Thirty students are taking a do-it-yourself approach to launching clothing lines in the May intersession.

These students will design and produce at least nine shirts as part of DIY T-Shirt Printing, said Curtis Jones, art professor.

“Since it’s a quick class, we kind of treat it like a reality show,” Jones said. “Like Project Runway, we split the class into teams and at the end, each team comes up with their own designs.”

Each shirt will be required to work together conceptually, he said.

The 12-day art class is focused on screen printing on fabric and is open to all students who like “to be creative and work with their hands,” Jones said.

Art skills are not a requirement for the class, communications senior Matt Nunley said.

“I’m a communications major, so I can’t draw,” Nunley said.

Nunley said he used clip art found online to design the shirts that he’s made so far.

“I’ve made tie-dye shirts before, but nothing like this,” Nunley said. “I didn’t know it was going to be so complicated.”

While drawing techniques are not necessary for the class, photography senior Lisa Vanschoyck said she enjoys the chance to use her own designs.

“If I’m going to steal something, I like to print it out and trace it and make it different in some way,” Vanschoyck said.

Although the class focuses on screen printing, it also covers other techniques for T-shirt design like discharge printing that uses bleach to stain shirts, Jones said. The class also provides resources for students to acquire their own equipment and make shirts cheaply.

“We teach little tricks to set up a shop domestically instead of having to buy $20,000 worth of screen printing equipment,” Jones said.

After four hours of class time, many students stay after class to work with their groups.

“It’s great. We made a shirt on the first day and we can make as many T-shirts as we want,” Nunley said.

As one of the students staying after class, Vanschoyck said the class is fun and easy to duplicate one’s own art.

“It makes it easy to take a drawing and turn it into a hundred drawings,” Vanschoyck said.