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Specialty Cuts and More at My WIndup Bird
2008-03-06 22:28:00
My Windup Bird is a San Francisco-based shirt company that really bridges the line between t-shirts and fashion. Their inspirations help set them apart from the crowd, drawing ideas from the worlds of art, photography and travel instead of witty media references. As Windup Bird puts it, even their print run size puts them more in the world of art than the world of commerce as they are "hand-screened and produced in small batches, like limited edition pieces of art."Windup Bird is also noteworthy for their Special Cuts - variations on the cut of the typical tee including tee dresses, tunics, scoop back tops, hoodies and more. While a lot of these fashionable options are strictly for the ladies, their traditionally cut t-shirts are very guy-friendly. Check out two of my favorites, Bike Girl and Anarchy Antelope.

Part Of It: Shirts that Support a Cause
2008-03-05 03:43:00
A lot of sites sell shirts and donate some of the proceeds back to charity. Typically, the shirts tend to be blatant ads for their cause, nice for fervent supporters maybe, but certainly not the type of work that appeals to the designer shirt crowd.Part Of It turns that formula on its head, contacting artists they'd like to print and then allowing those artists to choose the cause their work will support. Judging from the results, this method really inspired people to create attractive, wearable and meaningful art.Make Art Now by Dustin Amery Hostetler (benefiting the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo) is a gorgeous image, showing the hand of an artist literally trying to catch lightning. It's a cool metaphor for the creative process, and the bold graphics are a great fit for the t-shirt medium. Save Polar Bears by Geneviève Gauckler (benefiting WWF) eschews the drama and goes hard for the cute. Why is the creature green? What is he? And why does he have pink mittens? It is not f...
More About: Shirts , Support

Interview with Design by Humans, and Photos from DBH Headquarter
2008-03-03 17:34:00
... This is going to be long post, hang on there If you've never failed to follow the latest news from online T-shirt world, by right you should already heard about Design by Humans (DBH). If not, it's a competition-based online tee shop started in July last year, which prints and sells only winning designs picked by members; simply put, it's quite bit like Threadless Although it was started only last year, it already received warm welcome from some T-shirt enthusiasts plus some favorable reviews (see links at the end of this post). And few weeks ago, I' lucky to have  a chance drop Jason Gutierrez, co-founder of DBH, a few questions to get to know how they are doing and to make sure... They are real humans! (Thanks to Jed Seigle for letting this conversation happen) .... Rangga: Who are the guys behind DBH and how did you come up with yet-another T-shirt design competition? Jason: Design By Humans was started in early 2007 as a collaboration between my brother M...
More About: Photos , Interview

Thanking Sponsors for February 2008
2008-03-02 16:31:00
Below are Tshirt island's sponsors for the month of 2008 .html">February 2008 . Check out their website for lots of goodies you probably can't resist -- you know you want it. The-Affair: started in June 18th, 2007 by duo Zoltan and Dave with only two T-shirt. To date, The-Affair has 5 stylish tees and two long sleeves on the catalog, not forget to mention its cool interactive website. Go Ape Shirts: powered by the only super lone employee, Josh Perkins, but continuously rolling out new shirts – including the latest Go Disco. Go Ape is specialist in artsy tees with witty-cartoon illustrations printed on it. Scribtee: a new branch of Germany-based custom print tee shop, Shirtcity. It invites individual graphic artists to submit design and get rated by members, announced winners will get their shirts printed and sold, plus some bucks. Contrast: London-based apparel brand, it was established during the winter of 2003/04 by young international artists. Themes of the designs are always mo...
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My Shirt is From the Future: The Affair
2008-02-28 05:37:00
Let's take a moment to speak frankly about the future. Other science fiction futures have passed their prime, unlikely to ever emerge as reality (sorry, space operas!), but William Gibson's tight prose and vision of the future still ring just as true as they did when his first stories were written.Maybe that's why Gibson's words and ideas were tapped as inspiration for some of The Affair 's collection. In Corto's Crash, a line from Gibson's Neuromancer comes to life, with huge text obscured by complex vectors. It's almost a vintaged look, which is deeply appealing in a shirt about the future.Babylon Rocker is a less literal take on Gibson, but his influence is definitely still present. Rastafarian and soviet iconography combine to create a poster-style shirt that feels like a relic from an alternate future- but one that I hope will still come to pass.Both shirts are printed in limited editions of 200. And The Affair is looking to be a great destination for literary-minded t-s...
More About: Future , The Future , Shirt

