- All for Parks v1 and v2
Years ago I began a hobby of going for walks and taking photos in Seattle's city parks. The photos I took excited me even though I was just an amateur with a cheap camera. I wanted to do some sort of project with them, but I didn't know what it should be. I explored several formats of the photos with text, and settled on a design for a set of posters. The posters were inspired by my photos, but I wanted the design to inspire other photographers to support a common cause through their creations. That proved to be a challenge.
All for Parks v1 Posters
Later I found a merch site that offered T-shirts made from material that is printed with your design before it is cut and sewed into a shirt, so that the design covers the entire shirt. I felt these shirts would be more socially interactive than the posters, and would provide a more immersive experience than just a T-shirt with a picture printed on it. I designed a template for the shirts with photos from my hikes. I hoped these shirts could become examples for a platform of sorts for other outdoor photographers to share their experiences.
All for Parks v2 Shirts
The idea seemed to address some problems I had identified with the online merch model:
- As an individual it's hard to gain recognition and build a following.
- Creation process is too open-ended, tedious, and granular. No focus.
On the other hand, I discovered several new problems:
- The shirts in hand weren't as desirable as they appeared on screen.
- The merch site doesn't adjust the size of the printed image for different sized shirts. Product previews can be wildly misleading for some sizes. Production process limits design options.
- Design iteration is too expensive and time consuming to justify risk/reward. This template design remains unresolved.
- Are T-shirts really the right kind of product for this cause and community?
Finally, I decided to shelf the whole idea.
- Outcome
This project has always been a conceptual exploration, and it is ongoing. The idea currently has grown beyond t-shirts and hiking to thinking about NFTs and web3 social networks.