Term 2 Digital Design at Vancouver Film School includes an Adobe Illustrator introductory class. Part of this class called for a t-Shirt design, which happened to coinside with a time where I was experimenting with “currency illustration”.

Around this time I discovered a company called YouWorkForThem:

You Work For Them is an award-winning group of artists that produce some of the most groundbreaking design work available today. Our website not only showcases products such as typeface, stock design, art prints, and t-shirts produced exclusively by the group themselves, but also offers an impressive selection of books, magazines, videos and more featuring the best in contemporary design from around the world. Founded in 2001 by the award winning designers Michael Cina and Michael Young.

One of the packages they have for sale on their website is called the Empire Collection and it’s described as a…

series of stock vectors, this collection comes packed with detail oriented patterns typically used to encode currency and financial documents, ornaments, characters and many other elegant items.

From the moment I stumbled upon this little treasure I was -and am still- infatuated with the delicate blending effects used in Adobe Illustrator to create the style of illustration found on North American currency.

My goal with the t-shirt was to create a completely abstract design with the intention of unlocking the secrets used to create the illustrations materfully executed by YouWorkForThem.