Archive for the 'T-Shirt Tuesday' Category

TST week of Oct 21st, featuring “Splatter in D Minor”

Published
by
avarhirion
on October 21, 2008
in T-Shirt Tuesday
. 3 Comments

My last T-Shirt Tuesday provoked the first discussion in my comments section.  Thanks, it was cool!

This week I want to share some interesting shirts that have come out of this year’s monumental election.

Everyone Poops from Threadless

"Everyone Poops" from Threadless

The picture above is from a recently reprinted Threadless classic, Everyone Poops. Its reprint is timely, considering the peoples overwhelming distaste of and distrust in the United State’s Federal Government. No one is blameless, per Karl, and he is right that that shirt has a serious point behind a goofy design.

A spoof on Obamas name and done for the St Patricks Day holiday.

A spoof on Obama's name and done for the St Patrick's Day holiday.

All over the t-shirt world this year can you find politics (not to say politics isn’t anywhere else, haha, if only!). The topics range from pro-unity, to pro-insert-candidate-name, to deeply partisan, to extremely apathetic. As a person who follows politics, I take note of these shirts, and sometimes buy them. I am proud owner of one of the best “know your audience” political shirts of all time, Obama’s “O’Bama” St Patrick’s Day shirt, aimed at the strong Irish population in Ohio and the neighboring states, from back during the primaries in March. I made an impulse buy of a campaign joke shirt too, in the McCain: 1908 shirt from Busted Tees. But for the most part, I have avoided spending too much on election tees, because on November 5th they will go out of style and, at $15 a shirt, just a few weeks of wear is not cost effective.

Obama is extremely popular in the t-shirt world, probably because youth (especially the liberal group of artists and thinkers who make t-shirt designs) primarily identify with Obama as opposed to McCain.  Some really nice pro-Obama shirts have come out this summer and fall.  I have previously mentioned such shirts as the Prez Dispenser, Barackin’ the Free World, and Captain Obama.  Recently, message related shirts like this one has also shown up.

McCain is at a disadvantage in this market because all the artists are making Obama shirts instead.  I haven’t seen many pro-McCain shirts that are also aesthetically unique, but I have seen more than a few McCain jokes.  Sarah Palin has been especially the brunt of the joke shirts, including the V.I.L.F. shirt, Juno spoof of Palin, Palin Hunter, and more.  Don’t miss Busted Tee’s recent politcal releases, including this one pictured below.

Leaning on Busted Tees

Leaning on Busted Tees

The activist shirts are my favorites, because they are actually promoting involvement, despite the frustration.  Get out the vote shirts are everywhere, and some are even crude (”Please F**king Vote”) in getting their point across.  Busted tees suggests that if you don’t want to feel like an asshole, you should vote (check it out).

Tee designers are putting out quite a few shirts that mock the process.  American frustration in the electoral process is apparent.  Not including the “Everyone Poops” shirt, here are some: “Never Underestimated the Power of Stupid People in Large Groups” (iteration 1, 2, & 3), “Good Things About Conservatives/Liberals“, and I’ll Regret our Association When I’m Running for President, the latter an obvious spoof and/or protest of the anything-is-relevant attack-dog politics played by politicians in the US.

And for all those fed up with it all: here are two apathetic election shirts for you: “A New Hope” and “Bigfoot/Nessie 08″.  This year’s election has produced some interesting shirts for sure.

This week I’ll be featuring one of my favorite shirt designs of all time, one I have previously mentioned here, a Threadless classic: Splatter in D Minor.

Splatter in D Minor by Threadless

Splatter in D Minor by Threadless

Threadless is to blame for my becoming a t-shirt addict.  Upon discovering the wonderful, artistic tees being produced by Threadless, I broke the ice and bought my first one almost two years ago.  Then I bought another, and then another, and then I started participating in the threadless community, where the community picks what the company turns into a tee shirt.  During the first time I voted for a slate of designs, I saw a design called “Splatter in D Minor“.  Of all the shirts designs I’ve voted for on Threadless or any other t-shirt design community/competition website like it, I have never since wanted a shirt design to be win–so I could later own it of course–more than I wanted ‘Splatter’.  The community agreed with me, and a few weeks after my vote, my shirt was on its way.  During the recent Threadless $13 sale, I picked up a second, because my first had faded a bit.

