chaunt: t<3    |

So DBH made a big claim in their newsletter today.  I quote:

DBH has pushed the limits of t-shirt printing to new levels this week rising to the design challenge of the DBH Artists by printing a design deemed “unprintable” by some.

So I was excited to see the tee, headed straight to the site to see it in its full glory:

Dissapointing?  I was at least.  Sure the printing is impressive, but it’s not a tee I would ever wear.  It’s a shame but let’s hope the new technique will be put to better use soon.

Help get a great design printed and vote for this one.  I love it:

ps - I’m officially going to stop commenting on how crap I am at posting because a) nobody reads this blog, and b) that’s just the way it is - I’m a busy fella =0)

So, work has been a bitch and I haven’t had time to think for a month, nevermind post on here regularly as I really wanted to do.  I don’t want this to be another ’started but couldn’t be arsed’ tshirt blog - and I am determined it won’t be.

So, to the tees!

Nadia Plesner decided last year to do some good in the world.  She created a tshirt with a thought provoking and somewhat controversial design, with the idea of helping out with the Darfur crisis.  All proceeds from the shirt go straight to Divest for Darfur.  So, the shirt:

Now the bag might look familiar, even though it doesn’t use the brand name or logo.  Louis Vuitton anyone?  I guess it is pretty obvious.  Which presumably is why Vuitton are taking action to try and remove the design from Nadia’s site, even though it is purely for charity.  She is being sued for $7,500 per day for showing the image, and another $7,500 for using the Louis Vuitton name on her site.  Crazy?  Yes, but she is fighting back.

If you want to support, go and buy a shirt.  Leave a comment in support.  Or just burn your Vuitton bag.

You may have heard of or about T-Shirt Hell?  Probably for all of the wrong reasons.  Personally I think it has some good shirts, very funny and not too offensive.  But it also has some that go a little too far, even for me.

Well now you can enjoy the slightly twisted humour of T-Shirt Hell without being offended, with the launch of a new and toned down site, TorsoPants.

 The site design certainly stands out from the crowd, it’s wacky, quirky and very visual with lots of hidden surprises (like the moving eye near the bottom of the front page).  But I am sure the cost of the design will be worth it and in the long run, the site may even rival T-Shirt Hell for revenue.

Part of me immediately thought “man, this is selling out to the extreme”.  But then my partner very wisely pointed out that people who don’t ’sell out’ (whatever that really means), tend to be poor.  Good point well made.

So to the important part, the tees.  Well there are a lot to choose from at launch which is good to ensure momentum, and most of them are at least mildly humourous.  But for me, most were just “eh” rather than “hold crap I want that”. 

One that did make me chuckle was this one, given that it’s one of my pet peeves with bowling:

Prices are $18 per tee but you do get the huge choice of styles and colours.  And the site already appears to have a big following - as comments are allowed on the tees (great idea), it’s clear that many people are taking the effort to have their say and get involved.

Oh wait, I almost forgot the important bit!  If you sign up to the site this week, you’ll get 8 TorsoWashingtons (basically dollars that you can only spend on this site) in your account!  Which would make your first purchase just $10.  Click below to go to the special promo page:

So good luck to TorsoPants, may all your non-offensive dreams come true.

Well at the end of the last post I apologised for the lack of updates and said I would be posting more often again.  Well, I guess I lied because work is a bitch at the moment and I don’t have too much in the way of spare time.

That said, I couldn’t resist posting about the Threadless sale going on right now, because it really is too good to miss.

Oh.  My.  God.

I don’t know if any of you have ever written a blog before, but posting something like this takes a little while.  And while I was retreiving the above image from the Threadless site, I noticed a tee I hadn’t spotted yesterday when I was looking at the new shirts.

I looked at it, thought about it and then had a ‘moment’ - “I NEED THAT SHIRT!“.  Now I’ve not had such a moment very often before, but when they come along you don’t really want to be around because I go a bit nuts.

The below tee might just be the BEST tee I have ever seen.  I have already ordered it, despite only recently placing an order with Threadless.  I am only gutted that the XL and XXL hoodies are already sold out otherwise I would have to have one of those too.

Do you agree that it is awesome?  Hmm, maybe you have to think Resevoir Dogs is one of the best movies ever made?  That probably helps.

Deep breath.  Okay.  That’s better.

