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The challenges, designs, and thoughts of a young designer selling graphic tees

Vintage Supply

Self-Run Business Selling T-Shirts

Brief
Independently designing, producing, and promoting my cool t-shirts to sell

Description
After seeing cheap shirts left collecting dust on the rails of retail clothing stores, I wanted to design and produce graphic t-shirts that wouldn’t be left wasted. Vintage Supply was born, aiming to sell quality bootleg style t-shirts too cool to throw out. In this side hustle, I gained hands-on experience on a range of things – from designing, marketing, to selling in person

Credits
  • Russell Lee
  • Timi Akindoyeni, Nikhil Ninan, & Hayden Wong (photographers)

What I did
  • Brand identity and naming
  • Campaign & marketing roll outs
  • Email marketing
  • Art direction & experimentation, including photoshoots & video editing
  • Social media, copywriting, & tone of voice
  • Website design using Figma
  • Product & packaging design
  • Sourcing and collaborating with event organisers, influencers, & suppliers
  • Selling at Glebe Markets & Sneakerland ‘23

Tools
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Adobe Lightroom
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • Adobe Premiere Pro
  • Adobe inDesign
  • Figma
  • Klaviyo
  • Meta Ads
  • Google Keyword research

Timeline
Started since 2021, currently paused




I wanted to design cool shirts which would make people look twice. A shirt coloured in care from its overall design right down to the attention given to every seam and centimetre.

Presenting Vintage Supply...








“I just noticed the small details, and it’s insane.”

– Nathan, an American musician & designer, viewing Vintage Supply’s Chicago Bulls tee
The theme of the Chicago Bulls shirt was their double three-peat featuring the big three Bulls players, iconic photos, and their trophies.
Each t-shirt has their own theme woven in the details. The Kobe Bryant theme was centred around his no-excuse ‘mamba mentality’ where his limitations are his greatest hurdles.



Creating a neutral visual system that complements the brand’s experimental designs

With all the design work needed in a business, it was crucial to have coherent visual system to unify all the experimental work within the brand. Particularly a logo that could be slapped on top of any video, social media post, t-shirt label, and so on, without looking out of place.

I decided to keep the rudimentary design elements very simple and neutral – like the logo and colour palette – to be flexible and not get in the way of other more outstanding visuals. A modern Y2K-inspired logo, a beige colour palette, and a retro photo filter look helped tie everything together visually. This identity was applied across digital, social, email, and print media.




Logo application – including packaging & web.



Japanese-inspired catalogues to TikTok walk-ups: designing eye-catching visuals and content

A large part of the business is creating content for social media marketing. From random designs inspired Japanese Y2K catalogues to TikTok street interviews, I gained hands-on experience designing across digital, print, web, and social media. 

As a small business, I had to flexible and adaptable in my designs to keep up with trends. As such there weren’t any consistent typefaces or colours I strictly adhered to but rather designing content that captured the ‘vibe’ around my shirt products more.