Continuing with out T-Shirt a day preview of Fall-1 2008 next up we have… Der Kosmos!

This here is one of my favorite designs that we’ve ever done. I’ve had this idea in my head for a long while and way waiting for the right time and place to have it executed. While keeping with the space theme this is basically our take on those iconic record covers by KMFDM all done by Aidan “Brute!” Hughes.

I had this concept of doing a graphic based around an astronauts fantastic discovery in space, but I wanted it all reflected within the astronauts helmet. Obviously the discovery would be something alien, but all needed to be something that would be transfixing, something this astronaut just had to reach forward to touch. I finally settled on this exotic discovery being an alien version of the Sirens from Greek mythology. That way there is an inherent story within the composition that the viewer can begin to infer a beginning, a middle and even an end to. A big thank you to Robin Nishio on yet another masterful illustration!

Once the illustration was done we set forth to coloring it in Brutes! trademark 3 tone shading, which while looks quite simplistic, poses quite a lot of challenges to do just right! Then there was naming this pseudo astro-industrial masterpiece. Our first name Exotica we scrapped after it became the focal point for something in the near future. This was then replaced with “Cosmos” in Russian, but as a few people quickly pointed out the Cyrillic of Cosmos looks and reads like KOCMOC. After some deliberation we decided some people may not want to wear a tee could be read as COCK-MOCK, Hahaha! So it was back to the drawing board until we finally settled on it’s current name which translates out of Russian to mean Sphere, Orb or just Heavenly / Planetery Body which was equally as fitting and looked interesting and exotic in Cyrillic.