Boycott Beijing Olympics 2008 T-Shirt Review

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     Beijing Olympics 2008, boycott Beijing, free t-shirt, t-shirt review, tibet

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.

The priority objective for Buy Tees is a showcase of the best of the best, the most innovative t shirts, unique (without being unique for the sake of it i.e a car with square wheels is unique but no one’s going to buy it), and most of all no licensed tees, nothing from those awful sites that spam the search engines with tens of thousands of dumb shirts, old TV shows, Disney, movies, bands, most of this stuff was jsut merchandise to push a film or a new single, they were never supposed to be held up aloft as an example of great design. Apart from that you’re all clear! (lol)

Submit your design here!

On with the review, for my own design, I know I know, it isn’t the done thing, as I have explained in the prior post, to start the ball rolling and give potential submitters an idea of what we do, I’ve decided to post a couple of my own designs in this category. It won’t happen ever again, honest guv! This is another and the last free t-shirt design to be reviewed. It’s my personal stance on the whole Tibetan-Chinese Olympics debate, well hardly a debate seeing as the Western governments and corporations of the world have decided to keep schtum about the whole Olympics debacle.

Essentially I think we should boycott the 2008 Olympics as do many other individuals, especially every single person living in Tibet right now. If you have read the news, seen the footage (and I don’t mean the faked footage from the Chinese Communist propaganda machine), then you need to take a look at this t-shirt. I have ’spoofed’ the official Beijing Olympics website logo and created a free t-shirt design for download.

It actually took quite a while to ‘clean this design up’, I wanted to make a design that could fool the eye for long enough to pass by unnoticed in the ‘wrong company’ shall we say, Beijing Airport as an example, (I’m joking, don’t get arrested because of me, wear the design in a democratic country and you’ll be raising awareness rather than fighting off the secret police).

I felt I had a little trouble finding what to replace their own “running man” logo with, seeing as it was the political message that took precedent I had to crowbar a mention of Tibet in there somewhere. However I do believe the rest of the design is very strong and coherent. I particular appreciate the manipulation of the Olympics logo into a pair of handcuffs which I think gets my point across well. If you spot any photos of protesters wearing my design, let me know and I will feature the piccy (in fact I will build a shrine to those brave souls!), I know my contribution is small, but anything that can increase awareness of the Tibetan plight must be a good thing!

To inject a little humour into the theme I replaced the cutesy Manga characters with mini-Mao’s – I think this is probably the most successful design element of the whole work. I had to scour the net for different facial expressions of Mao (I’m telling you there aren’t that many!), mainly old propaganda posters, luckily I found a photo of an old Korean poster which depicted Mao with a sneer, which really saved me a long time. Mao has a rather fixed expression, it is a matter of balancing innovative ideas with recognition, if the viewer doesn’t know who Mao is forget it, but if they do but just don’t recognise ‘your Mao’ you know that it can only be your own fault. I got an average 8/10 for Mao recognisability from a group of friends so I am happy with it.

You have to work with the talents you have and build upon them. You have to leave all the wild ideas at the conception stage and quickly formularise what you do to be an effective t-shirt designer. But formula of design doesn’t mean a repetition of ideas, make sure that streak of originality is always running fast and wide in every design you make or your audience will fall asleep, worse still they’ll never exist.

If you’d like to help raise awareness of Tibet’s plight then boycott the 2008 Olympics and tell your friends, better still download this design and get it printed locally! I’m seriously considering putting this up in the shops but how on earth could I convince Spreadshirt or Cafepress to give away t-shirts at cost price? Surely some clever soul reading this has the answer!

Download Your Boycott Beijing Olympics 2008 T-Shirt Design Now!

It’s a big high resolution file in .png format so I’m afraid dial up is out – god knows the last time it was in :p

If you enjoyed this article please consider sharing it!