Design · Completed · No longer for sale
A Shirt for Howard Days
I wanted a unique T-shirt to wear at Robert E. Howard Days 2026 in Cross Plains, Texas. Instead of placing a logo on a standard shirt, I made the whole garment the artwork: a cut-and-sew, all-over-print design across the front and back.
The front brings together Robert E. Howard, Novalyne Price and the Howard house, marking 120 years since Howard’s birth, the 40th Howard Days and 30 years since The Whole Wide World. The back features guests Rusty Burke and Bill Cavalier, an Underwood No. 5 typewriter, boxing gloves, a hat and the Howard Days school bus.
Presentation mockup showing the front and back. Printed colours may differ from the screen image.
From image to garment
The design needed many revisions. Early compositions were overcrowded, figures were duplicated, anatomy went wrong and the house became distorted. I simplified the artwork, corrected portraits and the house, and moved important details away from seams and cut lines. The front and back also had to feel like one design.
Contrado produced the first physical shirt. Printing on fabric revealed how different a backlit RGB image can look from the finished garment. I made more subdued promotional images to better represent the actual colours.
One shirt became a small project
It was originally only meant for me. Rusty Burke and Bill Cavalier approved the use of their likenesses, and Rusty photographed the shirt and bought several himself. Their response encouraged me to offer it to other Howard readers through my REH webshop.
This was a personal, unofficial commemorative shirt, not official Howard Days merchandise. The project combined Howard history, graphic design, AI-assisted image creation, web development and the practical work of producing something to be worn.
No longer for sale
Sales have ended. Demand was too low, and additional invoices from FedEx after delivery made the total cost unreasonably high for buyers. The design remains here as a completed personal project.
The main lesson was the gap between an attractive digital image and a design that must work through printing, cutting, sewing and being worn by a real person.