No Fear, Let Akumu Ink Nightmare-ish Designs Flowing Through
2008-02-27 00:40:00
"Akumu" is Japanese for nightmare. And Akumu Ink is Montreal-based clothing brand whose designs were born from   the concept of letting ideas flow from dreams to the tangible state, particularly nightmare-ish kind of dreams. This "nightmare" element is what makes Akumu Ink designs look surreal and rather abstract at first but soon you will find there's something behind them. It's also element that illustrates rare visualization resulting from sense of fear. Although I often artists that create their art based on visualization of their dream, what Akumu Ink brings through its small collection is really new to me. There are only few tees collection at the moment; but I can't wait see more "dreams flowing through" from Joey and Dora (founder of Akumu Ink)
More About: Nightmare , Fear , Designs

It's Bitchin' Time with Material Bitch Tees
2008-02-23 16:06:00
This for-girls-only is definitely not clothing brand that fit me in both size and personality, but I wouldn't deny that this kind of shirts has no little audience. Material Bitch was firstly created by a girl want to be called MB, to mock her and her friends’ blatant attention to price tags, brand names and who celebrity was wearing what. Material Bitch is definitely a kind of clothing that build itself upon strong personality associated with celebrity gossip, women's fashion their 'bitching' habits. It’s not so much about graphic art of the shirt, although they don't look bad either. Material Bitch collections are now widely available in boutiques across the country (and even worldwide), but its online shop open is kept open for online purchase. PerezHilton, TMZ, Go Fug Yourself… These examples of website that can be associated with Material Bitch
More About: Time , Tees

What's Your Excuse?
2008-02-22 03:13:00
I could have posted more blog entries about t-shirts... but I got a computer virus.Okay, okay... like most bad excuses, that didn't actually happen. I'm just lazy. Lazy enough to need a lot of excuses. So in a way, Bad Excuse Tees exists just for people like me- the ones lazy enough to not only need an excuse, but also a way to communicate it without the exhausting process of speaking.While all the shirts contain excuses, there's a surprising amount of variety in the catalog. Athletic aspirations, dreams of stardom, and even everyday events get their due, and each shirt has a variety of color options.

Threadless Says Goodbye to American Apparel, Fruit of the Loom
2008-02-20 17:03:00
On yesterday's newsletter, Threadless announces that it will print all new winning designs on its own brand T-shirt garment instead of using brands like the usual American Apparel (AA) and Fruit of the Loom (FotL). This maybe sad news for those who already feel comfortable with AA or FotL T-shirts -- although Threadless own custom prints it's not that bad either; it has softer feel and decent durability (I've bought one myself) What important though is having its own tee will hopefully give Threadless better control over stocks. My only bad experience shopping on Threadless was when I want to buy a not-so-oldie tee shirt but often, they're already sold out and ask for reprint instead. And that's so frustrating. In long term, it's a worth a good investment too I believe especially as the company grow bigger. I look forward to the day when Threadless competing with American Apparel and Fruit of the Loom or Hanes as blank tee shirt supplier. Why not? I don't think it's impo...
More About: Goodbye

The Faded Line Promotes T-shirts by Gig Poster Artists
2008-02-19 02:28:00
The Faded Line Clothing Co. (or I'd like to call The Faded Line, in short) is brain child of Brad Mastrine, an Art Director who have been in a music industry for about 10 years. The Faded Line was founded with purpose to promote clothing inspired by rock art posters of bands like The Pixies, Ben Harper, Pearl Jam, and The Flaming Lips to name a few. Having said that, its main goal is basically to bring the artists to the forefront instead of let it be overshadowed by a band's name. These are few artists who have created gig posters for those top rock bands; and whose artworks have received notable publication from CNN and Rolling Stone magazine and displayed on The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Hard Rock Cafes, and Art Galleries throughout the world. Of course, you're free to judge. These are Faded Line contributing artists with link to their personal website: Emek, Jim Pollock, Todd Slater, and Jeff Wood. *image above is Emek's Cyberman tee
More About: Shirts , Artists , Poster , T-Shirts

