blue

We are expecting our first child and there is a lot of pressure that comes with that! The most pressure (so far) came from announcing our child to the world…

People expect designers to be creative, they expect us to do things that other people wouldn’t spend 5 seconds on, and they expect it to be amazing. In other words, pressure.

Any designer can tell you, it’s easy being creative for other people but being creative for yourself and for your future progeny is a whole different ball game.

The Concept

My wife Kari is the real designer in the family. She was on Etsy and was inspired by a great example of our last name “King” with a crown in the design on the front of a onesie. Going with the regal theme and the play on our last name she wanted it to say “Heir Apparent” somewhere and the expected date of our progeny.

It made it easier to think of Kari as the client and then coming up with ideas around her vision.

Making It

I knew that the design would require taking over our living room. We ordered the onesie and on the day it arrived Kari had to go to a work function and I thought it would be the perfect time to create the announcement and take over the house. ?I knew that I wanted a soft pink and blue in the background and I wanted to the shirt to really pop out of the background. I made the pink and blue gobo design so I could get the pink and blue aspect of the design to pop out of the background when projected with a gobo light.

I knew that the white onesie would have to be in focus while the background would need to be blurred. I used some twine and two lighting stands to hang the shirt from so I could get enough distance between the shirt and the background to get the blur effect right. I also knew I needed a ton of light specifically on the shirt so I could get a really high contrast look so I ended up using three of our cake spotlight rental lights.

I needed a wall to project on and a flat boring wall wasn’t interesting enough. I ended up using the curtains for our windows on the front of our house to project onto. The light did a really great job covering up the gray and white scroll pattern on the window treatment while adding some texture and interest in behind the colored circles of light.

I used a prime 50mm lens shot at f/1.8 so I could get a blurred background while keeping the shirt in focus.

The Final Result

As with most creative endeavors the devil’s in the details. I added some detail to the clothes pins holding the onesie to make them blue and pink, added a crown to the label on the shirt, enhanced the contrast and some colors as well as adding the text.

It helps having an entire inventory of lighting at my disposal, but thinking creatively with light can enable a number of design ideas and projects that would be otherwise impossible to do. Texture lighting like the gobo lights are infinitely versatile and we can help you come up with a way to use lighting creatively for your projects.

I think it came out pretty well and most importantly checked off the hardest part of having a child (so far). What do you think? Ideas, thoughts, comment below.