Tuesday, August 20, 2013

2013 Dominican Republic Missions Trip Shirt Design

A couple of months ago, I was asked to design a trip T-shirt for my church's Dominican Republic mission trip. I was happy to help. There was only one problem: with only a couple of days before my deadline, no one could tell me anything about the trip or its theme!

Eventually, I was given a verse to work with — Colossians 1:16.
For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.
And I was told that the primary ministry work on the trip would be to teenagers hungry for apologetics.

Here's what I came up with for the main graphic, which was on the back of the shirt:
The idea here was to take the whole world, give the land masses a bit of texture and height, but highlight the Dominican Republic with some landmarks and commonly found palm trees.  But how to credit God with His creation? Then, I recalled a phrase I heard (or misheard, or misremembered, or...) long ago about "putting one's thumbprint on" something — that is, leaving your signature on something you've done.  From there, I had the idea to embed the Tetragrammaton into the thumbprint itself, clearing up any question about Whose mark it was that was left.

I used a simple event marker for the front-left chest print:
Which brought the whole thing together like so: