The Making of Bad Milk

This Bad Milk Long Sleeve T-shirt design was actually born around the same time as Overflow’s inception and was a potential idea that was discussed with one of my close mates, Alex (be sure to follow his photography account on Instagram). We both have a love for all types of boards; be it skate or snow and again, are both lovers of unique clothing designs, so when throwing casual ideas around, this fella was sketched out as a potential to use on a product once we decided to launch. We kept him within the sketchbook for a few months, as we knew that we needed to bring him to life and add a few further features to this idea we had so that when we released it, he would be even more awesome. When it came to working on the sketch, the idea of a carton of milk skateboarding just sounded epic and was a design that we worked through a few iterations of before finalizing. We added some sunglasses, a straw and some fun little extras such as ‘Semi-skilled’ instead of semi-skimmed, to make up the final design.

After launching with short sleeve T-shirts, why did we decide to do a long sleeve tee this time you ask? Well, here at Overflow we love the fact that we have a large group of loyal customers who when we reached out to them and provided them with a ‘this or that’ style questionnaire on our Instagram stories, gave us their honest opinion on what they wanted to see for 2021 products and there was a big interest in a long sleeve tee being added to the Overflow family. After all, we are here to make sure we’re providing our customers with exactly what they want and what better way to be able to interact with them so closely and find out what they’re on the lookout for!?

All of our products start off as nothing more than a rough sketch in a pocket-sized sketchbook. If we think a design has legs (pardon the pun) then we reproduce it in a larger sketch pad with more detailing and some colouring that helps build up a visual representation of how it could look on the clothing. From there, if it seems to be a winner in our opinion, we then scan the sketch and start to digitise it in Adobe Illustrator. Using mockups in Photoshop we place the design in the position that looks best and check all details are visible in preparation for screen printing. The final design files are sent to our screen printers in London and they set up screens to print each colour onto our clothing with water-based ink, which gives that soft feel and almost looks like the design is part of the clothing itself. The product is finished off with some screen printed neck labels and the custom Overflow logo hem tags are sewn onto the bottom left hem. Our T-shirts are 100% organic cotton and we always go for a heavier cotton material so it stays soft over time and gives that quality feel that you expect with a premium T-shirt.

Interestingly, when we first received the final Bad Milk Long Sleeve, we tried them on to see how they looked and posted a teaser photo of the new design on our Instagram. We then needed to run into town to post some Overflow orders and upon returning home, we had a comment on the new design post from a member of the public that had seen the new tee and searched for it online. We thought that was pretty amazing, and exactly the kind of reaction a small clothing brand wants for new products!

So, what do you think of the Bad Milk design? Have you ever seen anything like this before? Like all of our tees to date, these are also a limited edition print, so once they’re gone...they’re really gone! Fancy getting 10% off? We recently partnered with Wethrift to provide customers with a greater chance of getting a discount on our website, so if you check their website and search for Overflow Clothing, you’ll be able to use the welcome code on their site for us to redeem against your purchase. Also, if you install their web browser plugin, you will automatically be shown redeemable discounts for whatever website you are on.