Splatter in D Minor by Threadless

Splatter in D Minor by Threadless

When I first saw ‘Splatter‘, my mind went crazy.  It inspired so many thoughts and ideas, both abstract and concrete.  It made me think about the great song writers, and how they refine rough ideas into order… into great music.  It made me think of how Beethoven wrote music after he lost hearing by laying his forehead on the piano and feeling the tones.  I was reminded of the famous Beatles song, “A Day in the Life”, which features and odd orchestral bit that is difficult to describe but on paper would look the splatters on this shirt.  And then it made me think of order in choas, the principle I believe God used when designing the world.  This art also visualizes something like a reverse-entropy, or chaos becoming order, an idea which, without a God, should be impossible.  So, in a way, this shirt also helps me visualize some of the qualities of my faith.  All that, and it looks freaking great.

Clearly, this shirt is my favorite piece in my collection.  Though it has sold out at least once, it is currently still available on threadless, and I highly recommend you pick it up.  This shirt will likely be inducted into the Threadless hall of fame, if and when such a thing is ever established by the company.

Get “Splatter in D Minor” on Threadless

Splatter in D Minor by Threadless

Splatter in D Minor by Threadless

TST featuring “Most Deadly”

Published
by
avarhirion
on September 30, 2008
in T-Shirt Tuesday
. 4 Comments

Welcome to another installment of T-Shirt Tuesday.  This time, I’d like to offer a shout-out to a couple of t-shirt blogs I frequently read for news and sales information:

  • First is tcritic, written by a great guy named Karl.  Tcritic gets about 8 posts a week, considerably less than other t-shirt blogs, but each is full quality information.  Karl regularly rewards his readers for involvement in his blog, either through tipping him off to t-shirt news, participating in the comments, or playing his contests with gift certificates to Threadless and other sites.  Also, Karl recently crossed over from t-blogger to t-maker when he introduced the funny and timely Prez Dispenser shirt and began his dabbling into t-shirt production.
  • Another favorite of mine is Hide Your Arms.  HYA is written by Andy and his blog offers some great insight into international t-shirt sources as well as domestic, since he currently resides overseas–though he is moving to Philadelphia for an internship shortly.  He posts regularly and sometimes writes a lot about the same vendors, but the high load of posts doesn’t mean he lacks quality.  His blog name is actually related to his first love, hoodies, but he takes a break during the summer to write about tees.
  • Finally, Shirts on Sale is an excellent source for saving money.   I should note that they mostly collect headlines from other blogs with the similar news [sources], but as a simple source for cheap designer tees, I love it.

Update: Note that this list is in no way exhaustive, there are hundreds of t-shirt blogs out there, but these three are my favorites for the various reasons listed.

In other news, Design by Humans announced the winners of the DBH $10k contest.  To my surprise my choice, Black Hole Sun, won, but when the graphic was finally translated onto a t-shirt, it is nothing like what I thought.  Compare for yourself:

Black Hole Sun, finalist in the DBH $10,000 Contest
Black Hole Sun concept, as seen when a finalist in the DBH $10,000 Contest
Black Hole Sun, as printed

Where did the blue go?  Where did the fuschia and purple go?  Why bother having us vote on these designs if Design by Humans will then go and drastically alter the design?  I won’t be buying this shirt, which is sad, because I was greatly looking forward to it being printed.

This week’s featured t-shirt is “Most Deadly” by Busted Tees.

Most Deadly by Busted Tees
Most Deadly by Busted Tees

Like I said way back in the first installment of T-Shirt Tuesday, I avoid buying joke t-shirts. I prefer to wear though-provoking clothes, or at the very least, clothes that don’t characterize me as something I am not.  While depending on your personality, the VILF shirt can be pretty funny, I won’t wear it because I see it as only slightly humorous and mostly unintelligent, divisive, and crude, all of which I am not.  But occasionally, I’ll make an exception, and this shirt is one.

Most Deadly T-Shirt by Busted Tees
Most Deadly T-Shirt by Busted Tees

For those of you not from my generation, this shirt likely makes no sense to you. It is based on the life-status bars for the player from the 007 Goldeneye video game of the late 1990’s. This game was “the game” during my early teenage years when I played lots of video games. I was 12 when I got the game in 1998, and I played it with regularity on solo missions or multiplayer deathmatches with friends until I formed my businesses in 2001. One of the greatest accomplishments of my life prior to the success of my business and my earning the eagle scout rank was the day my brother and I beat the hardest side mission in the game and won the most elusive special achievement: invincibility. While Halo now rules the world of first-person multiplayer shooter games, 007 was the trendsetter, changing the way people played multiplayer video games. I feel 007 made social video game play possible.

