Blue Line is a fun and welcoming quick-service cafe on the campus of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. Blue Line is a venture of The Commons Company, which describes themselves as "a family of food, beverage, and hospitality ventures that embrace a history of excellence and community driven culture." I was approached with the opportunity to develop an original shirt design for the workers to wear at Blue Line, with an emphasis on an original illustration. After my initial research, I created six loose concepts for the client.
The client was happy with several of the concepts, but ultimately chose the design in the bottom center, the hex sign inspired design. They liked the folksy appeal, while also giving a nice nod to the history in Lancaster. From there, I took that sketch and started drawing the final piece. Many of the elements in the design are inspired by items that are served at the cafe, so I pulled lots of references straight from the source to inspire the illustrations. Once I had it to the point of final illustration, I sent the client some options on colors.
Ultimately, the client settled on the one color scheme. This allowed the client to save some money on printing, and gave them the ability to go back to the printer and get different colors of the design printed. The initial batch was a dark blue print on a lighter blue shirt, which you can see below.
