gaming expo 2026 T-shirt
cal esports | Business Development | SP'26
Gaming Expo is Cal Esports' annual gaming convention, where gaming organizations on campus table to promote their clubs to new students during the start of the school year. This expo is hosted at the same time as Caltopia, our university's annual sponsorship convention. Each Gaming Expo involves sponsored T-shirts giveaways, awarded to students who successfully visit enough booths at the expo. Additionally, freebies like gaming-themed bear stickers are distributed to attendees. This year, as a marketing associate for Cal Esports, I was assigned to designing one of the sponsored T-shirts, along with the bear stickers (see Work tab for examples).
concept
Tools Used: Procreate, Figma
This was my first time designing a T-shirt for Cal Esports, so I drew heavily on previous years' designs for inspiration (pictured on the right). I noted their clean linework and hand-drawn style. I also wanted to use their similar color schemes, with one main color of either black or white, paired with a colorful accent tone.
I idealized the design as a fun, action-packed portrayal of gaming, filled with various easter eggs and references. I also wanted it to be distinct from previous designs, to excite students into participating in the giveaway.
From these ideas, I used Procreate to sketch up two different T-shirt designs. One was themed to the popular mobile game, Subway Surfers. It featured a Marvel Rivals character skating past a train, escaping from a graffiti escapade.
The second idea was a lifestyle game-inspired concept. This featured a video game protagonist's room, and elements from the popular role-play games, like a happiness bar from The Sims or a criminal star rating from GTA.
From there, I presented my designs to my supervisor. Ultimately, we decided on the Subway Surfers concept. It had thematic connection to our 2026 Caltopia theme, which was based on graffiti and skater culture and very much embodied by the design.
From there, I moved on to fleshing out the design's linework and content on Procreate. One major crit I received on my selected design was that it didn't include enough references to our most popular games played at the Cal Esports center, Valorant and League of Legends. As someone who didn't play either game, I didn't know what easter eggs to incorporate at first. However, I asked many friends I knew who played the games for their suggestions, and also did my own research in gaming communities on Reddit. This research helped me add more salient references to those two games in my design, such as the coins the player was chasing was actually the currency from LoL.
Back Design Rough Sketch
Back Design Line Work
T-shirt Back Illustration Process
Using my sketch as a based, I cleaned up my linework with a smooth pen brush. I also used light blue shading and negative spaces to create lighting and tone in the design without using a large range of color.
As an added detail, I utilized drawing guides in Procreate to ensure the perspective on the back design was accurate. This way, the motion in the illustration would read properly when viewed from different distances.
Click on the images on the left and right to see my drawing process.
T-shirt Front Illustration Process
FInal Product
Tools Used: Illustrator, Photoshop
To wrap the project up, I imported the Procreate design as a png into Illustrator, using the Image Trace tool to vectorize the design. This allowed the design to be scalable and used with various sized files.
I additionally created a T-shirt mockup using Photoshop to present my final work to my supervisor and the rest of the Cal Esports team.
Final Front and Back Design
