My fellow creatures of the night, I know many of you have an artistic streak just dying to get out. As the founder of Dismali.com, an online emporium catering to goths of discerning taste, I’m often asked how someone can create their own gothic fashion designs to share with our spooky community. Well my darklings, wonder no more! In this post, I’ll take you through 4 steps to create an original gothic t-shirt from start to hideous finish.
Gothic T-Shirt Design: 4 Steps
Conceptualize:
Summon visions to haunt your haunted mind. What macabre motifs ignite the coldest callings of your cadaverous core? What hidden hungers haunt you from within? What sneering symbols can saucily withstand the sunny scrutiny of strangers? Draft these dread designs within – for only once the image ignites within can it ignite without.
Research:
Roam the nether realms of the web in search of what speaks to your spectral spirits. Study sub sibling styles and steal only the simplest ideas. Pay heed to popular picks and pack mental punch by riffing upon the tried yet twisted. But avoid vapid vectors – remain relentlessly you, whatever you maybe.
Sketch:
Let claws claw slow across butcher paper, sketching the stark and sinister from your lurking subconscious. Test ideas quickly in tableaux of black and white before committing to color. Strive for simplicity and solidity of shapes. Fill spaces with fine linework only once silhouette sharpens and solidifies.
Finalize:
When form feels freakishly fresh, transfer to screen and ink with care. Choose Gothic color schemes – deepest midnight blacks paired with blood reds, elderberry purples, moldering greens or a chilling grey. Add subtle touches – splatters mimicking bats, fringes fine as spider legs, washes that weep like widows’ tears. Send to press and multiply, ensuring design remains as dire and distinctive as when first dreamt into being.
My Process for Dismali
Ok, for darklings looking for a layman’s explanation, the first step is gathering inspiration. I spend hours searching through medieval woodcut images, obscure occult references, and vintage horror movie posters. Don’t limit yourself to just visual inspirations either – listen to some gothic rock or dark wave music to get your creative juices flowing. I have a playlist of The Cure, Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees that never fails to put me in the right ominous mood.
Once you have some ideas in mind, start sketching out your designs on paper or a digital drawing app like Procreate. Don’t worry if you can’t draw photorealistically. A rough, sketchy style works great for gothic designs. Just grab a pencil or stylus and let your twisted visions take form. I often doodle spiders, ravens, skulls and vines intertwining into a rough composition.
When you have a sketch you like, turn your attention to typography. Gothic fonts with a medieval influence pair perfectly with most graphics. Do some research on DaFont.com and look for fonts with a distressed, spiky appearance. Blackletter typefaces like Fraktur or Textura are ideal. I named my company using a font called Fette UNZ Fraktur, in case you were wondering!
With your sketch and fonts selected, open up a program like Photoshop, GIMP or Affinity Designer to create your digital design. Bring in your scanned sketch or drawing and use it as a base, then add layers with different gothic elements and fonts on top. Screen blend modes like ‘multiply’ and ‘overlay’ work great for achieving a faded, aged effect. You can also apply filters like ‘grain’ and ‘grunge’ to make the design look centuries-old.
Once your design is complete, add it to a mockup of a plain black t-shirt so people can see how it will look as an actual garment. I use free t-shirt mockups from Smartmockups and then darken the background. This helps bring potential customers into the right spooky mindset.
The End?
Thus with these four funeral rites of grim form and ghastly function, summon the spectre within you outward -print upon the plebian planes of common cotton cloths and spread your shadowy sentiments across the sun-seared world. Let your limning lights the way for others haunted by beauty in breakdown, solace in shadows, delight in the dread behind decay. And know thy triumph is twofold: in both igniting imagination and manifesting vision within and without, self and society, darkness and daylight.
I hope this helps you design your darkest tee! If you are looking for some inspiration, head over to my T-Shirt section to get some inspiration!