This shirt design was selected as the 2024 Fear the Bird shirt for Illinois State University, a tradition that has been in place since 2007. Each year, four potential designs are created, voted on by the ISU community, and then produced for students and staff to purchase. The shirts provide opportunities to receive incentives at the Bone Student Center. 

As part of my internship with Event Management, Dining, & Hospitality at ISU, I created two designs for the 2024 Fear the Bird shirt. The ISU community votes on their preferred design, and one of the two I submitted was chosen. 

This winning design incorporates the essential elements of the Fear the Bird tagline, the Illinois State University name, and Reggie Redbird, the university’s mascot. The shirt color is always ISU red, so the shirt design is limited to the remaining university’s brand colors—white, black, or yellow. The focus of my design was on the use of lines, experimenting with the alignment, direction, and size of the letters in Fear the Bird. The overall composition is geometric, moving away from the more organic shapes featured in previous years’ designs.

In addition to the shirt, several other swag items are created using the Fear the Bird design. A reusable water cup, a straw topper, and a scrunchie are all items that were produced for the 2024-2025 school year, highlighting the versatility of my design outside of its original format.