Sharing the Big News
The small Journey of Big Time Tees trying to grow
My family and I started a T-Shirt company called Big Time Tees and we are always searching for new ways to grow. So while enrolled at school I was presented with the idea to create a publication for a company. I immediately thought about our family company. I have been trying to keep up with the social media and getting people aware of what we do. So…BINGO! A Product catalog is the missing piece! It was the answer to a lot of problems that were coming our way.
So, we were able to start brain storming different ideas and ways to handle this product catalog. This catalog would be for the employees to show around to our future clients. We would be able to have them explore through the publication themselves and the hope is that they will purchase one of the shirts.
Here was my process that I went through for this publication:
1.I was able to start out with some wire-framing because I was so eager to get this publication on the move.
These wire-frames helped me plan out the pages and sections that I wanted to incorporate. All of these things helped me see what to do and what not to do when it came to my publication. The way I wanted to design this was that there could easily be more sections, pages, and other elements that could be added later.
2. Second I took those wireframes and placed them into InDesign so that I could start visualizing how it would look.
I felt like this version of my publication was my rough draft for how I wanted things to look. I really wanted to incorporate the colors and fonts that were used in the Big Time Tees logo. I was really unhappy with the way things were looking with this initial design. I didn’t know where to go so I turned to UnSplash to find some photos for some visuals. I really wanted to keep it classy because I felt like the font was classy. So, I moved on to step three and took things to the next level.
3. Taking the rough draft and taking them to the next level.
After working on this second edition I was feeling so much better about how this publication was turning out. It was giving the whole project new life and more flow. Plus it still had the teal blue color as a light overlay for the backgrounds. This put the focus on the text and still allowed the images to impact how the pages look. It was also time to explore how each of the pages for the different types of T-shirts would turn out.
We have so many different designs and I wanted to be able to showcase them in the best light. So, in the T-shirts section we started out with four different pages of types of shirts Funny, Movies, Family Reunions, and Religious. I ended up with an overlay on each of these pages with a little grocery cart that was supposed to be a check out for anyone looking to buy. So, while scrolling through each section you could buy any shirt you were looking at. Plus each of the shirts demonstrated was a slideshow of shirts so you could see the phrase on all different colors of shirts.
I was really happy with the design improvement that was being seen but I still needed to add some interactions for our viewers.
4. Add the interactions and finish the publication.
There are only a few interactions for this publication because it is a product catalog. Keeping it simple with tapping to view our process and then tapping for colors. This way you could see what you were getting and how it would look. All this publication was really meant to do was spark ideas for a shirt you might want. We just want people to order a shirt and let us know what they think.
I got to learn so much from this publication and I was able to improve in my design. I learned how to do a slideshow in Mag+ and how to do other tasks. It really helped me gain new perspective for all of my other designs. Another element for this publication was snapping the images so that they would stay where the user could easily view them.
I was so grateful for this opportunity and it really helped with my confidence. It was hard working for myself and creating all of my own assets but it was so nice. In the future I really want to help other people out and make something that they can showcase to others. These publication tools can be so powerful and will really help improve businesses in the future. So please reach out and let me know if you would be interested.
Thanks for reading!
