Bending type on a mug

After 6 years of running t-shirt companies I'm finally expanding into other products. Our 2nd best selling t-shirt at TypographyShop http://bit.ly/cdKS14 is "Make the Logo Smaller." It won our first buyer's poll by a two to one margin.

I'm preparing the page for the mugs http://bit.ly/liE63J and as we don't have product yet had to fake the artwork on the mug just as I've done with t-shirts for years. Wrapping a cylinder is tricky and I'm not crazy about photoshop's warp feature.

As I'm trained as a figurative painter nothing drives me crazier than people adept at Photoshop and Illustrator who have no eye for perspective, lighting or drawing. To do the best job until we can photograph the product I calculated the depth of the mug's circumference from top to bottom, measuring, hitting the calculator and creating yet another ellipse. Only later did it dawn on me that I could have morphed the top and bottom in Illustrator and done it in seconds. I’m pleased with the results, but wish the mesh Photoshop supplies with the warp tool was much more sophisticated.