Although many things have changed in my life throughout the years, two things have not; my love for art and passion for sports. I’ve always enjoyed drawing and painting, as well as observing others creations. There is no right or wrong when it comes to art, and I’ve never been much for rules. Art allows people to express themselves and their ideas, while enriching others everyday lives through works of architecture, furniture, packaging, advertisement etc. as well as traditional mediums like paintings and music. We all benefit in many ways from our neighbors simply being their creative selves and sharing their gifts with the world.
Sports serve a similar role of bringing deeper meaning to our lives. Number one, they encourage us to get out and exercise. This is important for anyone interesting in developing and maintaining a healthy lifestyle and the relationship between mind, soul and body; and especially us creative professionals who spend a large amount of time in a seated position in front of a computer. They also help promote the competitive spirit, teamwork, individual responsibility, determination, perseverance and a host of other beneficial traits and values. Plus, they are social events that gather people from all walks of life together for one common cause-either to pull together and win on the field or to cheer for our favorite team on the sidelines.
I am lucky to be able to enjoy both of my passions on a daily basis in my work at The Cotton Exchange, a national leader in custom-decorated sports and casual apparel here in America. I have learned much since I traded in the Chef’s hat for a Wacom Tablet (a glorified mouse) two years after studying Graphic Design in college. In my nearly two years with the company I have strengthened my skills in Illustrator, especially with regards to type. I have also been able to do some nice drawing work, create more vectors than you can shake a stick at, work with color relationships, and occasionally crack Photoshop open, all while learning the ins and outs of a large screen-printing business. It’s been rewarding to do what I love and call it work, I’m thankful every day.
All work/images copyright © 2009 Lucas Albrecht

These are some works I created for SUNY Cortland at The Cotton Exchange. Just wanted to show a bit of progression from sketch to finished product. My usual process begins with some research. For this particular project I researched some football players in various positions, and then chose a few to draw from. It seems as though actual pencil and paper is disappearing from design work; I think it is crucial to be able to work away from the computer. After the sketch looks about right, Photoshop gets a call to duty. The drawings are scanned on an Epson 1250 at a high resolution so as not to lose any detail, usually 600dpi or so. Then I use my Wacom tablet to clean up the drawing; deleting stray lines and tightening others, being sure to balance thick/thin and dark/light areas. When I’m relatively satisfied with the results I save both a .psd and a .tif. The .psd in case I need to rework, and the .tif for Ai.

After I’m done in Photoshop, it’s time to crank up Illustrator (my favorite program other than Firefox) At this point I have two choices; (1) I can place the .tif, lock it on one layer, and then trace over it with the pen tool on another layer, making for a clean image but tedious work. (2) If I’ve cleaned the image in Ps well and have nice, dark lines, I can play with Illustrator’s LiveTrace feature and let it “vectorize” the image for me. The settings for each image you trace are going to be different; usually I’m after the one closest resembling my cleaned up sketch. This technique keeps the hand-drawn feel of the art, which is why we drew it by hand in the first place, right?

After that, it’s time for color and shading. I personally enjoy bright colors in my work, but for these jobs I am usually constrained by the customers needs which may or may not coincide with mine. For shadows I usually use a darker shade of whatever color the shadow is laying on, using CMYK values. The pathfinder tool is your friend during this stage! After the characters are done it’s time for the verbiage and the final art for the shirt. I have learned a lot about manipulating text at my job that I didn’t learn in design school; it has been great getting on the job experience in this area. Check out the final result below!

These are both up for sale at the SUNY Cortland Bookstore site now!  CortacaJugMerchandise