+KASA SHIRT DESIGN+
GOAL: To create a new shirt design for the Korean American Student Association (KASA) and win a free shirt with my design.
COntext: As a design challenge for myself, I decided to submit a design into KASA's shirt design competition. I wanted to see what ideas I could come up with, and in the process, hopefully win a free shirt.
TYPE: Graphic Design, Apparel Design, Branding
DATES: November 2017
+IDEATION+
For this project, I kickstarted my brainstorming process with three ideas: alphabet, characters, and parody.
ALPHABET: After browsing the internet for possible inspiration, I came across an image that combined the Korean alphabet letters with English to spell out words. I thought this was a perfect way to represent a mixed Korean American identity, so I began sketching out as many possible designs using this idea.
CHARACTER: I am a huge fan of cute characters such as Hello Kitty and Mickey Mouse, so I wanted to try creating my own character to represent KASA. Taking Northwestern's school mascot as my base, I sketched out a Wildcat character that have Korean American elements in its design.
Parody: In addition, I experimented with an idea based around KASA's private Facebook group name, "Kasaotalk." The name is a play on the popular Korean messaging app, Kakaotalk, which is easily distinguishable with its yellow logo. Taking this, I created a parody redesign of the yellow logo using "Kasaotalk" in place of Kakaotalk.
+FEEDBACK and MOCKUPS+
Upon showing my initial ideas to some friends and members of KASA, the majority of people favored the alphabet designs the most. While people thought that the Wildcat character was cute and iconic enough to act as a mascot for KASA, they felt that it wouldn't be popular with guys. As for the Kakaotalk logo, people commented that they would prefer to have a more original design for their shirt. Taking this feedback, I decided to refine my alphabet ideas and then mock them up onto shirts.
Some major decisions I made at this point were 1. to use geometric shapes to frame my alphabet design and 2. add the South Korean flag trigrams (the flag's black stripes) onto the shirt sleeves. Below are the shirt mockups I created.
+THE FINAL VOTE+
After submitting the above mockups to the competition, KASA members voted for their favorite design. Out of over 20 shirt designs, my design was picked (the left design in black)! Many of the comments people made about my design were that they enjoyed the minimalistic, cool feel, and that they found the sleeves to be a clever yet meaningful touch. Here are a few members of KASA rocking my design!