Electric Zombie Knows Horror
2008-02-18 03:30:00
Electric Zombie makes horror shirts. If your thing is zombies, monsters, and the screams of innocents, look no further.Through big prints and unearthly color schemes, Electric Zombie brings the feeling of scary movies to the medium of shirts. Enemies spring from cotton, weapon in hand and mouth ajar. It's a dark, otherworldly feel that the company has cultivated- the colors seem to be out of a dimension parallel to ours, but infinitely more twisted. And the large prints envelop the wearer, making them a part of the creepy scene.Need another reason to give Electric Zombie a try? As of right now, their shirts are priced at $10 each. I have no idea how long this will last, so act fast.
More About: Horror , Electric

Stained (For Fashion!)
2008-02-14 04:42:00
We've all had this experience- you're minding your own business, having a great day and wearing a brand new white shirt, when suddenly a brief moment of clumsiness transforms that pristine fabric into a disgusting, stained mess.Designer Kean Etro is protesting the wastefulness of trashing fashion mishaps like that with his new collection, all dyed with common stains. Coffee and Blueberry are among the stains, and recipes are offered so that customers can stain the shirts themselves.Now that stains have hit the runways, does it change the way you look at your damaged shirts? Or is this another high-concept idea that isn't compatible with your closet?via YumSugar
More About: Fashion

Cerebral Tee Shirts with Style, Acropolis
2008-02-11 18:01:00
Founded in Los Angeles in 2007, Acropolis Apparel™ is clothing company with a “cerebral” approach to fashion, ensuring each design has a specific definition and underlying meaning. My first impression, I don't like the crappy-looking website (sorry) but after digging deeper to the catalog, I found something interesting from the brand. Acropolis brings unique, bold concept to the table. Its inspiration seems to be influenced by human history blended with contemporary society, for provocative thought. The key words (as they told me) are: Ancient Remains...Modern Beginnings™ is a blending of the essence of past civilizations, cultures, ideologies, philosophies, architecture, art, weaponry, and human emotions with their modern counterparts. Hmm, yeah… I hope you don’ get confused by those words. Anyway, each tee shirt not only named with fancy words (such as Euphoria, Conspiracy, Living God, etc.) but also has their own "story”. Other than that, Acropolis tees...
More About: Shirts , Style

Disturbia Spring Summer Preview, Slide Mania!
2008-02-09 15:29:00
Sure Billionaire Boys Club has nicely built and good looking "Look Book" web page, but Disturbia 's Spring Summer '08 tee shirts collection on Slide .com does not look bad either. In fact, it can take advantage of social web interaction web 2.0 style -- you can rate and leave comments (by clicking on [more*], button on slide above) and even embed it on your MySpace or Facebook page, although I doubt you'll do that.Frank Major of Disturbia told me that Disturbia would continue to disturb the suburbs with new collection is a mix of subverted pop iconography, subtle wordplay, and evil collegiate styling. The 12 new tees all can be seen on the slide above. Disturbia firstly covered back in June last year, you can read my past review here
More About: Preview

Shirts and Product Copy: Can It Be a Losing Combination?
2008-02-05 21:20:00
When you're buying a t-shirt, a myriad of influences can determine whether or not you'll complete the sale. Maybe the color isn't quite right, or the drawing has a quirk you've just noticed. Or perhaps the composition or subject matter isn't for you. But are sales ever hurt by something that isn't even on the shirt itself?I'm talking about the item description, of course. Have you ever looked at a cool shirt, but then read the copy and... realized that this tee is not the gem you thought it was.The reason I bring this up is because I saw a great shirt recently, pictured above. To me it's a cool visualization of what music looks like, with instruments drowning in a sea of flourishes. The site staff had a bit of a different take, needless to say.So here's the experiment: Look at the picture above, and decide what it looks like to you. Then click the link to see what Woot had to say about this shirt. Were you and Woot on the same page? If not and you liked the shirt before cli...
More About: Product , Shirts , Combination , Copy

