This year, the Yorkshire Air Ambulance (YAA) is celebrating its 25th anniversary. To mark the occasion, the charity commissioned the very talented sisters behind Luce & Bear, Lucy and Clare Bulmer, to design a T-shirt that centred round its big birthday
“We always try to have meaning behind the designs we do,” they explained. We started with the large 25, which the YAA had stipulated they would like to be central to the design, and gave it a heartbeat line.
“Next, we drew the iconic yellow helicopter. In our research we read stories of people who have been rescued by the YAA so decided to represent them. There’s a motorist, biker, horse-riders, climber, walker and cyclist.
“The YAA also asked for the design to be ‘quintessentially Yorkshire’ so we added in some rolling hills, dry stone wall, a farmer in his ‘Landy’, some cheeky sheep and, of course, a cup of tea!”
YAA ordered “a lot”, Lucy and Clare report. “They are apparently selling really well so we are just discussing a re-order, which we’re thrilled about.”
Luce & Bear used direct-to-garment specialist Shirt Monkey to print the tees
Luce & Bear used direct-to-garment (DTG) specialist Shirt Monkey to print the tees. “They were printed using DTG, we’ve found this works best on T-shirts as it doesn’t crack or fade over time. The water-based ink is printed into the fabric, which allows the design to stretch and move as the T-shirt is worn. DTG is also perfect for our multi-coloured designs with a lot of small details. We were really pleased with the print quality.”
For the T-shirt, they chose a “Stanley/Stella organic cotton unisex style in dark grey, as we thought it would be a good background colour for the design and make the yellow heli really stand out. We have used this T-shirt for our own designs and found it to be high quality and suits men and women equally.”
It was, say Lucy and Clare, “a complete honour to be asked to be a part of the 25-year celebrations by this incredible charity. There are plans to use the new 25-year design on merchandise over the coming anniversary year… watch this space!”
