Control Freaks Anonymous

Hi I’m A.J. and I am a control freak. Particularly when it comes to my books which is a large part of the reason I self published.

It’s been difficult having to relinquish control in varying aspects of the publishing process, between covers and printing (because color never quite comes out the way it looks on the screen) and letting the book go to the editor. It’s all a process of letting some of my control go in order to hopefully end up with a better product for my troubles (or in the case of the cover, more work).

This is particularly true when it comes to designing t-shirts for IHOR Clothing Co.

The other day you might have noticed on my Facebook page (and I believe also Twitter) that I mentioned that a lot of designs that look really awesome on the computer, don’t seem to translate particularly well to t-shirt designs, in large part because I don’t have the control I need. Let me give you an example.

This is one of my favorite new designs, and theoretically the way in which it was designed the whole thing should go edge to edge. However when placed on a t-shirt in Spreadshirt, this ends up happening:

Now to be fair, this is neither their fault nor their problem. As a designer like any other artist, often times you’re forced to work within certain parameters. To be honest it doesn’t look all that horrible, but when you expect something to look a certain way it can be a bit jarring to realize that the print reality isn’t always as perfect as you’d like.

I think the lesson that we need to learn as designers and maybe even as writers is to accept the fact that it’s never going to be exactly what we want it to be or the way we envision something in our head. And we can either accept that fact, or spend the rest of our lives trying to make small tweaks that ultimately no one will notice but us. At some point, you really just have to be able to accept what you’ve made and move on to something new.