October 17, 2010

By: Lori B. from Albemarle, NC
Comments: 17

Posted By: Lori Baucom
On: 2/18/2009 1:36:57 PM

I am in charge of helping design a shirt for our Battle of the Books team. I am looking for ideas for ways that the students can help design these. They usually have all of their names on it in some way. Any ideas?

Posted By: Stephen Brink
On: 2/19/2009 9:05:33 AM

Run a contest for the students to design the shirt.

Posted By: Centennial Middle School
On: 2/19/2009 10:11:39 AM

We had a design contest for kids in our school for our community project which involves building wells in Africa. The kids all submitted their designs, teachers narrowed it down (by votes) to the top ten, and then all the students in the school voted on the top design during their lunches.

Posted By: Frederick Smith
On: 2/19/2009 10:03:12 PM

Get your Art teacher involved in the devleopment process. They may be able to incorporate ideas that include multiple grade levels, ethnicity and great talent. Also too you could even have them incorporate some of the design elements that you learned in New Orleans.

Posted By: Daniel Nelson
On: 2/20/2009 5:28:49 PM

If you keep the design to basic line art (black on white), most student designs can easily be adapted to screen printing on shirts. Have all of the students develop ideas through thumbnail sketches and create rough designs. Selection could be by vote or adapting two or more ideas into the final design. Names can be incorporated into the design(think stack of books with names on the binder), or put on the back of the shirt. We often print the signatures of student clubs or groups on the backs of the shirts.

Posted By: Frederick Smith
On: 2/20/2009 8:34:32 PM

Lori, Daniel seems to have a plan to get you of to a good start. I wonder would the addition of names or printed signatures force the price of each t-shirt to balloon in price. I know nothing about the printing business. I was just wondering.

Posted By: Daniel Nelson
On: 2/23/2009 5:34:14 PM

Most screen printing companies have a set-up charge or screen charge for each color printed; each color requires a screen. If the art is limited to one color, the nature of the image will not affect the price.

Posted By: kat corrigan
On: 2/23/2009 7:07:59 PM

if you are trying to be really cheap, you can cut stencil designs out of left-over laminate (from the laminating machine) and then spray-paint the designs on the shirts. I do this for a basic print-making class-

Posted By: James Iliff
On: 2/23/2009 7:16:49 PM

On a very cheap (and somewhat lame) level, I've bought the iron-on sheets from target and had the students design and print out their designs. The nice thing is that the images can be as complex as they make them. The bad thing is that it washes off quickly.

Posted By: Kevan Nitzberg
On: 2/23/2009 8:31:52 PM

Going back to the original post, how about having the students design the t-shirts depicting characters from their favorite books? There are certainly enough visual resources available online that would helpful for them to draw their ideas from.

Posted By: Susie Jessop
On: 2/23/2009 9:35:09 PM

For a great finishing touch to any group project that results in a unique t-shirt design, gather up a handful of Sharpies and have the kids sign each others t-shirts at the distribution event. Priceless personalization.

Posted By: Gineff McKinney
On: 6/4/2009 1:30:44 PM

So... can you share with us what became of the the shirts... I personally like the effects of spraying rit-dye onto shirts with a water bottle... The kids enjoy it too..just make sure that the bottle is on the spray setting!