Learning to use the symbol sprayer

J. Jill, a women’s clothing company, each year holds a “Nature of Compassion” contest to design a T-shirt that will be sold to raise money for homeless women. Each year has a different theme. I decided to use the contest to experiment with some of Illustrator’s tools I hadn’t used much: custom brushes and symbol sets and sprayers.

Of course, because the T-shirts were to be screen printed, and the contest rules limited the number of colors allowed, I came up with a second version that I submitted, above right.

My approach was to design a shirt that I’d want to buy and wear. I wanted to avoid anything that seemed too “feminine” or what I call “frou-frou.”