Zeroth is a handmade garment brand at the intersection of nature, music, and transformation — printed by hand, worn with intention
ZEROTH — 001
Butterfly Button Down
A butterfly split down the middle — two halves that only make sense together. The back reads like a sports jersey, numbered 03 and titled Godspeed, a Frank Ocean song, and an old wish for a good journey. A button-down that opens into something else entirely.
Process
Printed using a thresholded photograph of a butterfly, split across the front panels of a button-down shirt to align when buttoned. The back was screen printed with a bold, condensed layout borrowing from jersey typography. Ink was mixed and applied in a single color pass.
ZEROTH — 002
Headhunters Tee
Herbie Hancock's Headhunters came out in 1973 and still sounds like nothing else. This is my take on a fan-made piece — a two-color merch shirt for an album that never had one. A way of saying thank you to something that deserved it.
Process
Designed in Illustrator with a wide format layout that required the screen to be burned sideways to accommodate the full width of the design. Printed in red and white across three different colored shirts, each one showing how the same ink reads differently depending on what it lands on. Registration and pressure were dialed in over several test prints before committing to the final run.
ZEROTH — 003
Butterfly Tee
Butterfly Tee
A second take on the same image, pushed further. Godspeed printed not below but through the butterfly, the text and image occupying the same space. Two things overlap to become something neither could be alone.
Process
Reusing screens from the first print, the design was repositioned, and the typography overlaid directly on top of the butterfly image in red ink. Placing the text through the image rather than beneath it was a last-minute decision that ended up defining the piece — the overlap giving the design a depth that a cleaner layout never would have.
ZEROTH — 004
Takeoffs and Landings Tee
Takeoffs and Landings Tee
Rilo Kiley's Takeoffs and Landings is not a well-known record, but it deserves a shirt. The album cover's row of plane seats became the foundation for a two-color design — a piece of fan-made merch for something that never had any. A small way of putting a forgotten record back into the world.
Process
Designed around the visual language of the original album artwork, the layout was developed in Illustrator and printed as a two-color black and white design. The same screens were run across two different colored shirts — blue and red — letting the base color of each garment become a third element in the design. Each colorway reads as its own distinct piece.
ZEROTH — 005
CMYK
Skate Deck Tee
CMYK
Skate Deck Tee
ProcessThis was definitely the most ambitious print I have done. I had always been interested in CMYK printing, and how the layers came together almost seemed like magic. Most of the difficulty was in the setup of the file and the registration of the screens. Each transparency had to be registered close enough to each other before the screens were burned in order to allow for exact registration later in the process. I exposed each screen for less time than usual in order for the small halftone dots to show. Once the screens were tightly registered on the press the printing was the easy part, only having to clean the back side of the screens once in a while due to the wet on wet printing.
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