BustedTees, the maker of numerous stupid joke shirts, produced this one.  I find the quality to be exceptional, and the shirt soft and comfortable.  I have washed the shirt twice and noticed no major fading of ink, something I am always concerned about when buying for the first time from a vendor.  The design, for essentially copying a graphic from a video game, is very nicely done, and I am especially a fan of the dithered colors in the health meters.  For those who don’t know, dithering is a way to blend pixels of two different colors together to create the look of another color.  In the game it was used to simulate a gradient, since 64-bit technology was limited in color choices.  With today’s t-shirt production technology, a gradient would have come out looking really nice, but by using a dithered color pattern it made the design accurate to the original source and also gave it nice detail in an otherwise simple design.

Overall, for breaking my no-joke-shirt rule, I love my choice.  This shirt is a must-buy for all the kids of my generation who grew up shooting their friends to bits with digital bullets on 007 Goldeneye.

Most Deadly detail
“Most Deadly” detail

TST featuring Element Text Mosaic tee

Published
by
avarhirion
on September 10, 2008
in T-Shirt Tuesday
. 0 Comments

Welcome to T-Shirt Tuesday on Wednesday. Sorry for being a day late, I had the choice of blogging or missing a homework deadline, I picked the responsible avenue.

Before I get to the featured shirt of the week, I got some news and noteworthies from the t-shirt collecting world. First, a web design/digital artist type guy launched a new company called Around Shirts. The site sells shirts inspired by places.  While each of the five designs at site launch are basically the same design with a different location’s name (e.g.: Tokyo, Los Angeles), the premise and about us page suggest some neat designs soon to come.

Kingdom Comes, a Finalist in the DBH $10,000 Contest

Kingdom Comes, a Finalist in the DBH $10,000 Contest

Design by Humans has lately been rather underwhelming in regard to new designs and promotions, but last week broke that trend with a quality release and continued it this week with announcing contest winners.   Released last week and still available is the bold Shark with pixelated teeth (terrible name), and also the mellow and chill I Love Hitchcock.  They have been running a few contests lately, and the winners for the Unity Through Art contest were announced today, with my favorite, entitled We just started with art, taking second place.  The DBH Logo is used in that shirt, and I always liked that logo for its lively feel, which means that this shirt is on my list for that reason alone. Also in DBH news, the big $10,000 contest has its 10 finalists chosen and they are up for a vote on DBH right now.  My favorites are Black Hole Sun (below) and Kingdom Comes (above), but go out and vote for your own favorites!

Black Hole Sun, finalist in the DBH $10,000 Contest

Black Hole Sun, finalist in the DBH $10,000 Contest

Other items of note:

  • Enclothe has a minor sale going on right now. Only 30% off two tees, but that is deal considering that if I had the money I’d get their shirts like Axis Mundi and Ghost Ship at full price!
  • A new company for me, with a BOGO free sale going on right now, is Reverie.  They have a small and great line including this one called Promise.
  • Marc Ecko, the man behind the Ecko brand, seems to love Star Wars, or at least loves exploiting the money of Star Wars fans.  He has created some beautiful shirts based on the Original Trilogy.  They are expensive, but amazing works of art.  Check out the Marc Ecko Star Wars collection.
  • From their about us, “[fivehumans] create hip, fashionable t-shirts so you can support your cause in style!”  These guys make stylish shirts that advocate a cause, like child welfare, cancer, diabetes, autism and more, and then donate a percentage of the proceeds to related non-profit groups.  The shirts cost about average to slightly higher than average and worth the money, especially with part of the money being donated.
  • And finally, as Andy at Hide Your Arms puts it, a shirt “that further dilutes political discourse in the USA”: the V.I.L.F. shirt.  No comment.
Element Shirt

The Element Mosaic Text Shirt

This week’s featured t-shirt is actually a mass-market shirt (gasp!) by Element Skateboard Company.  I am not against mass-market clothing, but I avoid it for two reasons: most brands carry an image about them that I don’t want to associate myself with–for instance Abercrombie portraying an image of preppiness and cockiness, or Famous offering a raw inner-city rough around the edges feel–and second I hate seeing people wearing a shirt I also own–or worse, that I am currently wearing.  But when a work of art comes in the form of a mass-market t-shirt, I won’t not buy it, so this shirt was quickly added to my collection.

This photo, in black and white, excentuates the textures by the mosaic text.

This photo, in black and white, excentuates the textures by the mosaic text.

I’ve owned Element shirts before.  I like the brand because its image of promoting social responsibility through the skate (aka, generation y) subculture.  The brand often has artwork that is primitive, natural, and oraganic in design, so when I am feeling earthy or enviro-friendly their shirts find their way onto my back. This Element brand tee isn’t exactly organic, but it is a sweet design and I picked it up without hesitation.