Tee shirt to Support The SOLD Project
2008-02-05 07:16:00
Roman Apparel's The SOLD Project tee shirt is one good piece uniquely designed for the cause. This crème color tee is featuring a beautiful watercolor design which evokes a feeling of childhood innocence; although my only worry is back tag of the shirt (says "sex sells. children. for $10 billion a year".) might be misinterpreted by those who don't get it at first sight.The tee is sold for $32.00 each, with half the proceeds going directly to The SOLD Project education fund and the rest (oh yeah, there's still $16 bucks) being applied to printing costs. You can find out more about the SOLD Project to watch the heartbreaking trailer for their upcoming documentary (QuickTime Player required)
More About: Support , Shirt , Sold , Tee Shirt

Burn This Forever: Band Merch and Beyond
2008-02-04 01:58:00
It's pretty rare in any field to see someone who does work that is just consistently at the top of the heap. Kelly Scott Orr, however, is most definitely one of those people. Though his clothing line Burn This Forever , Orr mixes illustration, photograph, hand-drawn type and bold colors to great effect. The large prints swallow your torso, creating a shirt that is also genuinely a piece of art.Beyond Burn This Forever, Orr has also built up a great career as a band shirt designer. While his shirts for Paramore and UnderOath are my favorites (pictured above), he's also done work for bigger names in the industry including Metallica, New Found Glory, and Panic at the Disco.
More About: Band

Good Wearables should be Like YouWorkForThem T-shirts
2008-02-03 05:06:00
YouWorkForThem is the premiere graphic design boutique for publications, typefaces, stock while started printing up small number of graphic T-Shirts lately. This not-so small number of tees collection is what they call as result of tight selection of its vision of what shirts should be like.Since YouWorkForThem doesn't associate itself with A huge "kitchen sink" retailer like Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble, or brick & mortar retailer located in New York, London, Paris, Munich, etc. -- it's likely that you'll get the most rare piece of shirts on the market. Think about T-shirt that you hardly find elsewhere and when you have, it's like you are the only one on the planet earth who wear it; hopefully.*image above is one of my favorite YouWorkForThem called Unibomber
More About: T-Shirts , Good , T shirts

Thanking Sponsors for January 2008
2008-01-31 15:30:00
Good companies with great support toward Tshirt island's growth (and help pay our bills)Contrast: was established during the winter of 2003/04 by young international artists in London. The themes of the designs are always centered on people, their environment, symbols and emotions, as well as a mixture of individual charactersTurtlehead: a collective works of creative graphic designers based in Dublin, Ireland. 5% of its profit is donated to the voted charities and while trying to keep customer happy by giving free shipping almost on all orders.2smartmonkeys: born of a hideous marriage of inconvenience between Steve Maggs and Tim Clarke in the summer of 2005. One good example of Spreadshirts-shop with tees collection that has been growing awesomely for the past year.Pistol Clothing: perhaps one of the most sophisticated custom print Tee shop from Australia. Few weeks ago introduced some new, advance printing effects such as Fluro Colors, Gold or Silver Glitter and Glow in the Dark ...
More About: Sponsors , January , January 2008 , 2008

Sixpack: The Site Is In France
2008-01-31 04:53:00
I don't know French, which means I was only able to figure out two things about Sixpack France when I checked out their site.1. They are in France.2. They have some very awesome shirts.But when it comes down to it, that's all I really need to know. If I want a shirt with huge text (in perfect colors, too) to tell the world that I'm reppin' to the fullest (and of course I always am) then Sixpack has got me covered. But they've got a wide variety of clothing offered, and it extends right to my personal weakness: cool illustrations on bright shirts (like that awesome witch shirt that has a name I can't pronounce). You know, I'm almost glad I can't figure out the exchange rate for these prices, because I doubt I could afford it anyway. It's better just to window shop and feel international.My other favorite non-English shopping destination: A Better Tomorrow, Germany's streetwear source.
More About: Site , The Site

