A Design Experiment.

Actual shirt used in my design experiment.

A few years ago when I was in the middle of developing my texture book I thought of an idea. I liked how traditional t-shirt design wear out over time so I asked a friend who worked at a local screen printer if they could simply print a rectangle on a shirt for me. The shirt could be a scrap shirt but I wanted it to be a dark color and the ink printed to be white.

I gave the shirt to my wife and told her every time she did the laundry I wanted her to include this shirt in the wash. She thought it was kind of dumb washing something that wasn't dirty. (She's practical) I assured her there was a reason and reminded her to just keep doing it and periodically I'd check it to see how it was degrading over time. Well it's been a little over two years now and the shirt has that wonderful natural distressed look.


Close-Up of finalized texture file.

All I had to do is scan the shirt in and using the same Photoshop actions I set up for my book I created the final texture file I can now use in a design or illustration project. Even though my wife thought it was a waste of time I assured her it ended up looking even better than I had hoped.

It only took two years to accomplish this design experiment, but good things come to those who wait. I hope you enjoy using this texture in your own design and illustraiton projects.

"Well Worn" Texture File Specifications.
The following formats are included in this download.

- Layered Grayscale PSD File (Hi-Resolution, 10x15 inches @ 315 ppi)
- Bitmap Tiff Image (Hi-Resolution, 10x15 inches @ 300 ppi)

Download "Well Worn" Texture Files. (File Size: 10.7MB)