The development of the ITS t-shirt and bag is a kind of landmark on the ITS timeline. It represents one of the moments during the year when we tell ourselves “ok, we’re actually doing this, we’re not just talking about it or planning it anymore, this is something real”. It’s also a kind of “point of no return”, that tells us the event is not that far off. Oh my God yes it’s not that far at all IT’S ALMOST JUNE!!! Ok, sorry. It’s just that the billion commitments that await us are sometimes a little scary…
In the past we would involve finalists of ITS in thinking about possible graphics. We would give them the basic elements (like the number of the edition, certain colours…) and they would come up with possibilities we would pick from. In the image below you can see designs by David Aliperti (ITS#FOUR finalist) for ITS#FIVE, Aitor Throup (ITS#FIVE Winner of Fashion Collection of the Year) for ITS#SIX and Anna Sheldon (ITS#SIX Winner of YKK Special Award) for ITS#SEVEN.
This time, we decided to work differently. We have an amazing talent in drawing based over here in Trieste. His name is Andrea Toselli and luckily enough he’s quite a close friend of ours. So we invited him to come to our offices and started telling him about this year’s edition, about the “early-20th centuriesque carnival” concept, about the references to the travelling shows and circuses of those times. This was last year in December. Andrea gathered all of the information and went back home. After a while (to be honest, we had to struggle a little bit to get him to honour deadlines… you know, artists!), he came back to us with this:
… And we were just astonished by its beauty. It had the mood we were looking for. The guy with the crows coming out of his back symbolized creativity just bursting out without being able to stop it so well, and the barrel branded with the ITS logo with fire coming out of it, a light that can help you find the way, that is there to warm you…
This was the image he had drawn for the Limited Edition t-shirt (the one that goes to all of our guests). He also presented us with a design for the Crew T-shirt (which is the t-shirt worn only by the ITS staff during the event):
We also loved this one very much. But the beauty of the first image was such that we then decided to develop only that one, refining it and extracting a detail from it that would go on the Crew T-shirt and on the ITS#EIGHT bag. After a couple of versions, here’s the final one:
As you can see, for the bag and the Crew t-shirt we decided to focus only on the crows in Andrea’s drawing. Instead the Limited Edition version that will go to all of our guests displays the entire picture, obviously refined and accurately finished:
We think it is simply fantastic, really an amazing t-shirt to celebrate this very special eighth edition. Just waiting for them to arrive in our offices so we can wear them!!!