Chef Uniforms

ChefUniforms.com sells to working chefs. Not people who like cooking shows — people who spend twelve hours on a line and then wear the shirt out afterward.

They needed a graphic tee collection those chefs would actually choose to be seen in, which is a different problem from putting a logo on a shirt. I ran it end to end: audience research, concepts, sketches, and the finished illustrations.

• Chef humor is insider humor. Get the joke slightly wrong and it reads like something a restaurant supply catalog thinks chefs find funny, which is worse than no joke at all.
• You're asking someone to wear an opinion in public. A graphic tee isn't consumed, it's worn — it has to be something a person is willing to be seen in, repeatedly, by their colleagues.
• Apparel is a commitment with inventory behind it. Every design is a print run. It sells or it sits in a warehouse, and the feedback arrives months later as a number.
• What the audience actually wanted sat outside the brand's comfort zone. The research pointed to edgy, tattoo-flash, kitchen-literal imagery — not the register a uniform retailer's catalog usually operates in.

1. Researched before drawing anything. Found the throughline in what this audience actually responds to — edgy imagery, kitchen tools, tattoo-inspired aesthetics — and let that set the visual language for the whole collection rather than designing to taste.
2. Sketched wide, and typographically. Pushed hard on wordplay that lands with someone who's been on the line all day: “I See Fed People,” “This Chef Is a Whisk Taker,” “Chef Salad.”
3. Built “Chef Salad” as the anchor. Kitchen and refrigerator elements rendered in a tattoo-flash style — the design meant to carry the collection.
4. Rendered the full collection digitally. Multiple finished designs taken from sketch to print-ready artwork.
5. Designed a sugar skull for Día de Muertos. A seasonal piece built to sit inside the same visual language as the rest of the range.

• “Chef Salad” became a top seller year after year and is still profitable today.
• Only one design in the entire catalog — “Mad Skull” — has outsold it.