vitaminwater CFDA contest submission

vitaminwater and the CFDA (council of fashion designers of America) are hosting a contest for vitaminwater's "color collection" of t-shirts.  Six designers have already created shirt designs, but they are allowing submissions for the seventh!  Since DAAP is a CFDA-selected school, I thought I'd take a shot at this.

 

I was asked to put together a mood board showcasing my inspiration.  The flavor I chose to work with was "drive", a blood orange and mixed berry water.  I was particularly in love with the label, which as you can see above is bright orange and royal blue.  Since complementary colors are big for spring 2012 (and I'm loving orange and blue right now), I played up the color combo in my design.  And because the brand I am representing sells water, I designed my colors to look as though they were painted with watercolor paints, and used water droplets to capture the essence of the product further.  I have always admired vitaminwater for their simple logo and its beautiful sense of balance, so I kept my design centered and linear with clean edges.  I hope my design captures the brand identity while still maintaining my own design aesthetic, and that it shows a creative abstraction of a recognizable product.

I needed to submit a flat of the design on a white t-shirt (the design could be on the front or back, but not both), and then a croquis version of the design.  Both were done using a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet (love), and the actual shirt design was done in Photoshop CS3 (I know, I know).  And I am very proud of those water droplets.  

For a t-shirt, this is definitely something I would wear, so I hope that it strikes a chord with the judges for being a unique graphic representation of my inspiration.  If not, I had a lot of fun doing it and I learned how to make water droplets in Ps!  So it's still a winning experience.  The winner will get $5,000 and a two-day trip to New York City with a guest, to see their shirt produced and showcased at NY Fashion Week (September 8th -15th - WOOHOO for being down there anyway!), and to watch a few fashion shows as well!  Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.  I can't remember if you can vote for your favorite designs - I think you can - but that won't be til September.  Wish me luck!

Oh, and we had to include a head shot (they said it is so they can see what the next big designer looks like!).  If you want to see which one I picked, it's the one I'm now using in my "about" section.