If you remember last week’s feature, you will recall my discussion on typographic designs making great shirts.  This one is no exception.  The picture to the left shows it in black and white, and it still looks great!  The text, in a newsprint type font, is of the company mission statement.  The blocks of text are cut up and mosaicked into a visually stunning design.  It is an awesome shirt, and worthy of the recognition of being one of my featured shirts of the week.

Element Mosaic Text Detail

Element Mosaic Text Detail

TST featuring “Finnish National Railroad” by Ambiguous Clothing

Published
by
avarhirion
on September 2, 2008
in T-Shirt Tuesday and Web Design
. 0 Comments

Welcome back to T-Shirt Tuesday, now one month old.

The Threadless $12 sale continues this week and got even better, with select styles further marked down to $9.  While the selection of $9 shirts pales to the everything else selection at $12 each, there are still a few gems in the $9 sale (especially if you’re a girl or a size small guy) worth looking at.  Threadless released, like it does every week, a couple of new shirts and a couple reprints yesterday which are all only $12, including this one I am sure to pick up eventually (like, wow, UV color changing inks?  Crazy!).  I also discovered some great typography tees at Ugmonk… including a must-have called lowercase.

Finnish National Railway by Ambiguous

Finnish National Railway by Ambiguous

This week’s feature shirt explores another design trend in tee shirts, typography.  Typography is basically the study of and practice of design with typography, known in layman’s terms as the font face.  Great typography makes or breaks a design, case in point (Barack Obama’s bold yet comfortable feeling website design to John McCain’s rather bland and sterile website design).  Regardless of who I prefer, the design and use of creative typography on Obama’s website is superior to McCain’s. T-shirts also benefit from good type.  A beautiful design can suffer if the text used sucks.  On the other hand, some shirts can be simply words in different colors and fonts and be an awesome design.  This weeks featured shirt, which I call “Finnish National Railroad” is such an example.

Finnish National Railway closeup

Finnish National Railway closeup

This shirt was designed and wholesaled by Ambiguous Clothing, a skate and snowboard type company.  Ambiguous does not deal directly, but can be found in most “west coast style” stores.  These guys make some awesome typographic tees, including this one from their Summer 08 line and of course this week’s featured shirt.  What is cool about typographic design is that shirts like “Finnish” have simple artwork compared to something like “Refraction” but they still look great.  All it took was some layered fonts, a few lines, and a few colors, and the result was a stunning design that works well and looks great. I picked up this shirt two weeks ago at Pacific Sun Company (or PacSun) on half off sale for $15.  I had been eyeing it for weeks waiting for a sale.  I got the last in my size.  If you have one of those stores around you, check it out and see if you can pick up this gem for as good or better a price than I.

Until next T-Shirt Tuesday, I offer this advice: you may be a great friend who’d do anything for those you care about, but they can get their own t-shirts.

T-Shirt Tuesday featuring “Refraction”

Published
by
avarhirion
on August 20, 2008
in Scouts and T-Shirt Tuesday
. 1 Comment

One week in and I already messed up on my T-Shirt Tuesday series.  I have a good excuse though, my cat, Oliver, chewed up the power cable to my MacBookPro and I didn’t have my computer for a few days.   It cost $72 at the Apple store, including the student discount, to replace it, in addition to the funeral costs related to Oliver’s untimely demise.

In t-shirt news this week comes an excellent selection from Threadless, including a new must-have for me called T-Minus, and also some long-awaited reprints from Design By Humans, including one I missed out on called Controlled Chaos.  I discovered a great source for typographic tees called Snakes and Suits, which is definitely worth a look.  Also, Barack Obama’s campaign is holding a t-shirt design contest that should yield some awesome results considering an already awesome selection of fan-created tees (1, 2, 3).

A close up of Refraction

A close up of "Refraction"

This week’s feature shirt from my closet is “Refraction” from Design by Humans.

Refraction from the front.

"Refraction" from the front.

It is funny that five to seven years ago (when I was a teen and I cared how others thought of me) you were “gay” if you (as a guy) wore any colors other than black, red, or gray.  The dominant fashions of the late 90’s and early 2000’s except for the “prep” style all followed this rule, but none more stringently than the “skate” style.  With the skate style now melded into the more general “west coast” style, blacks, reds, and grays, are still around, but often as the base shirt for a design full of color. Bright Pinks, Purples, Blues, Greens, Yellows, and every other color imaginable have emerged, and people my age and younger now can wear whatever they want and not have their sexuality brought into question.  As a person who sees color as expressive, and as a person who is very loud, passionate, and expressive himself, this is a good thing for me.  I credit the mid 2000’s “Real Men Wear Pink” fad (which I avoided with a ten foot pole) as the opening that made it okay for us guys to express ourselves.

