ugmonk | The Scribtee Blog

Chance Of Rain

Phhh … hold on a second, let me wipe this dust and cobwebs off first …. cough … there you go. Time for more content, time for more insights into a designers’ life. This time we sent our questions out to Vermont, US of A, where Jeff Sheldon, the creator of the cute little CMYK raindrops on “Chance Of Rain” is living, working and doing other things. And this is what we got back:

Jeff Self Portait

Please introduce yourself in a few words.

My name is Jeff Sheldon and I am a 22 year old designer living in Burlington, VT with my amazing wife.

Are you a full time T-shirt designer? Or what is your main business?

I work as a full time graphic designer by day and do t-shirt design and other freelance work on the side. I recently launched my own line of shirts called Ugmonk. As you can see I love typography and good clean design. I found that there was a lack of fresh, clean t-shirt design so I decided to start my own brand.

Tell us a little about your design: what were your thoughts behind it ?

I had been drawing these little creatures for quite a while and noticed the some of them looked similar to raindrops. I then got the idea to create a full composition with the raindrops making up a cloud shape. The raindrops are happy with all of there friends just hanging out in the sky and enjoying life. Then before they know it the poor raindrops lives come to an end and they fall to their doom!

What inspires you?

Inspiration comes from everywhere for me. I enjoy browsing the web, being outdoors, people watching, taking photos, and just letting my my wander and coming up with completely random concepts.

What equipment do you work with ?
I like to sketch my ideas out first in my sketchbook and then take them to the computer. I use my trusty MacBook Pro, Adobe Illustrator, and Wacom tablet.

How many tees do you own and what’s the greatest and the ugliest piece in your collection?
Way too many, I can’t even fit them all in my drawers. I get a lot of my shirts from contests that I win or other clients that I do design for so I don’t end up buying too many other shirts. Ironically, I wear a lot of solid tees, so I would say those are a staple to my wardrobe.

A link to your favorite T-shirt site?
Well, a little shameless self-promo for my line: www.ugmonk.com. I don’t have a favorite site but I like a lot of stuff on www.designbyhumans.com and www.iso50.com.

What would be your advice to young and emerging designers (or people thinking of taking this direction)?
Learn the basic principles of art before trying to get good at photoshop and the computer side of things. Knowing how to use the computer as a tool helps, but it is much more important to understand design and how to make a good composition.

As a shirt design experienced guy: what’s your opinion on scribtee.com ?
Scribtee is nice, and I don’t think enough designers know about it and submit designs here. Scribtee definitely has a solid collection of shirts already and I hope to see more great designs in the future.

I want to thank Scribtee for picking my design!

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And we want to thank Jeff for his answers and wish him good luck with Ugmonk! Let’s hope he will hand us another design after all one day.