Welcome back to another addition of our Retro '71 apparel line. This weeks concept is based on vintage Walt Disney World Resort merchandise. Over the past few weeks I've been out visiting the various antique and thrift shops Indianapolis has to offer. I've come across some amazing artifacts and now have officially become obsessed with vintage theme park merchandise. I know that I could easily acquire vintage merchandise via ebay but what's the fun in that? I do however use ebay as a reference before I begin hunting.
During my research I came across a series of 4 mini glass plate coaster from the Magic Kingdom, simple in design and in colors of aqua blue, green, black and white depicting Adventureland, Liberty Square, Fantasyland and Main Street U.S.A. I knew right away that I must incorporate these designs into apparel for Retro '71 as well as find them for my collection.
I used the art directly from the plate, recreating it in Illustrator. The only changes I made were the main typeface for Adventureland (I reset it in a display font Disney used back in '71 for the branding of Adventureland), using the original Walt Disney World flag logo and adding the distressed textures.
I placed the design on a heathered green shirt. The printing technique would be waterbase inks or plastisol ran through an extremely high mesh count in order to get a soft hand. The design would be printed without an underlay so that the print really looks vintage.
There's a fine line when trying to make something look vintage when it comes to printing. Simply adding a texture to your art file only takes you so far. You need to find the happy medium with not only your art but with print production as well. Most if not all my shirts would be printed in similar fashion as Junk Food apparel. Fact: they have the best printers and printing techniques when it comes to authentic faux vintage looks.
Well that does it for this weeks addition. Tune in next week for part 2 of our Main Street U.S.A. typography case study. Hope to see you back here soon and have a great week.
