Glennz - aka Glenn Jones - A Bona-fide Genius of T-Shirt Design!

Glennz - The T-Shirt Design Genius.

Even if you don’t think you’ve heard of Glennz (Glenn Jones) the t-shirt designer, you have, and if you haven’t, this is planet Earth and the year is 2008. I doubt any person alive with a love of t-shirts hasn’t seen one of his works. I’m sure we could debate whether this is art or not for years to come, but, as far as fulfilling all the requirements of classic t-shirt design, Glennz has to be the man.

I know this review will come across as a total creepfest, but I really don’t care, Glennz has to be one of the few t-shirt artists that made me believe I could make it in this industry. His works are some of the most memorable I have ever seen, sure they aren’t grunge, they’re not eroded, they’re not filled with vector shields and gothic text, or experimental photo-montage techniques, but those are all fads and fashions that will pass and eventually return again.

The world of design like the world of art follows some very basic principles in order to maintain their essential position in our culture. They enable us to visualise that which cannot be understood, or has been misunderstood. They must create a new iconography for each generation, they must speak to both the mass and the individual. Yet beneath all the diatribe, each artist, each designer, has to have their own distinct vision and a wealth of skill and technique to achieve it.

I studied a rather strange little Arts Degree course way back when, the overriding factor in the conception and creation of any piece was the ability to justify the choice of materials, the subject matter, the design approach, and its final production as a work of art/design. It was called Conceptual Media back then. I have no idea of the current watchword as I’ve practically abandoned the high-arts world in an attempt to prove my head tutor wrong once and for all. All I know is that Glennz is already doing that job for me.

Glennz is the closest the t-shirt world has to a ‘Banksy‘. Like Banksy he’s challenging our perceptions of the world, like Banksy he is expressing his ideas through a low-art medium, one creates graffiti and the other t-shirts. One is politically charged, the other culturally and perceptually subversive. If Banksy is preaching from a ghetto hell, then Glennz is creating debate in a surrealism of suburbia. Like Banksy Glennz work seems incredibly familiar, even when witnessing a work of his for the first time you have that niggling feeling that this idea should have been expressed a long time ago.

There are only two reasons why Glennz won’t ever receive the adulation that Banksy does, the first is that the Arts world has an inbuilt aversion to anything fashion-related. I can’t blame them to some extent, at college I couldn’t stand the fashion students, they honestly were idiots, (obviously this was a small sample) - I love great clothes, but the bitching and catty behaviour of those people about little more than who could add the most sequins to their ill-fitting garbs held me back from the fashion world for many years.

I went into advertising (yuck) and finally graphic design, it would be over a decade before I found myself back here. Glennz is one of the reasons why. The second is that he isn’t politically charged or posing as a champion for the oppressed, good intentions aside, as Banksy finds is work earning him more and more, he’ll have a harder time simply being ‘one of the people’. Glennz is one of the people, he’s just a guy with a some graphics software, he isn’t creating a media spectacle, he’s making t-shirts, and very very cool ones at that

This guy is a genius at vector design, his work is succinct beyond measure, I am a fussy $%^£^&$ and on a truly personal level, can usually only appreciate one or two works by any t-shirt designer, I can positively critique many designers, I can deconstruct an idea with glee, I am trained to do it, I can see references to artists in history where many will miss those finer points, but I rarely can sit back and hand control over to another. Except on this one occasion.

I received an email today from Glennz, and I have to admit it was kind of exciting, perhaps I need to get out more, but if there’s one person I wanted to get to know better in the t-shirt industry (apart from a very rich t-shirt printer with an unlimited advertising budget), it has to be Glennz. He asked me to write a quick feature about his latest work called Freak of Nature - another classic tee - features Gene Simmons of KISS fame, a crazy black and white excess of high-camp pop-rock has entered the gene pool :p Who knows what genetic experimentation you can buy if you have the cash, I can see Gene wanting one of these (hint Glennz).

In fact I was pretty impressed that Glennz had even bothered contacting me, perhaps I’m getting a little better known than I thought, I suppose Imagine a legion of fans out there bigging him up at every opportune moment. Either way, I don’t think one work is enough to showcase this guy, so let’s all take a wander through the mind of Glennz.

It’s a Bottle Jim! is one of my absolute all-time favourites, I am an old sci-fi fan, not so much a geek as a nostalgic (another banned sentiment at my arts course). For example as a child my parents went through a messy divorce, a friend at school (we were about 9) and his rich builder dad took pity on me, and they took me to see the UK premiere of Star Wars in 1977.

It was a big event and I’m sure there were plenty of stars there but all I remember is sitting there in front of a massive Leicester Square cinema screen and feeling like nothing would be the same again. I spent years watching reruns of old Star Trek episodes with my Dad on a wintry Sunday evening (the only day he could see me) and delving into the whys and wherefores of if, how, and when we will ever travel the stars.

