Designing a unisex t-shirt for Loves, Mariessa posed an interesting challenge — after all, her name has the word love in it and hearts in her logo. Since the brand is a boutique fashion line, it needed it to be edgy (my favorite descriptive word), bright and cool. I had my work cut out for me.

Turns out Mariessa didn’t like any of these — she’s going with something more distressed and more about clothing construction, a dress form and sewing machine parts — but I liked the execution of integrating hearts with a larger concept about either 1) a tough act or 2) big talk to make it more likely that a boy would wear it.

Approved t-shirt designs for Loves, Mariessa. These were screened by Bearded Lady printing in Austin, Texas for a limited edition.

With a handful of fonts, I recreated the design, substituting a few of the phrases for term specific to Kirk. Here’s what we came up with.

The catalog number is the actual catalog number for Kirk’s album, Suddenly Bright Out. See, Kirk wanted a t-shirt that was less about promotion than it was something someone would want to wear. But still, with an eye on promotion. His logic: he’d seen a cup at Bouldin Creek Coffeehouse that read, I love — can’t remember the name, but let’s say Andre D’Arcy so — Andre D’Arcy. Kirk found out later that this was a local musician. But more than about Andre D’Arcy, it was a cool coffee cup, one that Kirk wanted to use for his coffee.

With such a shirt, I can see how the shirt owner would proselytize Kirk more than the shirt by itself. Kirk’s logic is that word-of-mouth is more powerful than just seeing another name on a t-shirt.

In the end, he liked the second version the best. I do too. Look for the shirt soon at his website.