If one desires personalised, Volkswagen-themed T-shirts, sweat shirts or other garments, one can do this by creating iron-on transfers, printing on some relatively low-cost, special sheet materials (typically International A4 size - 297 mm x 210 mm), using an ordinary ink-jet printer. In 1997~98, when I was taking two consecutive, part-time, BTEC NVQ Level 2 courses, at the Central Graphics Academy, in Desktop Publishing and Graphic Design (just to update and extend my general-purpose skills, rather than an attempt to change my main profession!), using Quark Xpress, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop, one of the assessed pieces of work, was to design and produce an iron-on transfer, corresponding to either one of two briefs.
At the time, we used two different brands of special sheet material; one from Hewlett Packard and the other from Stabilo®. To the best of my recall, both the "HP T-Shirt Transfer" material and the "Stabilo Wizard ink-jet Transfer Papers", were purchased in modest quantities as required, from one or more local stationery shops. In 1998, the Stabilo® product retailed locally, at £9•99 for six A4 sized sheets. The following Internet website link, was quoted re Hewlett Packard's speciality printing material (paper and card, plus possibly the T-shirt transfer material) on the accompanying instruction leaflet for the "HP T-Shirt Transfer" material.
http://www.hp.com/go/paper
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm ... ccessories
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm ... 24466.html
The briefs were to illustrate the themes of either a "Pop-Music Band on Tour" or the "1998 Soccer World Cup". I had, and still have, little knowledge or interest, in either modern pop music or soccer (before you ask, I will definitely not be watching on television, any of the 2010 Soccer World Cup matches, held in South Africa this year!).
However, I did manage to pursuade my course tutor, that an Anniversary Tour, featuring the Beatles (that iconic Liverpool, Merseybeat, pop group, of the 1960s & 1970s), touring in a VW Kombi campervan (i.e. 1960~70s hippy bus), would reasonably satisfy the first brief. By coincidence, 1998 just happened to be, the 30th anniversary of the first model year, of the 1968~79 VW Kombi, so my family's 1973 VW 1600 Type 2 Kombi based, Westfalia Continental campervan, features prominantly in the transfer design, as I had intended! -;)
Sadly, owing to cost constraints, we were only permitted to produce a paper colour print, of the final accepted format for the iron-on transfer, but could produce an almost unlimited quantity of grey-scale, paper prints, on the laser printer, for inclusion in our portfolio. So, please find herewith, for your delectation and delight, the designs I managed to come up with.
The colour photograps were scanned using Adobe Photoshop and stored as digital files, in either JPEG or TIF file format (I forget which, but I suspect it was the former). The VW-roundal, elliptical and circular frames, with coloured-text legends, were created using Adobe Illustrator. It took me a few attempts to create the "right visual balance" of the area of the custom-shaped frames for the pictures, versus the black-band-widths of both the annular ring (incorporating the main coloured-text legend) and the V & W letters.
The Adobe Illustrator created frames, were imported into separate Quark Xpress documents, via picture boxes of appropriate shape. Further standard or custom-shaped picture boxes were then created, into which were imported, the JPEG or TIF file format scans, of the colour photographs. Further overlayed text legends, both straight and curved, were created using Quark Xpress.
The text legend, "Performance from the Beatles or Beetles", is a play on words, which could either be interpreted as a musical perfomance from the pop group, called The Beatles, or as an allusion to the engine performace, of the 50 DIN horsepower, VW 1600 Type 1 Beetle style engine, with which the British & European specification, 1968~79 VW Type 2s, were most commonly fitted.
This VW-Roundal based design, printed in colour, is my favourite and the one I submitted as my piece of assessed work.
VW-Emblem T-shirt design
The pictures illustrate:
(a) Central-Top (i.e. within the V letter) - Preparing for a tow to a repair workshop, during our 1982 summer tour of Sweden, following a breakdown attributable to a perforated carburettor float.
(b) Upper-Left & Upper-Right (i.e. interposed between the V & W letters) - A layby tea & toilet stop, en route through central Austria, during either our 1983 summer touring holiday Austria or 1985 summer touring holiday in Hungary. Note that the left-hand side of the photograph is framed on the right and vice versa.
(c) Lower-Left & Lower-Right (i.e. outside the W letter) - Parked on the road verge, beside a field of blue cornflowers, on one of the few dry days, during our very wet, 1985 summer touring holiday in Hungary. Note that the left-hand side of the photograph is framed on the right and vice versa.
(d) Central-Bottom (i.e. below the W letter) - Ferry crossing of the River Danube, on a rainy day, during our very wet, 1985 summer touring holiday in Hungary.
that was alotta typing, just to say you made iron on bootleg VW merch. lol.