After completing my first two designs for team Assault, Tim asked if I’d like to make a tutorial providing some insight into my design process.Generally speaking I always try to work from general to specific. I also find that for each design, the process is unique. Some designers feel that thumbnails are always useful, some designers feel that just going at it, throwing pieces together and working out the design solutions on the canvass is the best method.To be honest I do not prefer any standard methodology over another, the only consistent philosophies I try to abide by while working include, working general to specific, maintaining focus on what works for THIS design--don’t hold anything precious, and last but certainly not least, don’t be afraid to try something new!For the “One Year As A Lion” design I already had a strong image in my head of what I wanted and a fairly certain approach laid out before I began, so lets get into it.

Gather source images

The first step in the actual production process is to search and gather images which I think could be useful. I’ll use ANY resource available, google, flickr, magazines, old sketches, ANYTHING.When I was living in Amsterdam, taking the train to work, they would hand out free newspapers to passengers. As the papers were in Dutch I couldn’t read the articles, but i took the papers anyway and during my ride I would look through the images for anything that MIGHT be useful in the future. At the end of each month I’d scan all the clippings in that I had accumulated, and save them in a PSD file of reference material.For this design I knew I wanted a man/lion figure standing out among a sea of sheep. I wanted the lion to be the only source of light as well as the sheep to resemble rocks of a cliff. I searched for sheep, sheep flocks, goats, lions, orangutans, (for fur) clouds/storm clouds/ash plumes, (all for rock like imagery to accompany the sheep) bodybuilders, (for the lion man’s base) barcodes, and skeletons.As you can see in this image I’ve gathered and extracted various masses of sheep. At this stage we aren’t concerned with color, brightness, contrast or levels. Remember, we’re working general to specific, once we lay in the base of the image we can then work more specifically, tweaking when necessary.

From general to specific

The lion man is a good example of finding anything you think could work to your advantage and going with it.  Here is an image of two different body builders, a random hand, two different lion’s manes and even some orangutan fur to fill out the mane further. None of the images have the same colors, tonal values or contrast. At this point, even the seams between the different images are clearly noticeable. Again, all acceptable at this “block in” stage.Here the lion man has come a little further, now with both arms and a leg. Where pieces didn’t line up enough i painted in a make-shift base. The further we go, the more layers we build up, the less noticeable the seams between the various pieces will become.

Combining the elements in gray scale

Here we have the lion man with his flock. I’ve gone ahead and desaturated the image so that I could focus on unifying the values to bring the individual pieces together more.

After using several adjustment layers, including: “levels,” and “brightness/contrast”, to even out the values I began painting in areas that needed more visual information before going any further with any additional layers.

Here I’ve addressed all the seams, I’ve added to and unified highlights and shadows and I’ve slightly altered the outreaching hand.

I’ve knocked back the brightness and added a layer of cloud imagery I’ve meshed together with the sheep layer. I’ve began to bring out a focal point and focus on building up the light source. This was accomplished by fading the edges of the flock to darkness and dodged up areas that would be closes to the light source. (his hand)I’ve also adjusted layers of highlight and deep shadow by dodging/burning/over-painting.

Here, you can see I’ve added a flame for the light source. I’ve also adjusted the shape of his hand. Because I couldn’t find a hand “just right” for my design needs here I took a photograph of my own posed hand with my phone and then brought it into Photoshop for further manipulation. I’ve also brought in layers of hair I had assembled from images of orangutans set to multiply over the base of the lion man’s body.I should mention that in order to streamline the design process I have a “hue/saturation” layer at the top of my layer stack in this PSD set to “0% saturation”. This way, no matter what color information a new layer or image brings in, as long a it is below this “hue/saturation” layer it will automatically show up as gray scale. This keeps me from having to individually desaturate every layer I bring in.

I’ve now began to bring in more subtle detail elements. Here I’ve added sheep skeletal information to various members of the flock including skulls, ribs, and spines. I’ve also added to the sheep’s head in the lion man’s hand.  Additionally, I’ve added in bar code elements to the back of several sheep’s heads, a subtle detail.

From my original mental image of this design, I knew that the final design would be a layered "posterized" look. I felt this would best add to the element of ambiguity in the flock. I believed this would also aid in bringing together the sheep and cloud elements.

Having had this in mind, I added another adjustment layer at the top of my layer stack in the PSD, as I had done with the “hue/saturation” before. This time it was a “posterize” modifier.

Bringing it all together with detail

Now that I had all of the basic design information unified, all that was left was detail work. I wanted a hot color palette of yellows and oranges to work with an earthy palette of browns. I tried several ideas before stumbling across the right design solution for this image: I ended up using color overlays and various hue/saturation adjustments.