I was going to post about this tee while complaining about the tee colour, but it’s almost meaningless now.  Ah well I’ll post it anyway because it’s cool.

[EDIT]Wait, it’s a reprint?  The best shirt ever made is a reprint?!  Why hadn’t I noticed it before??  I’m somewhat of a Threadless addict, so how the hell did I miss that?  Man alive, I need to be more of a tee geek in future.  Maybe I’ll as Karl for some tips!

I think I have already mentioned that I am pretty anti-censorship.  Which is why I had to grab this shirt from t-shirt hell:

Now it’s not the type of tee I can wear every day (I don’t think my employer would approve!), but it does communicate well my views on censored words such as these.  I bet if I say “cunt”, someone will be offended.  But please, don’t be - did it really hurt you to read that?

On another note, one of my favourite all time Threadless tees was reprinted recently!  Stabby McKnife.  The first time it was printed I wasn’t a regular enough Threadless visitor to grab it before it sold out.  Then it was reprinted while I was on damn holiday a couple of years ago.  So this time I was quick off the mark (plus Threadless tees don’t sell out anywhere near as quickly as they used to when there were just a few released per week).  However, having shouted with joy, I am now a little, just a tad, gutted.  Why?  Because my damn fiancee pleaded with me to let her order it instead.  I’m a sucker for a cute girl, what can I say?  And somehow the prospect of having matching tshirts didn’t appeal …

I did however have to grab a few others while ordering, picking up Merge, also for the fiancee (though I kinda wanted it too), Birds of a Feather, and Mr Choppy (which I LOVE).

Final note is the lack of updates - not that anyone is reading this blog yet haha.  But even so, I planned on posting a few times a week at least - but work has been really hectic, not to mention spending a week in Budapest (work related conference).  But from now on I’ll try to stick to the regime.  Otherwise this blog will fall into the deadpool along with all of the other failed tshirt blogs.

Well personally I reckon that Donald would win out, but Yackfou think differently.  Which sums up their tshirts actually, they are very ‘different’.  Which personally I love.  Also check out Jesus Fights, awesome.

Yackfou is a German site with many, many, awesome designs.  The shirts are pricey at €30-35, but sometimes you just have to pay for quality designs.

You could however grab one of their designs, Napoleon’s Ride, for just fifteen bucks at Threadless.

The success of online tshirt vendors is being transferred to the high street, with big names in the online tee world opening up real life stores to sell to the non-online public.

Last year, Threadless opened up a store in Chicago and by all reports it seems to be going great guns.  A very innovative approach to marketing through scheduled events and regular display art has led to the store being a huge success (the display art sales alone have totalled almost $10k and sell out quickly).

Well another big name in tshirt design is opening up a second ‘real life’ store in LA, having one already situated in Boston.  Johnny Cupcakes has gone from strength to strength in recent years.  Check out the new LA store (due to open May 2008) and the change in warehousing facilities over the last five years …

“Warehouse” in 2003, his parent’s dining room:

And the new in-development warehouse, 2008:

Do you like to fuck with people’s minds?  If so then this might be the perfect tshirt site for you.

Disinformation Tshirts sell tees that at first glance look like a bog standard shirt.  Then you look again and wonder what’s going on, and then it clicks.  At least I think it would because I was obviously viewing these on the site knowing that something was wrong …

 See it says that Nixon made the quote, but it’s got a picture of Kennedy and the quote was actually made by Roosevelt.  In actual fact the shirt falls down slightly because it seems that the actual quote is “… the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.  Which isn’t quite the same, and isn’t, from what I can tell, intentional.

Anyhoos, here are another couple to play with your mind a little.  I have no idea if the image quality is really this bad or if it’s just their site … I hope the latter.

I can’t decide whether this tee by designbyhumans is the ugliest thing I ever saw, or whether it is in fact pretty cool.

So what do you reckon?

Likewise this design by Threadless.

I am leaning towards ugly for both.  Yup, definitely ugly.

Karl over on his blog, tcritic.com, made a very interesting post recently showcasing various tshirt/fashion related Facebook applications.

Now I’m not a  big Facebooker, but I didn’t realise that ONE such application existed, nevermind a dozen or more.  Now some of them are fairly cool (Threadless Plus) wherease others are just, well, almost meaningless.

In terms of users, My Label has by far the most (241 daily active users).

Anyway, head over to tcritic to read the whole post.