Cerbae Brings Art and Culture to Streetwear
2008-01-29 04:36:00
There are a lot of brands out there right now trying to capitalize on the popularity of streetwear. You can find a lot of them on sites like Karmaloop, and after awhile they all sort of fade together in a fog of big prints, big text and bright colors.For me, Cerbae stands out from all of that because of the clear influence of art and the classics in their work. This season's text shirt is a common creative mantra, "Create, Destroy, Rebuild." Other shirts reference chess, ancient Egypt and pop art. Even Zeus gets a shout out, complete with gold foil lightning bolts.I don't mean to imply that everything Cerbae does is highbrow- they definitely hit the hip hop staples of skulls, guns, and scantily clad ladies just as hard as any other brand. But by expanding from those roots, Cerbae is carving out a nice niche for themselves as the thinking man's streetwear brand.
More About: Culture

Disinformation T-Shirts: Better Than the Truth
2008-01-28 04:25:00
Disinformation T-Shirts creates souvenir-style clothing with a twist: none of this stuff is even close to the truth. In their shirts, they describe a world where the Mayflower had a propeller, San Francisco is in Oregon, and Jefferson resided at Mount Vernon. It's so wrong, it's kind of right.The funniest thing about these shirts, though, is the confusion they cause. It's funny how just because someone is wearing a certain shirt, we assume so much- that they've been to the place pictured on it, or that the event described happened as it is shown on the tee. But the truth is, shirts are just as fallible as any other information source- at least these err on the side of comedy!I think the right wearer could have a lot of fun with these shirts, especially if they were to wear them to the right place (I'm thinking a museum or school function would be ideal).
More About: Truth , T-Shirts , T shirts , Disinformation

T-shirt Design Contest, This Time by Karmaloop
2008-01-27 05:53:00
It seems like we can't get enough T-shirt design competition these days. Sure we're already loaded with too many awesome winning T-shirt designs come from Threadless, Design by Humans, Uneetee, Split the Atom, Allmightys, Teetonic (just to name a few) -- we even have one blog that good enough to cover these competition -- but that doesn't mean we won't see any other party to join the hip.Massachusetts-based, streetwear merch-powerhouse Karmaloop is the latest party to invite tee designers to win T-shirt design contest with total prize of $1000 (in cash and gift certificate). Teamed up with Lupe Fiasco, Karmaloop contest searches T-shirt that best conveys what is "cool" to you – ehm yeah, that’s pretty abstract. The contest will go through the month of February and winner(s) will be choose Monday, March 3, 2008.I'm curious of what kind of T-shirt will win the heart of Karmaloop. While most T-shirt design contest held with greater approach to contemporary graphic art, illustr...
More About: Contest , Time , Shirt , T-Shirt

Mojizu is for Modern Character-Design Lovers
2008-01-26 04:17:00
Whether you are inspired graphic artist or someone with great interest in contemporary character design, you're going to love Mojizu. The community based website is dedicated toward facilitating character design lovers.Although still in "beta" stage, members of Mojizu are already able to upload their character, get them personality info and rated by other members; to add some fun, there's even so-called Moji War -- small competition to find most favorable design which come in 3 round battles.But where's the T-shirts?Despite huge number of character art on its database submitted by members, currently, only six of them are already be printed and sold on Moji Shop. But as I mentioned earlier, Mojizu still a very young and there are lots of new features we can expect from it in the future. Below is one of of the latest released of Moji Tee collection called "Kimono", based on character designed byDigArt
More About: Design , Lovers , Character , Modern