Finally, dejected, I decided to take a wander through my reference library of images and textures I’ve collected. It was at this point I stumbled across a sheet of brown, discolored and deteriorating paper.

I then made copy layers of this sheet which were then merged and the seams stamped out with the stamp tool. All that was left was to find the most visually pleasing layer setting, which in this case was “color burn” at 100%, a little hue/saturation tweak and bingo!

Even though I felt I had achieved the colors I wanted, something was still missing. It was still too clean. I needed a bit of grunge, a bit more granular debris. So again back to the reference library to find an appropriate overlay.  This piece of paper had just the detailed dirt information I was looking for.

I set this layer to “multiply”, and knocked back the opacity and adjusted the levels so that only the darkest micro detail would show up.

And here we have my final image. I had completed my portion of the design, the base for which Tim would add his own design touches to in order to polish the piece.

The finishing touches by Tim

After receiving the final design from Stani, I decided to add a bit of the "Assault" flair to the design including some text, our hidden logo, (It's in there I promise you) as well as some abstract splats to the lion and flames. I duplicated the entire design, and set the layer mode of the duplicate to color dodge. Next, I played with the opacity and levels to give the design more contrast, and more importantly a few less colors so we could afford to print the shirt!

What you see above is the final version of the design and you can purchase the, "One Year As A Lion" T-Shirt over at the Assault Online Store. You can also purchase Stani's other design, the 1984 t-shirt, which we will also have a, "making of" blog post in the near future.

Related Posts

    
• Tutorial: Creating your own Photoshop Custom Brushes
    
• Assault Grunge Photoshop Brushes
    
• Tutorial: Photoshop Brush Dynamics
    
• Tutorial: Trendy Lightbursts step by step tutorial

If you're a designer and developer there's no doubt that you have at some time had to design or code an HTML email. If you haven't already, sign up for our newsletter at the top of our homepage to receive the Assault Newsletter once a month.

HTML emails have become a great way to solidify your brand with internal and external emails. Along with their popularity, there seems to be some common misconceptions about how they work, and how long they take to build. Along with the basic process for which I have outlined below, there are a few general rules that you should always follow with HTML emails as well as with any other web based project for which you are not experienced with or completely cognizant of:

1. If the client needs it the next day, they are not getting an HTML email.

Email clients are even pickier than web browsers, and there are 50 more email clients than browsers. HTML emails need to be tested after they are built. Testing can take anywhere from 1-4 hours. They also need to be cut up from an image and turned to plain text so that if users have certain features disabled in their email client (Such as HTML) they can still see the content of the message.

2. HTML Emails are commonly rejected and/or flagged as spam (Should you even use it?)

HTML email adds points to your emails’ overall spam score, and runs the risk of being marked as spam. For this reason, it is important to send a text only version of your email, and/or a link at the top of the email that allows users to click to view their newsletter in a browser window. Another thing to note, is that because you have an inherit spam score from the embedded HTML, that you should not forward HTML emails. They should be sent directly with no FWD in the subject because that too will add to your overall spam score.

We should also be sure to have permission to send emails to the people we are contacting whether it be via an opted-in online subscription form, or they should have exchanged business cards, and understood that they would be getting contacted.

3. Images are disabled for security reasons

It is important to have the text of the email be in system text because 99% of email clients have images disabled for security reasons. This causes them to show up blank until the user right click and allows them. With plain html and system text users can still see most of the email.

4. “Pixel Perfect” – Not possible with HTML Emails

There are too many email clients, and too many different rules for how html emails are displayed. They are never going to look exactly the same in all email clients. Your 16 hour build time can easily turn into 100 hours of time if you spend time trying to make it look correct in Eudora as well as in Outlook Express, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail.

5. Fast, Good, Cheap – Pick two

If you want a fast and cheap email, it’s not going to be complex and it has to be very simple. If you want a good, fast email, it’s not going to be cheap.

The Correct Process (16-24 hours After Design Approval)

• Design Approved for build
• Design built into inline styles, HTML/CSS and tables
• Images uploaded to remote host
• Design is sent around to different email clients to test for images disabled etc.
• Email is built into workable template for either Campaign Monitor or Thunderbird (see below)

The Incorrect Process

• Design Approved
• Design Sent to Client
• As an attachment
• As a PDF
• As a single image in an html document

Two Ways to send your HTML Email

1. One email at a time, personalized for each individual
This process requires using either an Outlook template, or a Thunderbird template. We recommend doing this process in Thunderbird because it provides a way to send an html email, as well as a text only email in case users do not allow HTML in their emails.

It should be noted that there is no tracking with this approach. The only way you will know who clicked on what is by looking at your site statistics, or from actual responses from users.

