Spring 2017
# What is Kin Games?
Kin Games is an undergraduate kinesiology conference where Canadian students gather to compete in academics, athletics, and spirit.
Since the McGill Martlet, our mascot, looks like this:
I was asked to come up with a more fitting design for an athletic competition. This was back in 2017, before McGill imposed stricter regulations on McGill branding.
# The story
Although I had done a few commissions around this time, I was still very new to design principles and practices. Files from my early days are a confusing patchwork of overlaid vector shapes, and layers were nonexistant.
As it goes, I was working on this particular design while my second cousin was visiting Canada. Her husband teaches design, so after having done countless posters, flyers, and even a tattoo, I had the priviledge of sitting in on my first ever lesson in design.
Above you’ll see two versions. The grey t-shirt features my independent pass at the design. The black shirt features the second version, redesigned with advice from my impromptu instructor. He taught me some key Illustrator principles and offered advice on how to give an image a dynamic feel, but I still had much to learn in terms of silhouettes and shape construction.
I include these early designs to document the learning process I go through with every project. I learned here that starting fresh doesn’t mean starting from scratch. You bring with you the lessons from previous attempts, and this has served me very well through subsequent projects.
In the end, the Kin Games team decided to print their tshirts with with my original design.