Logo Shirts That Don't Suck
2008-01-24 00:51:00
Logo shirts are a hard sell for most customers. Unless you're a popular, well-established brand, no one is looking to be your walking billboard. So what's a fledgling business with dreams of hitting the big time supposed to do?To them, falls the most difficult task in all of t-shirt design: they have to make a cool, wearable logo shirt.The way I see it, there are two major ways to make your logo shirt palettable to the masses. You can take a page from Oddhero and Second Son, constructing your company's name out of some fiercely drawn objects or design elements. This way, the words aren't the only draw, your shirt almost becomes an art piece instead of an advertisement.The second way to go about a logo shirt is to make the logo itself purely secondary to a killer illustration. The UberIndex shirt uses its Uber text as almost a bit of Dada, spicing up the image of a manic, mittened rabbit. Meanwhile, the DiamondHawk shirt takes branding to the next level, representing their compan...
More About: Shirts , Logo , Suck

MonsterHoodies is not-your-everyday Hoodie
2008-01-22 23:25:00
MonsterHoodies is indeed not average hoodie you can see on the street every day and definitely kind of hoodie that gets people talking. Well, especially if you can act "monster" like these models. These hand-made hoodies are currently only available for pre-order and would be shipped from February 1st.Cool hoodies, reminds me of ANTICON's "hooded sweatshirt"

Homage Clothing: Revisiting the Past
2008-01-21 05:10:00
Homage Clothing creates vintage-style shirts that evoke memories of some of the most iconic moments of American culture. Their influences run the gamut from music to politics to sports, but their clean retro graphics unite the collection.One of my favorites is Rocky Lives, which promotes the surprising victory of Buster Douglas over Mike Tyson. In a cool example of attention to detail, they've printed some text on the inside of the shirt that explains the importance of the moment and how it happened. I'm also partial to the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign shirt, which seems so full of hope.As Homage puts it, their shirts "tell stories of triumph, individualism and hustle, preserving the old school and creating new legacies." It's a worthy goal, and I think Homage is well on their way towards achieving it.
More About: Past

From the Love for coFFee, FFee Clothing was Born
2008-01-20 14:43:00
The "FFee" for FFee Clothing is derived from the love of its founders for coFFee. FFee is clothing line concept established by a couple of Web/Graphic designers who thought that they would take their passion to get out of the daily grind and put love for design into designing FFee shirts. So far, the two have launched two distinctive line of collections: Grind and High Tide.Martyn, one of team members who contacted me, explain that they try to make designs to cater to all different types of people. A lot of researches have been conducted to come up with one-of-a-kind designs (see their blog for more ideas and experimentations on graphic artworks). All of Fee T-shirts are printed with the latest water based inks and promised that there is no screen print scratchy feel, only super soft material.
More About: Love , Coffee

Busted Tees' Response to Teen's Best Party Ever
2008-01-17 23:51:00
It often amaze when Busted Tees takes it shot to response that happening lately. This Sunglasses tee shirt, for example, was quickly made for pre-order after the news report of Corey Delaney's a 16-year old Aussie, who wanted to throw party while his parents were not at home. The invitations which were sent via MySpace just get spiraled out of control and brought 500 people showed up and started destroying the neighborhood.And the cool part about this can be actually watch on the video below and as what Busted Tees says on Sunglasses tee, "I'm sorry - But I'm not taking off my glasses"
More About: Party , Response

Shirted Ape: Promoting Artists and Illustrators
2008-01-17 05:17:00
Shirted Ape tags itself as consisting of custom and handmade t-shirt specialists. Beyond that, they've specialized even further and built up an impressive collection of work from some up-and-coming artists and illustrators. For people just starting out in that competitive art market, Shirted Ape gives them the opportunity to create some really interesting t-shirt pieces. Links on the website back to the artists' homepages give the participants even more exposure.Just a year after the site's launch, Shirted Ape is already doing pretty well for itself. They have a nice, wide-ranging collection that includes sweatshirts, bags and tees decorated with a variety of illustrative styles. My favorite is I'm Giving Up Smoking by Hannah Barton, in which one smudge creature gives up smoking and the other gives up looking at the former smoker. It's a neat, expressive piece with a lot of humor. I'm also drawn to Dave Bain's Bird Tangle, which uses the contrast between the complex tangle an...
More About: Promoting , Artists