2. More than one email at a time, mass email to large lists
For this solution we recommend using Campaign Monitor. Campaign Monitor's templates take longer to make because they have to integrate with the Campaign Monitor template scheme, but can be saved and reused.

Campaign Monitor makes it easy to import lists of emails, personalize names and subjects of emails, make groups of users based on certain rules, and makes it easier to track and maintain your campaigns to see how successful they are. It’s also a relatively cheap service at $5.00 per campaign and .01 cents per email. Some of my most favorite t-shirt related websites use Campaign Monitor: Linty Fresh, and Threadless.

Other email services:

• Mail Chimp
• MyEmma

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We're proud to announce a new designer has been added to the family, Assault, Fernando Rodriguez. Fernando, formerly of Ecko, is currently in the preliminary stages of launching his own design agency called EyeKandy. He currently resides in New York, but will be moving back to Puerto Rico to dedicate his time to developing his new company EyeKandy.

The shirt he has designed for Assault comes in black and white and is called Fatal Justice. It features the classic underlying political message that Assault has become known for, as well as some of our favorite design motifs--skulls!!!

Fernando had the idea from his experience living under the Puerto Rican government. There's alot of corruption, like in most governments, but especially in the Latin American governments. His other inspiration for the design comes from the current situation in Darfur. Some common themes in this design as well as in many other Assault designs are about how greed for power leads to killing and mass poverty among the working class.

The design's major theme being about how there really is no more equal justice for the rich and the poor. Justice has just become a beautiful icon, and is no longer what it used to be. Fernando hand draws all of his designs, and then inks them and scans them into Illustrator. He uses live trace and later brings them into Photoshop to clean them up. The color palette is neutral based to further emphasize the grunge look to go along with his original idea for the concept.

Fernando is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design. If you'd like Fernando to do some apparel design work for you, or... if you'd like to contact him because you are a pretty lady who likes artists, you can go to his personal website and email him--especially if you live in Puerto Rico, or NYC.

Relavant Links

• EyeKandy
• Fernando's Personal Website
• Buy the Fatal Justice T-Shirt in Black
• Buy the Fatal Justice T-Shirt in White

I originally posted this at my Design and Apparel Resource Blog and thought it would be perfect for you ebayers...

Do you know why we sometimes find ourselves excitedly buying things we don’t really need?  I came across this outline from a book by Dan Ariely called, "Predictably Irrational" that had some incredibly insightful information about people and why we at times seem to act completely irrational. It covers giving away  things for free, putting high price points on products to create demand, and even the benefit of arousal!

The Truth About Relativity

• When Williams-Sonoma introduced bread machines, sales were slow. When they added a "deluxe" version that was 50% more expensive, they started flying off the shelves; the first bread machine now appeared to be a bargain
• When contemplating the purchase of a $25 pen, the majority of subjects would drive to another store 15 minutes away to save $7
• When contemplating the purchase of a $455 suit, the majority of subjects would not drive to another store 15 minutes away to save $7

The Fallacy of Supply and Demand

A good portion of what you may have learned in your high school economics class may not necessarily be true. By piggy backing on other brands and setting a unique price point and targeting a higher class of consumer you may find that you can put yourself in the same class as the greats:

Savador Assael, the Pearl King, single-handedly created the market for black pearls, which were unknown in the industry before 1973. His first attempt to market the pearls was an utter failure; he didn't sell a single pearl. So he went to his friend Harry Winston, and had Winston put them in the window of his 5th Avenue store with an outrageous price tag attached. Then he ran full page ads in glossy magazines with black pearls next to diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Soon, black pearls were considered precious.

Supply and demand doesn't necessarily pertain to products either, we've all seen that club that's got a line out the door every Friday Night. (that's probably devoid of any chicks on the inside.) The illusion of demand creates demand.

The Cost of Zero Cost

When we first started Assault, we charged for shipping. After realizing that that was a huge part of what kept people from buying our product we decided it would be good to try giving our visitors free shipping to simplify the process. We were amazed to see that getting hit with a shipping cost was a huge stopping point for most consumers and we've never looked back. Ariely noticed similar things with some of the tests that he tried on students:

