Sunday, November 30, 2008

Babies for Barack and Obama Mamas

Little Characters, my online store, has a great collection of political T-shirts for babies, kids, and parents. Click on any of the pictures below and you'll go straight to the website where you can buy T-shirts, onesies, or bibs for less than $20. They're all printed to order, so every design will be in stock in the size you want.

The design I'm most proud of is based on Obama's logo. It features a baby/toddler crawling on the red and white striped path toward the rising sun.
As always, I've made all the designs available in different skin tones. This picture is available with several messages (or just on its own). My favorite message is "My Future Is Looking Brighter".

This design was one of the things I can really say was a collaboration with my husband, Patrick. My final sketch had a rough drawing of the logo itself, but Patrick did a lot of cool technical work. He created different layers - one for my little kid, one for the wavy stripey path and one for the circles. Then he made sure the circles were really circles (I suck at drawing straight lines or perfect circles). The last thing he did was a really cool effect where the light blue background fades gradually into transparent. It makes it look like the white sun is really sending out rays of light.

I think another set of political designs that are really cute are my little blue donkeys.
A good friend of mine periodically checks out my shop and she spontaneously reacted to the United Baby by saying that the little blue donkey on his lap was really cute. The other shopkeepers on the forum have been saying for a while that I should try to offer designs that don't have people in them, so I decided to do some designs with just that donkey. I had to monkey with the coloring, because the bright blue didn't seem to print well - especially on dark colored shirts. The pastel is sweet though. My favorite product with the little donkey is the Future Democrat design on the maternity shirt.

I wish that I had been able to create more of these before Obama won, but I've been plugging away. As I'm typing this and thinking it through, I can't really ask for a better reason for designing. It's been hard work, but I do want to celebrate Obama's victory. Honestly, I'm just frustrated that I can't figure out how to get my designs to come up higher on the search results in Cafe Press's marketplace. Right now, if someone goes into their Kids section for clothes and does the featured search for Barack Babies, my designs don't start until the 7th page! I guess it's egotistical but I really believe my designs are better than a lot of the ones that come up first, and I'm worried that no one will see them.

If anyone is reading this who likes my designs, please go into the marketplace, search under "Barack Babies" and just click on my designs. Supposedly, Cafe Press's search results are based on how many people click the designs - not only people who buy them. So you could help my stuff get seen without spending a dime.

0 comments: