Week 3 & 4

Between these two weeks, the workload was pretty much the same. The office started to get a little bit hectic and stressful in these last fourteen days due to the confusion between the uniforms, shipping, uniform colors etc.

One of the harder things about being a cheer uniform company is decided color pantones for the teams. There was a very big miscommunication between the printing company and All Star, resulting in the uniforms being delivered in two very different shades of blue. Here is Angel, my boss handling the printed pantone and everyone basically discussing the differences between the two colors.

The work I did was not so stressful, however. I did a proposal of the mesh shorts I've decided and received great feedback. They asked if I like what I've designed, which was my favorite and least favorite design and what I would've changed in terms of color and templates if I had more time.

With that put aside, they took the designs they liked into consideration and instructed the next part of the internship to design sports bras that may or may not come together with the mesh shorts. Just like the mesh shorts, I had to work within clipping masks and symmetry, but I found it much easier to handle and design.

These are a couple of the designs I came up with.

I really liked this limited edition design from Nike from the safari line. I really liked that I could try and manipulate and change it up a little bit and make it more me!

When I proposed it in the middle of week 4, the feedback was as good as it was with the mesh shorts. They were happy with the extent that I've learned in terms of my Illustrator skills and have seen them being put to good use, which is exactly what I intended. They also gave me constructive feedback about designs that would not work well in reality, with it having too many colors and patterns, causing the cost of the item to shoot to the roof.

The skull design that I did on the top has more than 4 colors, which will require a lot of money when it's printed. Which is why in theory it works very well but in real life it might not.

In other news, the company also over ordered about 10 plain pink mesh shorts and allowed me to design vinyls that could be heat pressed onto each shorts. These were also things that they plan to put up on the website to be sold as individual items.

The process of vinyl printing and heat pressing is quite extensive and interesting!

 This is the workroom, or the work shop where the company does the more physical handiwork. The mac mini is uses a program much like the laser cutters at uni to send information out to the printer to do it's work. After doing a design, the rolls next to the laptops are the vinyls that we then align an snap to the grid on the printer as we can see in the picture.

 The printer then cuts very thinly into the vinyl according to the pressure settings. These are the samples that I've printed out. By peeling off the white sheet, only the design is left. The peeling process is called weeding.

 The tool that you see in the picture above is a weeding tool. It picks up the unnecessary vinyl very gently and I am able to remove the excess without ruining the design.

Unfortunately I was not able to take a picture of the final outcome of the designs being printed onto the shorts, but they turned out very well for my first heat press!


At the end of the week, they gave me a limited edition All Star jumper design that they were working on. We also all went out for Chinese food which is always a student's dream!

Overall, I really loved it. The small company, the cozy environment, the laid back attitude of everyone at the work place gave me a different outlook on the graphic design life. Yes, it would be absolutely amazing to work in a huge company and live from deadline to deadline, but sometimes, it's so much nicer to take a step back and use the road less taken!

Till then.