Bike-A-Thon is an annual charity event hosted by VietnameseVietnamese Student Association (VSA) at UC Davis that helps raise fund for Vietnamese Youth Development Center. Every year, VSA would gather bikers across Davis for this 30 miles bike marathon from Davis to Sacramento. Davis’ known for its flat plain and harsh winds that tend to be one of the worst challenges for biking long distances. (I tried [biking 18 miles once] against the infamous Davis wind, it was.. rewarding.) Though, they take pit stops, it’s still one hell-of-a trip. Mad Props for all the bikers.
John from VSA contacted me a few months prior to the event regarding a collaboration. They make t-shirts annually for the event and it’s a great honor to take part of it for this year. Here goes the design process:
Background info:
1. VSA at UC Davis
2. Bike-A-Thon
3. May 14, 2011
4. The catch- phrase: Changing gears, changing lives.
5. A place where we can put sponsor logos
6. “in support of (the logo of our philanthropy Vietnamese Youth Development Center (VYCD))”
7. Davis to Sac and back
One of the challenges is to implement all the info while maintaining a clean look for the design. 
↑ As oppose to write out and focus on the words “changing gears, changing lives,” I wanted to fuse it within the design to keep things clean.
Another approach I used to cut down the words while maintain the idea is by graphic: 
↑An indication that it was a round trip from Davis to Sac.
Cow/Cattle is known to many as a sign of Davis, it was also used by VSA for the past t-shirts, so I thought I’d continue the tradition but adding my own twist. 
↑ Kept it playful.
After the final sketch, I use Adobe Illustrator for the entire design. No extra touch up needed through Photoshop for this one: 
Final design:
Back design for sponsorship is important. I’ve seen many shirts that companies pass out as promo items during events. Most of the shirts had a well designed front, but a horrible back collage of sponsor logos. A bad back placement of logos would make the shirt look cheap. To prevent that, I touched up all the logos (majority of them didn’t have a high resolution logo) and match the style to the front for cohesiveness. 
Placements: 
They even made buttons!
BAM! 
’til next collaboration,
-Benson|| Twitter || the movement|| The Imaginary Zebra website || Shop of Imagination ||
