Smurfs Attack - Old School Toon Tee Shirt

This is Smurfs Attack available at SplitReason.com

Split Reason has been around since 2003, however they seem to have steered more and more towards the tried and tested popularity vote system you can find at Threadless and many other similar t-shirt designer sites. (I have a problem as a designer with this format - it seems rely on a more throwaway attitude towards new designers - popularity is viral, not dependent on the votes of competitors and anonymous surfers - oh well - my five cents.) You’re sure to find gems everywhere you look, although it can be frustrating when you see a t-shirt you like sitting for weeks on end in the submission pool. Luckily Smurfs Attack is available to buy now. The design caught my eye, basically due to my own childhood memories in the 1970’s, popping down the local BP petrol garage and buying a Smurf every Sunday like it was some kind of small blue religion. I soon grew out of the phase and passed the whole collection, to a kid down the road with a single mother and permanent food stains on his t-shirts. Read the story »

Graphic Equalizer T Shirt - Beautifully Tacky!

It’s amazing isn’t it? Perhaps just amazingly awful. I’m not usually one for gadgets, read my rant on water-cooled t-shirts! Besides it doesn’t look like it’ll be long before everyone starts selling advertising space on their chest, they’ll probably even be able to detect impressions and clicks and BlueTooth it to the nearest available stockist. Then of course the salesbot will be chasing you down the street just because you threw a glance at a damn flashy t-shirt. Ah well, I digress, that’s the future, and you can keep it. Read the story »

Boycott Beijing Olympics 2008 T-Shirt Review

Once again this is a free t-shirt design, it will be the last review of my own works in this category, I urge all talented designers to submit their own tee shirts, even if its only for the free publicity! You maybe wondering why a t shirt designer would willingly invite his competition to submit their own products? For those worried I’m about to slate everything I receive don’t! First of all we have a stringent review policy here, basically if I see an intelligent design, a witty slogan, a great use of colour, something that catches my eye (remember I am a t-shirt designer so I have seen every “I’m with stupid” variation out there), then I will submit it. In those cases where my opinions somewhat varied I will ask others (friends and t-shirt fans of the site) for their opinions. If the feedback is mixed and I can’t make a convincing argument for the design then it will be rejected. I won’t negatively campaign against any commercially available t-shirt, it is someone else’s living, if they have a market for their work then I wish them all the luck in the world. Read the story »

Reviews of the Camden T-Shirt Competition for XFM and H&M

OK, so this won’t be the most objective of reviews, I know, so don’t start piling in with the complaints. If you want us to review your t-shirt, then submit your design info today! If there’s one thing we all hate about the Net it has to be arriving at an empty blog, no one more than the webmaster who owns it (apart from perhaps search engine spiders). So to start the ball rolling I’m going to review a couple of my own t-shirts (starting with Camden Rocks!) - that can show an example of what to expect for the future. I will be breaking my own rules again by reviewing tee shirts that aren’t available for sale to the public, however, to avoid any accusations of blatant opportunism, I think it best to make that exception this one time!

Camden Rocks! (H&M / XFM promotional merchandise).

Unfortunately by the time I had heard about the recent t-shirt design competition at XFM.co.uk it seemed the competition was already over, I ranted in a few emails but to be honest I think a little nepotism is sprawling round the corridors of XFM Radio’s headquarters. I submitted my design 3 days before the deadline, and he designs there absolutely sucked, that’s not a personal opinion, it is plain and simple truth. Take a look at all the submissions here.

Read the story »

Racist T-Shirts: Obama Protests - Curious George Litigation

There’s one t-shirt designer on the planet facing possible litigation like we’ve never seen before. Forget dodgy unlicensed movie and band tees, forget T-Shirt Hell, this is probably the dumbest idea anyone ever had. “I know, I will openly slur a potential Presidential candidate with racist dogma, and bring down the might of Houghton Mifflin’s legal team over copyright infringement.” A racist and incompetent in the legal ramifications of intellectual copyright, bar owner Mike Norman has been selling his wares at his Mulligan’s Bar and Grill, Peachtree City, Georgia, USA [ See Map ] Read the story »

Fair Trade Eco T-Shirts - a designers’ dilemma

There’s a moral obligation for all t-shirt designers to try and pressure the industry, alongside the consumer, to practice business more ethically. This for me is a completely different argument to judging the conditions of the Third World from a First World perspective. Here the only people who we can blame are the t-shirt printers and textile industries of the West, which is fine and dandy with me!