• Ariely, Shampanier, and Mazar conducted an experiment using Lindt truffles and Hershey's Kisses.
  • When a truffle was $0.15 and a Kiss was $0.01, 73% of subjects chose the truffle and 27% the Kiss
  • When a truffle was $0.14 and a Kiss was free, 69% chose the kiss and 31% the truffle
  • According to standard economic theory, the price reduction shouldn't lead to any behavior change (relative price and expected pleasure should be equal between the two experiments)
• The same experiments were conducted with Kisses going for $0.02, $0.01, and free...and free again made a huge difference.
• Ariely's theory is that for normal transactions, we consider both upside and downside. But when something is free, we forget about the downside.
  • "Free" makes us perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is
    • Humans are loss-averse; when considering a normal purchase, loss-aversion comes into play
    • But when an item is free, there is no visible possibility of loss
• Ariely conducted a variation, where people were offered a choice between items.
  • He gave kids (and students) 3 Kisses and offered to trade 1 Kiss for a small Snickers, and 2 Kisses for a large Snickers.
  • The subjects overwhelmingly chose the large Snickers (which is rational, given the weights of the candies)
  • When he instead offered to trade 1 Kiss for a large Snickers, or let the person take a small Snickers for free, the subjects overwhelming went for the free offer.
  • The zero price effect applies even when money is not involved.
• In the real world, this effect was demonstrated by Amazon's free shipping.
  • After Super Saver shipping was introduced, Amazon saw sales increases everywhere except for France
  • It turned out that the French division offered 1 franc ($0.20) pricing instead of free pricing.
  • When this was changed to free, France saw the same sales increases as elsewhere

The Influence of Arousal

Another astonishing piece of information was the interviews of people when they were "sober" and after in which they had "aroused" themselves. People's minds  function entirely differently when under the influence of... well ya know. (We didn't have to tell you that sex sells. That's why our site is absent of pictures of Craig and myself on product pages...)

Ariely and Loewenstein conducted an experiment on Berkeley undergrads (Ariely tried to do this at MIT, but couldn't get the necessary permissions).  They asked them a series of questions.  Then they had the undergraduates stimulate themselves to a state of sexual arousal, and asked them to answer the same set of questions.

• Some of the results from their experiment:
  • Can you imagine having sex with a 60-year-old woman
    • Sober: 7%
    • Aroused: 23%
  • Could you enjoy having sex with someone you hated?
    • Sober: 53%
    • Aroused: 77%
  • Is just kissing frustrating?
    • Sober: 41%
    • Aroused: 69%
  • Would you slip a woman a drug to increase the chance she'd have sex with you?
    • Sober: 5%
    • Aroused: 26%
  • Would you use a condom even if you were afraid that a woman might change her mind while you went to get it?
    • Sober: 86%
    • Aroused: 60%

A few other interesting pieces of information

In 210 BC, Xiang Yu led an army against the Ch'in Dynasty.  While his troops slept, he burned his ships and smashed all the cooking pots.  He explained to his troops that they had to either fight their way to victory or die.  His troops won 9 consecutive battles.  Eliminating options improved the focus of his troops. We feel compelled to preserve options, even at great expense, even when it doesn't make sense.

Companies that try to market based on social norms ("like a good neighbor...") but fail to follow through (e.g. imposing nuisance fees) end up in a worse position. Consumers take personal offense when a relationship framed as a social exchange turns out to be a market one.

If you think you need to play rough, don't waste money making your company the fuzzy feel-good choice. State what you give and what you expect in return--it's just business.

A salary alone will not motivate people to risk their lives. Police officers, firefighters, soldiers--they don't die for their weekly pay. It's the social norms--pride in their profession and a sense of duty--that will motivate them to give up their lives and health.

Money, as it turns out, is very often the most expensive way to motivate people. Social norms are not only cheaper, but often more effective as well.

Some of this information is invaluable to you when you're planning the little things on your site or company that you may have never thought of. Free shipping, pictures of pretty girls wearing your product, offering coupons everywhere you can, picking your price point--all of these irrational behaviors have alot to do with the way humans have been wired weather it's social pressure, or some sort of marketing pressure. I highly recommend reading the book outline of Dan Ariely's book, checking out his official website, or go look at the Predictably Irrational website.

Feel free to arouse yourselves and go buy some of our shirts.

The Skull Propaganda T-Shirt was done using a combination of my normal photoshop techniques completely in Photoshop. The skull that provides the main focal point for the shirt was done by tracing a skull I found on the internet with the pen tool. I then converted the path to a custom shape so I could use the shape again if I wanted, and I deleted the jawbone because for some reason it makes it look a bit more rugged.

As always feel free to comment on the shirt as well as the underlying message on the shirt. The image links to a high resolution version of the design in case you want to see all the intricate details.

We've decided to make this shirt available to both men as well as women. The Men's shirts print on the American Apparel 2001 Fine Jersey T-Shirt and the Women's shirts print on the 6321 Sheer Jersey Cap T-Shirt. As always we encourage you to submit pictures of yourselves wearing our shirts and we'll send you discounts and free stuff!

 

To purchase the Skull Propaganda T-Shirt click here.

Download the skull custom photoshop shapes