About my process

Most of my most popular designs are illustrations, hand-drawn by me, of a dev board or chip or component. I was influenced towards hand-dawn designs by some makers when I first started the store early in 2025. They encouraged me to use _my_ hand to express _my_style.

genNotUpToIt

Turning to a hand-drawn style was brilliant advice and better than the alternative. I had started my path to an Etsy store in earnest early last year, thinking 'oh, just get genAI to do a design and then pop it up on Etsy.' But in my case, I really only got one design the way I wanted and one close to what I wanted despite hours of trying dozens of different designs.

The key issue was I wasn't just making genAI images to sell. I specifically wanted maker-themed designs. And the genAI at the time (early 2025) just didn't cut it.

Personal process

My hand-drawn process took some time to come together. I do not remember which were my early designs, but I managed to converge on a style, format, visual I am pleased with (and by the designs I sold, other are pleased, too).

My main illustration tool is Adobe Fresco on an iPad Pro, with an Apple Pencil. I like Fresco's onion-skinning and layers, its flexibility to define brush styles, and being able to output to PDF. I output to PDF so I can do any needed post-processing in Inkscape on my MacBook Air. And from Inkscape I do the final PNG output to mock up the shirt at the print provider.

Old style made new

The basis for my designs are actual images of the products, often CC licensed images. I look for images that are not only visually striking, but also can be conveyed in the minimalist style I have. I tend to focus on key features rather than make a faithful trace of the whole object. Tho some images ask for more detail than others.

My stylization of the image echoes the camera lucida, a sketching tool dating back to the early 1600s. From the build video below, which is a time lapse I get from Fresco, you can see that while the tool aids with placement and proportion, the line quality, design choices, what gets included or excluded, the blaze orange highlights are all mine. This 'human-made and human-decided' is central to my designs and has become more important as the disapproval of AI slop (output with demonstrable lack of effort, poor quality, and annoying ubiquity) has only grown in the past year.

Maker hand and heart

I know the SmallRun marketplace will be filled with hardware folks make. But my designs are things I have created with my hands, and focused on things makers love. So I am honored to be able to sell my shirts here, too.

And I am here because YOU are here. I hope you like my designs, buy all of them (haha), and suggest new ones.

Enjoy my build video of the illustration of the Raspberry Pi 5.