Firstly, I have been looking at the business ethics of my distributors, and to be honest they leave you mostly in the dark when it comes to the whys and wherefores of both their garment manufacturers and their own printing technologies. Although I have found a solitary ethics statement from SpreadShirt who do seem to want at least appease the growing anger against unfair trading practices and environmental pollutants. Read the story »

Judge Condones Anti-Gay T-Shirt

The final appeal for a Neuqua Valley High School student (and anti-gay protester) who wants to express his sentiments on homosexuality by wearing a “Be Happy, Not Gay” T-shirt to class has won his case on second appeal. If it was anti faith, creed, colour, or depicted a celebrity (without a license) he’d be forking out on the court fees right now.

Whatever your personal beliefs you have to err on the side of caution when a ruling judge can accept anti-gay t-shirts but not pro-gay tees. The point is you really can’t choose one and not the other, that wouldn’t be impartial, which I think is the whole problem here. I’m surprised at the location, maybe I’ve got it all wrong, but Chicago, Chicago House Music? House Music is part of the staple diet of music at any gay club on the Western Hemisphere, but besides that, isn’t homosexuality legal there?

The really spiteful thing about all this is that the court’s ruling came two days before the annual Day of Silence, a time whereby all participating students stay silent for the day - if they speak they lose their grades. Sponsored by the school’s Gay/Straight Alliance, the Day of Silence, students often wear written messages on shirts, buttons and stickers showing their support of peers who are gay. Read the story »

Darfur T-Shirt Versus Louis Vuitton

Have you heard of Nadia Plesner? She is running a near one-woman campaign to raise awareness and charitable contributions for the Darfur situation. She’s an art student, she’s 26, and she doesn’t have the legal clout that a worldwide fashion brand can afford. The point is Nadia is selling her t-shirts at no profit, all of the money she receives goes towards helping the people of Darfur. Yet Louis Vuitton don’t see it like that

Deep down I’m sure it’s more likely the potential damage to their branding their fretting about, the whole idea of the design is to focus our attention on the fripperies of modern life, the stark comparison between getting anything you want and dying for lack of what you need. Read the story »

A cool shirt - in fact its freezing…

A lot of words are bandied about these days, like genius for instance, I’m that old I remember when people were a ‘wizard’ at something or other, always something complicated mind you. However this must be about the most accurate description in the history of cool shirts..

This is one of the coolest t-shirts you’ll ever find on the open market, looks a bit like something out of NASA doesn’t it? Well it was originally designed for racing car drivers, however all sorts of people are buying them now. I’d personally rather drink H2O than wear it but each to their own. Read the story »

Latest RedBubble T-Shirt Designs!

Here’s a quick snapshot of my latest designs at RedBubble.com Read the story »

I spoke too soon - SpreadShirt.com comes through!

Ah the mysteries of Vector image design. I’ll collate some of the information I’ve had and write an article on submitting to Spread Shirt in the very near future. For now I must work out the vagaries and mysteries of the European arm of Spread shirt. It seems they are working to completely different rules. How would I know?

Well… I have just had my first vector design accepted for flock printed t-shirts at my American Spread Shirt store. (Hooray!)

I’ll be featuring the design in the Buy Tees Store as soon as I have fathomed the strange and rather annoying submission process at Spreadshirt.net :/

SpreadShirt Blues…

Wow! I never realized how difficult it would be transferring my designs from DTG to Flock print. Basically it has meant slapping thick borders over all my work, I had read the advice,

i.e 1.5mm border around every single vector object but now they’re telling me this about my first screen-print submission..

“The different colours within your design are too close together. The positioning of two different colour foils can cause a shift of up to 2.0mm.” Read the story »

Store will be open soon!

Just a quick note to say that we are currently redesigning the Buy Tees store and will be reopening very soon. Expect to find even more great t-shirts at bargain prices, we now have distributors in North America, Europe and Australia! That means a lower carbon footprint for us and lower shipping prices for you. We should have all four stores up and running in a few weeks. For now you can visit our CafePress store at www.retrogod.com. Read the story »