In the 1970’s Dad bought a pewter sculpture of the USS Enterprise from Franklin Mint in Bromley, Kent. It even has phaser cannons made from rubies and an emerald dome. It’s over 20 years later and these days he talks more about his final time on earth, he’s only in his 60s but he is in a bad way. His legs are shot from an industrial accident in the early 80s, besides that he’s grieved for so many friends and family who’ve passed that almost every conversation ends with him removing the Enterprise from its box and showing me part of my inheritance. I’d rather keep my dad, I’d rather see that ship proudly placed on his mantelpiece, but if there is something guaranteed to remind me of Dad, it will always be the Starship Enterprise. Glennz knows the affection that many guys young and old feel for this craft, to imbue it with history, to seal it in a bottle, to preserve its memory, for me is like preserving the memory of my Dad and myself in those heady days of the 1970’s.

Scrap Metal is the first t-shirt I remember seeing and thinking hey that’s a Glennz, his style is immediately recognisable, it has a clarity of idea and style that is usually only matched by the most expensive of advertising campaigns. Imagining one guy by his laptop creating these designs one after another makes me wonder how long has big business got before it’s toppled by talented individuals like Glenn. Yes it’s a reference to Star Wars and I love it, this is the only other way you’ll get me nostalgic about Sci-fi, through the medium of Star Wars iconography.

When I first began designing t-shirts I got a bit of grief off Nintendo for producing a Wii and iPod related design called iiPwn - Apple didn’t say a thing, anyway I realised the troubles with anything even remotely associated with copyright design. Glennz is a master at retaining the recognisable without ever crossing the line of legality. George Lucas can only stand back and admire (or in horror) accept that this is a fitting end for his Star Wars franchise. The first trilogy was fantastic, the last three awful, I don’t care what the Star Wars experts say, it should have ended back in the 80s, (same goes for Indiana Lucas!).

Beyond the cultural references is an incredible understanding of detailing the effects of natural forces, physical stress and deformation of material under extreme conditions. It may seem easy to create an image like this, but without exactly the correct perspective and balance of detail versus treatment, this work would have failed miserably. You know what it is and you know what’s happened, the work explains itself immediately. ‘The Force’ (of t-shirt design) is strong within Glennz. I’ve just realised I haven’t bought this, I really should, I know it so well I feel like it’s already hanging in my wardrobe :0

Endangered Species is the slickest environmental t-shirt I’ve ever seen, I don’t like Sushi, yes I admit it, but if there’s one thing I know most glamorous types in the city love, it’s eating raw fish at the end of the evening. The irony is they’re running out, the fish stocks are falling, perhaps they should just open the restaurants in the middle of the Japanese Ocean so you can pick what you like as it swims by?

I’m sure there are plenty of pro-Sushi people out there who will eat it till they drop, or rather the fish population does, I like fish, cooked though, and even our lowly British Cod is almost at an end. Britain as many other countries than Japan are contributing to the problem.

The fact is the future of food like fuel is in doubt, erratic weather cycles reduce harvests and make it impossible to predict how much we can produce. Pollution and over-fishing means the same will apply to the sea, no matter how many farms we create, the damage has been done. Eventually we’ll all have to rely more and more on local resources, if I could afford a house with some land I’d be growing my own organic food at a slither of the price the supermarkets charge, even selling the surplus on to neighbours or better still bartering for other essentials.

I’ve made a small step in an attempt to reduce the enormous carbon-footprint of our industry by encouraging people to print their t-shirts locally, (plug coming up…) and have set up a free global directory for t-shirt printers at TshirtPrinter.org - I spent a few weeks entering the categories (gulp) and I hope that enough people get word of the site it will in some way encourage the industry to do better. I even feature organic t-shirt printers for free as a way of encouragement for printing companies to do better. Who knows word might spread :/

I adore the treatment used in Endangered Species, the colours and cold dead eye of the fish head really bring the design alive (ironically), with even just one hint of Manga style illustration and I think the message would’ve been lost. The style is more reminiscent of a funky 1960’s American cook book than a Japanese comic, and that for me makes it perfect.

Deflating Defences is yet another über subtle piece of design, seemingly innocuous but produced at a time when all Western political minds must be considering the prospects of war both now and in the future. On one level this is simply a very sweet design, perfectly executed (yet again), immediately recognisable, and an excellent use of iconic metaphor.

Part of me wonders if Glennz is scratching his head right now, perhaps there’s no message in any of works? My reply would be, if a t-shirt designer can make an ageing and very cynical post-conceptual installation artist wake up and cheer him on, then he must be doing something right, consciously or subconsciously (it is neither here nor there). The fact is everyone of the works I’ve reviewed will remain at the heart of the designer t-shirt Zeitgeist for many years to come.

So whichever way Glennz may lean, I can see the futility of war in this work, others may see their childhood, or a waste of a good bouncy castle, or just something nice for the kids, each to their own. All I know is that Glennz has a highly annoying habit (don’t worry Im just greening with envy here) of hitting the nail on the head every single time.

I don’t want to make life any more difficult for the guy, don’t have unrealistic expectations about what a t-shirt design can actually achieve in the outside world, it is after all just a t-shirt. But if you’re proud of your collection, if you truly know your t-shirts, you should check you actually do own a Glennz.

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