What is your Creative Process?

It's a good point that was brought up. That there is a process, that involves steps. I was speaking with a customer at my shop recently and he remarked to me that some of the younger people in his organization like to just jump straight into the computer. No sketching, no paper. He's old school so and his computer skills are rusty, but he really believes in pencil and paper.

In my opinion, and from my experience, the computer is less of a creative tool, than a simple "tool". Like a hammer. I don't "design" with it, I use it to help me realize designs in digital form. The important thing to me is to get as much of my idea down on paper, sketches, assets, varying possibilities, etc, and wait til I'm really "feeling" with certainty that I can achieve what I have done on paper. Everything prior to the computer serves as a blueprint. After that I pick up my hammer and chisel and set about realizing the design.

Other than that, I try to be very organized. I have a library of extremely organized assets and ideas. I use Adobe Bridge to organize it all. I keep all of my physical sketches and notes organized. Everything is within very short reach. When I find that something is not, I make a special effort to rearrange and get things to be within short reach. The truth is, if you know you need something, but you can't remember where it is, you may skip it.

I keep my desk dead empty. I don't want to "clear it off" when inspiration strikes. I reach for the paper and pencil which are very handy/close by. The less it takes me to "get started" the more likely I will "get started" and also have the best chance of finishing well.

I follow this set of steps for everything I do. Not just t-shirt design, but whatever I set about doing. This process always gives the best chance for looking at every angle of a thing, and ending with the best result.

For us, we sketch ideas out.... very very very roughly. We then choose the idea that we like most (or the client likes most) and we flesh it out more and make tweaks to it until we (or the client) is happy with it. From there we finish the line art, scan it in at a high resolution (minimum of 300DPI). We then take that line art, clean it up in Photoshop using our Wacom tablet or we manually vector trace it. Depending on the project and complexity of shading we want, we add color in either Photoshop or Illustrator. It all gets 1 more serious look to make sure we (or the client) approves of the final image, and we separate it for print.

That is our exact work pipeline here, and it has worked for us for going on 8 years now. Of course talent plays a huge role in every step there. I require that all of our artists have a background in figure drawing along with still life and can draw with a pencil/pen. We have 1 artist that can paint here and does so using the Wacom tablet to give some of our more detailed illustrations "texture" and more feeling.

Whether that be for shirt graphics, websites, anything and everything relating to artwork should have a sketch behind it. A lot of "new" designers like to go straight to the computer for everything and in turn, more and more graphics are looking sterile and just cold and creative block is becoming more of an issue for these designers.

I do love James' idea of sketching 4 things each week. I usually take our artists and myself out to our local Dr Sketchy program every month and we draw burlesque models and grab a few drinks. It really steps your game up and you can play around with a few different art styles.

sorry I believe i misread the question the first time around.
An important step that i don't think was mentioned. Before I sketch, I like to do research on the subject. And by research I don't just mean browsing google image (but yes often i do that as well). surf the web for information. Maybe even take a trip to a place that relates. Take a few on site pics. I have alot of reference books, magazine clippings etc. Also I even browse my old sketch books from time to time. I've used stuff that I made years ago. I usually sketch alot of ideas. I'll bring 1 or 2 ideas to life, making necessary changes along the way with a light box. I will oftion ask for opinions, to get a reaction. Then I go ahead and scan as mentioned. Alot of times when transfering from paper to computer, other ideas will come into play.
But this all depends on the seriousness of the project. If a customer wants a "SIMPLE" design (the most annoying word to hear). Then sometimes I will whip something up in illustrator. If customers are not concerened about artwork I wont waste my time. Because time is always an issue. And there is nothing worse when you spend a bunch of time on something and you show a customer and they wouldnt of cared if it was a stick figure.