Ingkong's creative use of photo imagery and colors make him a top seller on Design By Humans. His urban design style use trending themes while still having a personal touch. The unique textures give a little extra life to the shirt that you can only get from a conceptual artist.

The IngKong Creatives' are a special team developing t shirt designs together from concept to final design. You can read all about IngKongs' great adventures in the t shirt design world; from photoshop skills to marketing tips for becoming a successful graphic tee designer.

Introducing IngKong, Husband & Wife Surreal Artists

Q: Who is Ingkong and where are you based?

First We would like to say thank you DBH for giving us an opportunity or chance to be interviewed and for believing in our talents. Ingkong or Ingkong Creatives are based in Mandaue City in Cebu, Philippines.

A collaboration of husband & wife who love Surreal Arts. My husband does most of the concepts while I take care of the execution and sometimes vice versa. We create art based on our imaginations and real life happenings and sometimes based on our feelings.

Q: How did you get started in design and more specifically tee design?

My husband was working for a garment company so he knows more about garment design; he's the one who inspired me to get interested in designing.

We found DBH on a website named Competeetion a long, long time ago and there we saw an array of designs, very good designs from your website. From there we started to have and create ideas and entered the DBH daily contest.

Q: You have had many wins on multiple T-shirt sites but which is your favorite DBH winner that you designed and why?

We really like our winning SOTD designs 'The Lost City' because we used the shirt very well as a canvas on that particular design. The use of negative space and the toned down colors of the high rise buildings starting from the faded parts on the neckline makes that design really interesting. It is eye catching; the use of gray, black and red, which is our favorite palette, makes this one look great and our favorite.

Q: You were recently commissioned to design some T-shirts for the DJ's Digital Departure, tell us about that experience?

Sir Adam Suwol of DJ's Digital Departure contacted us first and started the conversation, they also sent us messages on Facebook. They said they really, really like our mind-blowing designs on DBH. They were looking forward to every submission we made! They were really inspired by our collective designs SPACE PANDA & PANDAMONIUM that they really liked visually.

That was really a great experience working with them, they are kind and really a groovy party type of people'¦:D

Q: Tell us a little bit about your process, how do you go about making such cool art?

As we said a while ago we make our designs based on our imaginations, feelings & experience. It's very hard to make design if you are a surreal artist. That was a brain cracking one. We create & composed designs based on silhouettes, PS brushes, photos as references or direct photo manipulation, sometimes we do sketching if we have time. We render our designs; all designs on Photoshop, as well as Adobe illustrator but not as often. We use silhouettes as a guide or starting point to help when rendering the designs. They are very useful on our part when it comes to using negative space creatively. We have our favorite palettes if you noticed in our designs too. We use certain colors to identify our style to others.

Q: You have a large number of followers and fans. Do you have any tips for up and coming designers on how to build a community all of their own and market their work?

Well the social media sites help us a lot. As you can see everything can be marketed, published or even sold through Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and even on Instagram. You should know how marketing plays an important role in a social media, in that case it will help you and your designs being promoted and well-known. This is a clear open doors for us and for up and coming designers.

Q: If you could only draw one animal for the rest of your life what would it be?

Hahahahahahaha only one answer'¦PANDA, PANDA, PANDA'¦:D panda as a gentleman, panda as a warrior, panda as an astronaut'¦:D

Q: You have a very strong work ethic and you seem to constantly be making more and more complicated designs. Do you ever take a day off?

Making design is really a big part in our life and we do it as a daily routine. Maybe we can say.. We can't sleep if we can't make any designs'¦ Hahahaha. Even my husband is dreaming what designs will be submitted next. That's how crazy we are'¦Hahahahaha.

Q: What's the next project(s) you are working on? Anything new in the pipeline?

For now we are concentrating on the Diablo 3 Contest, that kind of rendering is really not our genre but we try our best to submit one or even two entries. Maybe next month you're going see some new designs from us for the daily contest and in our collective store.

Q: Finally, you use a lot of photo manipulation in your art. Do you have to be careful about which images you use and how should other artists avoid copyright problems?

Doing a photo manipulation on design is a critical one. First you should be aware of what & where the photos you are going to use came from. Is it copyrighted or not? Even if you only use it as a reference or a small part of the photo itself to make up part of design, always check. We have a friend who's a photographer in the US and sometimes we buy photos from him or order what kind of photo subject we wanted for our design.

We once became a victim of copyright infringement and we learned a lot from that experience.

Thank you so much DBH & Sir Wotto'¦