Interview with the 3rd place winner of Derby 87
Kdubbs29 has been around for a few months and this is his very first print. Here's some more facts and stats on him.
Shirt.Woot Stats? (first derby / shirts bought / shirts printed)
73 (Optimism) / 2 / 1. I bought my first shirt so that I could start voting for my own shirts, and the other when my shirt recently won.
What are your tools of choice?
Adobe Illustrator for all my illustrations. And then
Photoshop for preparing the thumbnail and comp.
What is your typical process for going about a design?
I try to do a quick brainstorm to think of something that would be unique, wearable, and maybe have a touch of humor to it.
What design or art experience do you have outside the derby?
I graduated from Miami University with a BFA with a concentration in graphic design. Professionally, I am a graphic designer. I have worked for ad agencies, and currently work for an in-house department for a grocery store chain (Wegmans). My work can be seen at my website,
KevinWerther. I don't have any t-shirt art up there currently.
Which artists or designers inspire you?
Hard to say. I appreciate all kinds of art, but gravitate towards making bold, graphic designs for my own work.
Would you like to do art/design full-time? If so, what is your dream job?
I work in design full-time now. However, my dream job would be to do sports logos. Designing t-shirts is a great way to fuel my creativity in ways I don't get to at work.
Any plans to ever sell your designs using a print-to-order shop like SpreadShirt or CafePress?
Yes. Skirochester and I are opening a shop on Cafepress:
CafePress.com A2Ts. We are just getting this up so it is pretty sparse at the moment. But, we will be adding many of our shirts from Woot as soon as we are contractually permitted to do so. We also have shirts being posted on other sites like
Threadless,
ShirtFight,
Spreadshirt, etc.
What advice do you have for new derby artists?
Be true to your style. Early on I was rusty and then tried emulating other successful artists' styles for votes and did not do well. Later, I started getting back to my style and that is when I've had the most success. You have to deal with the frustration that you might not always do well weekly, but your style-strength will pay off when the right derby comes around, like it did for me with the Art Deco derby.
