Obliterate Tee Design

Obliterate the status quo.

Obliterate Plumbing & Drainage approached Club Fun with a t-shirt design concept rooted in a plumbing joke, they wanted to connect with their industry through humour and create a buzz around the new plumbing services on offer.

"It's not every day that we receive a design brief of this sort so our intention was to explore what leaves us in stitches" (Alex I., Club Fun Creative Consultant).

The Concept

Sam, the owner of Obliterate wanted a cartoony, retro aesthetic that stood out from other trade brands. To bring this to life we drew inspiration from the golden age of 1930s and 1940s rubber-hose animation, graffiti characters whilst utilizing a red primer and blue PVC glue palette.

The Challenge

Translating the vision onto fabric came with some expected hurdles. Because both characters were illustrated mid-stride, we ran the risk of the artwork looking overly symmetrical, instead we wanted it to look visually interesting. Once we were happy with the composition and character silhouettes we transitioned to a pressure-sensitive brush with rich thickness variance. This gave the line work an organic hand-inked feel that brought the whole design together.

The Design and Impact

The finished artwork was printed on crisp white tees, creating contrast between the fabric, colour palette and character silhouettes. What started as a gag quickly evolved into a multi-platform campaign, scaling across social media content and graphics for the company's earthmover transport truck. It seems the target demographic "got" the joke 🤣.