Now that I am focusing more and more on music and engineering, I need to scratch my design itch now and again on my own time. Earlier this month, I created three designs for custom t-shirts I could wear out dancing.

Colgada custom tango t-shirt

Here, I’ve taken the toothpaste brand Colgate and turned it into Colgada, a tango move involving spinning both your partner and yourself on one axis. It looks a bit like a spinning V, with both dancers pivoting at roughly the same point on the floor.

Absolut Fusion custom tango t-shirt

I took the ubiquitous look of the Absolut Vodka advertisements, and turned it into Absolut Fusion. Dancing fusion is taking little bits of Tango, Swing and Blues and throwing them all in the same song. I hear there’s actually a Fusion dance night in Portland OR – I’d love to go to that, if only I lived in the area!

Neotango custom tango t-shirt

This one was perhaps a bit too subtle. I took the Nintendo logo and substituted a few letters to get Neotango, which is a reference to a new style of tango music combining electronic productions with tango instrumentation. I’m actually working on a couple of neotango songs myself, for the next album.

This isn’t the first time I have created custom dance-based t-shirts. Last year I created a set of three tango-influenced T-shirts.

Nuevo Inside custom tango t-shirt

This was my first t-shirt design I did. Again, another tango reference – this time, referring to a new style of tango dancing that is becoming popular, especially among younger dancers.

Tango Barbara custom tango t-shirt

Probably my least favorite of the collection. I tried to make a semi-cool logo for Santa Barbara Tango, but it ended up taking on a Black Panther context that I didn’t quite catch while I was creating it.

Swango custom tango t-shirt

Yet another fusion-style dance t-shirt. This one wasn’t based off any existing logo – I just wanted to create a logo from scratch that highlighted the SWing in swango. Truth be told, I am starting to hate the word, but the term is fairly well-recognized within the dance community.

I think my favorite flow is to take a well-known icon, symbol or brand, and parody it to fit a niche market, such as tango dancers. Here are a couple other designs I plan on printing.

Gancho King t-shirt idea

I’m fairly excited about getting this one printed. The “Gancho” took me quite awhile to do, though it still needs some tweaking. For those not in-the-know, a gancho is another tango move. Look it up.

Tango Police t-shirt idea

Thanks to some Santa Barbara dancers for help on this idea (Lora, Nathan, and Karen). It’s pretty bland right now, but fairly true to the original Monopoly source.

I print all of my designs at Printfection , which has much better print quality than the more popular Cafepress. I have printed with other companies in the past, but Printfection’s quality has convinced me to settle with them.

For those wondering how I make my designs, I create all my t-shirts as vector art in Illustrator. For logos, I either find vector sources on the internet (it helps to search for ‘eps’ when looking for vector logos – it’s surprising all the odd places original source art can be found), or I use jpeg images as a template to re-construct the logo myself.

Fonts used in logos are also easy to find by searching for something like ‘colgate font’. And if the font isn’t available, I try to construct letters on my own. Finally, I take the finished image and save it as a high-resolution JPEG (as little compression as possible, and at least 300 DPI or larger). I upload the image to Spreadshirt, and make minor positioning adjustments.  Maybe sometime in the future I will write a detailed guide on how to reconstruct logos in vector format, or how to construct letters to match a logo’s font.

If anyone is interested in purchasing a t-shirt, let me know at info@chancesend.com. I would publish the designs on my Printfection account, but I fear that if I do, they would get deleted as potential copyright infringements (though this falls under fair use as parody, I know companies like Printfection and Cafepress tend to be overly cautious).

This series shows several collages of humans and the cosmos, in a lighthearted effort to quickly depict several different concepts of an omnipotent being.

The touch of a hand

The image of the V838 Moncerotis red supergiant is from the Hubble imaging satellite (Credit: NASA, ESA and H.E. Bond - STSci). The image of the hand is by Maciej Ciupa of Biskupiec, Poland (ciupa@op.pl)

The huge evergrowing pulsating brain that rules from the center of the ultraworld

The first image is the stellar death of planetary nebula NGC 7027 taken by Hubble (Credit: NASA, H.E. Bond - STSci). The image of the brain is by the Virtual Human Initiative.

