The backstory of how Flylow creates original prints for shirts, shorts, and more.
Wear your new Anderson Shirt out for a ride and a friend is sure to comment: “Is that an alien spaceship on your shirt?” Yes, you can answer, it sure is. A handful of pieces in our spring 2026 collection are adorned with a new custom print featuring a desert UFO scene. Picture cacti, howling coyotes, red rock cliffs, crescent moons, and yes, a flying saucer sucking up a coyote from Earth.
Here’s how some apparel brands obtain prints for a new T-shirt or pair of shorts: They go to a print house, browse a giant binder filled with stock prints, and make their selection. (If they spend enough, they get exclusive use of a print; if they don’t, there’s a chance other brands will use the same print.) That is not how things are done at Flylow.
“We work with graphic designers to create completely unique, original prints every season,” says Chad Dobson, apparel designer at Flylow. “We’re not just buying a generic topographical map print to put on a pocket like every other brand. Everything is custom, so you will not see our prints from any other brand.”
The Flylow Dirt Glove comes in the UFO print this season.
The process of creating an original print is time consuming and costly, but it’s worth it for the originality. “It’s definitely the harder way to do it, but it’s the only way to go if you’re a brand like Flylow that strives to be unique,” Dobson says.
When it comes to prints at Flylow, weird works. Dobson starts by creating a brief for a freelance graphic designer. He’ll pull images or graphics from a wide range of sources to create a mood board that’ll help inspire the graphic artist to create the print he's looking for.
Dobson's original mood board for the UFO print.
The ideas usually come from design meetings where general print themes are tossed out for brainstorming. For spring 2026, the general theme was drawn from nature, so ideas included western, wildflowers, fish, feathers, foliage. “I was noodling on the idea of a desert southwest theme, and I was thinking about the landscapes of New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada and I landed on UFOs,” Dobson says. “That’s often how we get there: These roundabout ways of someone throwing out an idea and it being just weird enough to be Flylow.”
That briefing will get sent to the designer, who works to create the print. Usually, there are a few rounds of edits and revisions: adding or removing icons, creating more variation, or flipping things around. The UFO print was created by a globe-trotting, van-dwelling, outdoor-loving graphic designer named Kinsey Hotchkiss.
"The desert landscape is my favorite place in the world, so this print was especially fun for me to create," says Hotchkiss, who has an alien tattoo she drew on her foot. "I sat down and doodled a bunch of different assets inspired by the desert—from saguaros to mesas—then I used a computer to fine-tune the layout, getting everything placed like a big puzzle."
Artist and illustrator Kinsey Hotchkiss.
When the print is ready to go, it gets assigned to various pieces. Certain shirts and shorts do well with bold, wild prints. The UFO print can be found in the spring 2026 collection on these items: the men’s and women’s Anderson Shirt, the Cody Shirt, the Phoenix Shirt, the Tucker Jumper, the Moonshine Short, and the Dirt Glove.
“From a distance, it looks like a cool, interesting texture,” Dobson says. “Then as you get closer, it pulls people in and gains their interest. You’ll be like, ‘Wait a second, that’s a UFO sucking up a coyote.’”
The editing process involves slight tweaks and changes to the print.
Prints are refreshed and created new each season. (The UFO print is a limited-edition just for the spring 2026 line.) “That’s the fun challenge about doing prints,” Dobson says. “It’s a ton of work to develop multiple new prints every season, but it’s a good way to keep the products interesting and it’s a good challenge to try to unlock an even cooler print.”
You can learn more about Kinsey's art and follow along on her journey here.
W Anderson Shirt
Anderson Shirt
Cody Shirt