That said, my selection of “loud” designs is still limited, perhaps for more subconscious reasons than not.  But when it comes to loud designs in my collection, not one beats “Refraction”.

It looks great on me.

It looks great on me.

When I first saw this design on DBH, I thought of the classic Pink Floyd Album cover like it.  The beam of white light begins around the back of the shirt and hits a prism on the lower left side, exploding into swaths of brilliant colors.  The brilliant design is pleasing to the eye and exciting, and makes a statement when worn.  I picked this shirt up for $14 during a sale, but at $19 this shirt is still worth every penny.

This was my first shirt from DBH and I’ll warn you, the inks on this one don’t hold up as well as store-bought and Threadless tees.  I have begun washing this shirt in dark-colors-only loads on a gentle cycle to maintain the quality.  But even a little worn out, “Refraction” is still loud and proud and easily one of my favorite shirts in my collection.

I have already shot the pictures for next week’s selection, in hopes of having T-Shirt Tuesday posted Monday night.  Until then…

T-Shirt Tuesday featuring “The Communist Party”

Published
by
avarhirion
on August 12, 2008
in T-Shirt Tuesday
. 1 Comment
My T-Shirt Collection, aka My Closet

My T-Shirt Collection, aka My Closet

T-shirts make a statement.  Sometimes this statement goes far beyond fashion and brand.  I collect t-shirts that make interesting, amusing, or inspiring statements.  My closet (see pic) is full of my collection.  Collecting t-shirts is more fun than collecting anything else because every time I leave the house I have an opportunity to share pieces from the collection.

Starting this week I will be posting a weekly column I am calling T-shirt Tuesday. T-shirt Tuesday will be my  opportunity to share some of the week’s news about my addiction hobby.  Each week, I will also write about a shirt from my collection, explaining why I like it and what it means to me.  I decided Tuesday for a few reasons but mainly because “T-Shirt Tuesday” sounds better than “T-Shirt Friday”.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy this new series.

For T-Shirt Tuesday week one I chose to share one of the most important shirts that is in my collection, even though it isn’t my favorite and I don’t often wear it.  This week I am featuring a user-generated media classic: the t-shirt “The Communist Party” by Threadless.

A close-up of the graphics from The Communist Party by Threadless

A close-up of the graphics from "The Communist Party" by Threadless

User-generated content is a growing web trend.  I mean, what would sites like YouTube or Facebook be without it?  Threadless, and its more artsy copycat, Design By Humans, proved that the end user could double as the product creator.  Every Threadless shirt was first designed by one of its users (aka, customers) and then submitted for a vote by the community.  Each week the community picks their favorites and the Threadless team turns those into t-shirts.  This fun and unique system not only creates a loyal fanbase but it also guarantees some of the most unique and interesting t-shirts available.  Each shirt, some with only 1000 in existence, are like piece of rare pop-art, except you wear it.  I follow this company not only because it has great t-shirts, but also because it has one of the most forward-thinking and creative business models in the world, and as a creative entreprenuer my self, I can learn a lot from them.

Me sporting the funny t-shirt.

Me sporting the funny t-shirt.

“The Communist Party” is easily one of Threadless’s greatest hits.  It was originally submitted in 2005 and been reprinted over and over again.  Its latest printing is pretty much sold out, again!  Its popularity boosted the image, and success, of its manufacturer, and it is likely one of, if not the most, popular shirt on Threadless.

Vodka comrade? I offer some Russian Vodka to my Communist Comrades.

"Vodka comrade?" I offer some Russian Vodka to my Communist Comrades.

“The Communist Party” is a visual pun… a joke.  As a rule, though, I try to avoid joke shirts.  First of all, jokes get old while art does not, and second, unless the joke is very smart, it makes the wearer look stupid.  (For instance, I’d look dumb in this one.)  Yet I broke my rule for this shirt and bought it, even though it is a joke, for other reasons.

You see, to those of us in this hobby, this shirt represents the beginning of the success for Threadless.  Also, to ‘creative entreprenuers’ like myself, this shirt is proof of how one can be successful by involving their customers in the design phase.  So I basically bought this shirt because of what it represents, not what is says.

The shirt costs $17 when available. Sign up for the threadless newsletter to get a shot at the next printing if you’d like this shirt, or to follow all the new shirts they put out on a weekly basis.