There’s a party in my galaxy

The first image is taken by Hubble, and is a Black Eye galaxy that resulted from an abrasive collision (Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI), Acknowledgment: S. Smartt (Institute of Astronomy) and D. Richstone (U. Michigan)) The image of the rocker hand is by Chris Sanchez of Franklin Park, IL (iamjamoke@gmail.com)

The overseeing eye

The first image is the glow of a nearby planetary nebula taken by Hubble (Credit: NASA, NOAO, ESA, the Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), and T.A. Rector (NRAO)). The eye is a photo by Dora Mitsonia (float_d@yahoo.com).

The wish giver

The first photo is the Trifid Nebula taken by Hubble (Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI)). The image of the woman is by Steve Landis.

Demon Series

In contrast with the Hand of God series, this shows the fiery and awe-inspiring aspects of the cosmos, composited with similarly-forboding demon images.

Demonic spawn of the cosmos

The first image is the burst of a star in the core of a galaxy, imaged by Hubble (Credits: NASA, Gerald Cecil (University of North Carolina), Sylvain Veilleux (University of Maryland), Joss Bland-Hawthorn (Anglo- Australian Observatory), and Alex Filippenko (University of California at Berkeley)). The second image is a portrait by Nicolas Abadjian of New York, NY (nicodemus1019@yahoo.com)

Demon inside the fire

The solar image was taken by the SOHO Solar Imaging satellite (Credit: Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA). The devil drawing is a sketch by an unknown internet source

Planet Repurpose Series

Taking images of the bodies orbiting our sun and placing them in situations where they do not belong.

From whence the moon came

The galactic image is the Messier 104 "Sombrero" galaxy taken by Hubble (Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)). The image of the moon is taken by the ASTER satellite (Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team)

The giant spider of Saturn’s Tethys moon

The photo of Saturn's Tethys moon is taken by the Cassini deep space explorer. The image of the spider is by Jorge Del Toro of Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico (bullgeo@hotmail.com)

Happy birthday, Earth!

The moon image is from the ASTER satellite (Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team). The bow was photographed by Jyn Meyer from Spokane, WA (sxc@jynmeyer.com)

What a lovely night

The earth image is a multi-sensor composite photo created by Reto Stockli with the help of Alan Nelson, under the leadership of Fritz Hasler, using NOAA's Polar Orbiting Environmental Satellites (POES) + others. The second image is the M51 whirlpool galaxy photographed by Hubble (Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))

Rings of Earth

The photo of Saturn's rings is from Hubble (Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Clarke (Boston University), and Z. Levay (STScI)). The photo of Earth is by the Galileo spacecraft.

Ariel View series

Mainly concerned with arial views from the Iknonos, Modis, and Aster imaging sensors, this series seeks to change their focus through photoshopping.

It began in Afrika

The arial image of Africa's dust storm is from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite. The images of the smoke is from Lucretious of Salonika, Thessaloniki, Greece (lucretious@gmail.com)

This is the big one

Hurricane Kate is photographed by the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite. The galaxy is courtesy of Hubble (Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))

A Vatican hurricane

The photo of Hurricane Kate is from the MODIS sensor on the Terra satellite. The image of the Vatican's spiral staircase is by Roman Tutschek of Wien, Wien, Austria (r.tutschek@designkanzlei.com)

The US Navy on a Venitian holiday

The arial photograph of Venice is by the Ikonos imaging satellite. The photograph of the battleship is taken from a Pearl Harbor photograph from Ikonos.

That is one large island

The image of the island is from the ASTER imaging satellite (Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team). The interior galaxy is a Hubble photograph of the Tarantula Nebula showing many generations of stars (Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA / STScI / NASA))

Worshipping the Suez canal

The overhead image of the Suez canal is from the ASTER imaging satellite (Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team). This has been pasted into a stained-glass image by Michael Slonecker of Windermere, Florida (slonecker@earthlink.net)

Skysitter

The overhead arial shot of Denver is the first public image of Denver, generated by the Ikonos satellite. The shot of the child's legs is from Gabe Guterres of Soquel, CA (beatnikman@juno.com)

ET Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel tower image is by Riccardo Lisoni of Italy (liric58@yahoo.it). This is composited with a photo of the WFPC2 galaxy (Credit: NASA, John Trauger (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and James Westphal (California Intitute of Technology))