The Work
Product video, campaign content, and shorts made for the brand.
An obsession with retro futuristic y2k geometric graphics became a shirt company that led to a Graphic Design degree. From idea to cloth and everything in between.
Spectral Essence was a maximalist vaporwave cyber-witchy streetwear brand. Geometric clutter, layered color, emotions printed on fabric. The vibe lived in warehouse parties, art shows, festivals, and city streets after dark.
The name came from the idea of pulling things out of the ether and into physical form. A spectral wave moves across the whole spectrum, undulating between states. Essence is source, is life, is vapor condensing into droplets. Spectral Essence was the act of distilling something intangible into something you could wear.
Product video, campaign content, and shorts made for the brand.
Selected prints and product shots from the collection.
Five drops, each with its own emotional center. The most popular was the Plant Person tee, which became the unofficial mascot of the brand. Others leaned into the same maximalist, cyber-witchy aesthetic: geometric patterns, layered imagery, and designs that treated a t-shirt like a canvas instead of a billboard.
One example: the "Pensive Pony" tee, a horse staring off into the horizon, caught mid-thought. It said everything about the brand's tone. Emotional, a little absurd, completely sincere.
Spectral Essence sold modestly. Drop shipping overhead was too high to sustain, and the brand shut down in 2025 after two years. I used that catalyst to get a Graphic Arts degree so I could do it better. In hindsight, the work was such a huge lesson. I can be proud that I went through getting business licences and countless hours imagining things into fruition. That was the real exercise. Now it's not so scary or precious. I can be proud of five drops of fully realized brand identity, produced start to finish by one person with no team and no outside funding. And it led me to being a designer in Berlin.
I still wear the shirts. I made them for me. Everything else came after.