A young, Wisconsin-based, entrepreneur turned his passion into an apparel and lifestyle brand: Goldeneye. I had the great pleasure of being the lead designer for the brand and the apparel, and assisting with some social media graphics. I was also a consultant for the voice of the brand, portrayed through social media, sharing strategies for more clearly communicating the overall tone of the brand.

Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop

I began with a task to create a logo and some t-shirt designs for Henry, the young entrepreneur behind the brand. He wasn’t exactly sure what the brand would consist of, but he wanted to get the logo out on some apparel and generate some buzz in his hometown.

As a designer, this frightened me a bit, not having much to go off of to create a well-designed logo that would be representative of the brand. It was one of those moments that challenged me and showed me that things don’t always have to be done in a specific order, and sometimes the product needs to be developed before you can create a brand package around it! With my eagerness to roll with the punches to create something bold for the community that I also call home, and Henry’s go-with-the-flow entrepreneurial spirit, we were in good shape to get to work!

Having known Henry from a very young age, I was able to really capture his essence, and pair it with his passions to create a bold, timeless, and versatile logo for what would come to be a really neat brand. Once the logo development process was complete, it was time to get to work on t-shirt designs. This is where I really got to feel out colors, art direction, and the overall mood for the apparel. Henry shared with me that he really resonated with brands like Sitka and Patagonia, and he’d like if I would take inspiration from some of their product development and art to create the first batch of Goldeneye tees.

We created a really fun, youthful yet timeless line of tees and a couple of hats, as well for the first batch of apparel. I worked with a local company, pre-pressing the artwork to get the designs screen printed and embroidered onto the apparel. It took a bit longer than expected, but in that time, we got to work thinking about what to do next.

While the first batch was great, we wanted to add some more character and personality to the next launch. I had the vision to create a really watercolor-esque marsh scene, depicting a foggy morning on the water, but it seemed that screen printers in our area were not going to be able to execute the design how we’d envisioned. Instead of taking a loss, I spent the next couple of weeks researching and gathering screen-printing supplies to do it myself! The first few tees were not fabulous, but I refined my technique and nailed down the colors to create just what I had imagined. I purchased some bleach, a fine-mist spray bottle, mixed large batches of the color palette and got to work on the limited edition Maddesign screen-printed tees.

The apparel was looking awesome, and we really had a great feel for the overall visual direction of the brand, so I got to work creating a style guide for his website developer and social media specialist. Most recently, I have designed a few ads for an apparel sale and helped with some back-end coding for the Shopify site.