Person A: "So Are You Supposed To Look Or Not?"

Person B: "Negative."

Likes: 1,001 

Dislikes: 1,000

by Anonymous April 1, 1999

Name

Negative was chosen to represent the epitome of negative symbolism in both language and art.

There was a decent number of name changes for this particular design. Going way back, I was going to call it "Don't Say Hi", because that was the text used for my first prototype. However, after a few renditions, it would be called "Don't Look", but then I had to follow my theme of singular word names for Collection 1, So then I called it D-Negative, but then I thought the name was kinda ugly, therefore I changed it to Negative.

Concept

Funny story actually, this double negative concept wasn't my idea. When I was working at the library during high school I came across a particular piece of paper.

I mean I know for sure this was not intentional, however I laughed so hard and it really made my day. I would always reference this photo from time to time against annoying classmates.

So after revisiting this photo I told myself, "Well for a shirt you are supposed to look at the shirt, so I would do something like Don't Look."

Progression

So the process for this shirt was excruciating. I first started out with this simple piece 

Pretty simple, basically a cut out No Symbol with the words "Don't Look".

However, I was thinking that there was something missing and that the design felt empty. So I did another iteration of this version like this.

Adding this black line indicates this almost "3-D" effect that that bridges the two sides of the design. But now it became too much and that it isn't a design that I enjoy looking at, despite the uniqueness with the inclusion of the black line.

Therefore I went back to the drawing board and created this prototype.

I basically scratched off the idea of cutting the No Symbol and rewording the words as "Don't Say Hi". But it just doesn't bring out the message I wanted. This whole battle ended up me misleading myself to what I wanted. It's not an anti-social shirt, it's an anti-anti-visual shirt and I definitely don't want people to get the wrong message. So then I went back to my roots and started square one again.

Execution

Sometimes backtracking makes progression and with Negative, I achieved the completion of this shirt design.

I went back to saying "Don't Look", and instead of using a white or black shirt, I would use a red shirt to represent the color of negative connotations. And then I actually separated the No Symbol but through colors rather than distance to reflect that there are two words on the shirt.

Very annoying process of bringing new ideas and then backtracking.

But at the end of the day, this is the shirt that everyone be staring at in your local grocery store.