This year, the team at DesignStreet has had a few major changes. Not only have we moved offices from North Sydney to Kent Street in the heart of the Sydney CBD, but we have also just celebrated our 25’th year as a company!
As with any new move, we’re gradually fitting out our office settings to better suit who we are as a company. This has involved the gradual addition of plants, artwork, neon signage and groovy black walls – as well as the inclusion of a few necessities (like snacks). As we got to thinking about how we look and feel as a company, we also decided to create some merch for our team to rock.
You are what you…wear?
We wanted to create something that reflects not only the type of work we do, but our creativity. A good t-shirt design should be something that all our team are happy to wear, whether around the office or at home!
Thus, we had the foundation to begin our designing process – with our brief, and our client (us).
We started off by thinking a bit about design elements that inspire us. This included existing streetwear, cool typographic effects, and intriguing illustrations. But how do you speak to the work of an advertising agency? We dabble in so much subject matter, tools and mediums that it is admittedly hard to sum up! For this reason, our brainstorming process and experimentation phase was key.
To the drawing board!
Experimentation follows directly from the brainstorming stage. Putting pen to paper pushes ideas forward, whether as a thumbnail sketch on an A4 sheet, or as polished as a vector graphic on an illustrator final! Here is the evolution of our own merch design.
- We scribbled down thumbnail drawings that combine the tools that we use daily, with elements of art and design that we like. Thumbnail sketches are petite sketches that allow you to quickly jot down many ideas quickly (hence the name).They also allow you to see a lot of your ideas in one space and decide what elements from each sketch you might like to pick and choose from.
- We tested funky displays of the digital tools we use every day in the studio.
- We added a graphic element to our design, allowing us to connect all the individual aspects of our concept, like all the things we love in our office (apparently, sushi!). This combined the creativity of our ideation with functionality.
Building a story with illustration
Thus, our product, the latest DesignStreet merch was born! A T-shirt with the theme: ‘The building blocks of DST’.
Our T-shirt includes elements of the digital tools we use, catchphrases around the office and even the food we like! Made up of hand-drawn lines, it reflects a little of the casual creativity of our team. Although this shirt might not ‘sum up’ DesignStreet, we can consider it a light-hearted expression, and a fun way to reflect on the changes that 2023 has brought about.
We are happy to be ever evolving and we are looking forward to seeing what the rest of the year could bring on! We’re already keen to see what the next merch we make will look like.
