Locs Sunglasses is a designer brand of hard core shades. Locs were made popular by young gangsters back in the day who wore them for their style and super dark lenses. Some would say it’s part of the “gangsta uniform”. The brand has been glamorized by famous rap artists and movie stars like Easy-E and Ice-T.

The project was to create branded t-shirt graphics. I asked the Art Director, Ward to fill out my creative brief and I went online to get familiar with the brand. I found that there were three or four different logos that were kind of similar but not. You couldn’t really tell which was the main logo. When I received their logo art, it wasn’t very clean (vector-wise). I offered to recreate and clean it up and once that was approved I was then ready to go.

The first design, Blazin’, went over very well. It’s mainly a logo treatment I did in photoshop using the newly refurbished logo. I sent Ward about five different versions and he chose three. The cityscape version (above) was inspired by a chrome/skyline/graffiti style (just watch Beat Street).

Ward also wanted a skull design where the direction was completely open with just one criteria, use only black and white (for no gang affiliation). So I created a skull where the eye sockets were actually Loc shades. And to top it off I created the teeth with bullet shells, because I roll like that. My favorite version is the second one as it shows off the concept the best and overall the graphic is more subtle. But in the end they picked the first version. Click the image to enlarge.

“Waldo is an awesome artist to work with.  With artists, I find that they usually work on “their” schedule and not the clients. He is very punctual with his deadlines and often rushes me for info so that we don’t miss our deadlines. He does background homework prior to creating his artwork which really enhances his ability to capture what we need. I find Waldo very multi-dimensional. I have given him tasks ranging from designing product for the urban community to western cowgirl merchandise. A very thorough and detailed individual.” – Ward Chen, Art Director, Jay-Y Enterprise