Word Up To Wordans

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     European tees, French T-Shirts, Wordans, Wordans.com, cafepress, collective, crowdsourcing, designer t-shirts, t-shirt community, zazzle

Antoine the co-founder at Wordans.com t-shirt community gave us a shout at Buy Tees for a review. The site is in many ways a pretty straightforward Zazzle or Cafepress clone, except for a few vital differences. Sure the site design is clearer and friendlier than many of its competitors out there (which there are more than a few now), and yes there’s an English and French speaking version for all the Euro t-shirt fans and designers seeking something just that little bit different than the norm. But what struck me immediately about Wordans is the fact you’ll find no trace of tacky mugs and mouse mats and gawd knows what else their competitors like to dabble in. What’s more they actually have some really decent designers under their wing, and they make sure you know it!

For all the budding t-shirt community stores out there hoping to make their mark, Wordans can teach you a thing or two about how to set the scene and make a unique mark in online urban fashions. Usually the immediate concerns of everything from bottom line profits, delivery mechanisms, and Google rankings get in the way of the essentials that savvy t-shirt buyers and urban fashionistas will always want. Simply to find the best of the best as soon as they hit the store. A fine balance has to be struck between presentation, quality control, and design excellence. Wordans truly know what their people want and they ensure they’re never swamped in a labyrinthian search and browse system of tags and keywords, search terms and subjects in the process.

I’d rather they skipped the Flash-based designer and I’d love to see some larger design formats than the usual, how about some all over printing? I suppose you can’t have everything can you. Asides the rather slow Flash designer, Wordans is as tactile as virtual shopping can achieve (for now – unless they invent a holographic internet), and I personally feel they’re heading in the right direction. Like the most happening ghettos of the most style conscious cities across the world, the development of a style is organic, and evolution however haphazard is always more fun than the megalomania of a business creationist.

This is cute, very street art, and a nice simple idea, Design T-Shirt by Bendesign gets straight to the point and leaves behind the pretentiousness that could’ve have haunted this work. A cool free-flowing style tops off the crunchy iconography for a t-shirt with meat on its bones.

Kinda creepy I suppose but what a refreshing change from all those awfully glib slogan t-shirts, most slogans leave me cold, and sure IANAM does the same, but at least it does it for all the right reasons. With the world’s climate of paranoia and oncoming doom and gloom, I can see this being a hit with the more cynical fashionista looking to make an impact on the old men who run the game called society.

I seem to be picking out all the monotones at Wordans but I do like a wisecrack and this tops them all, New York Taxi is very tidy, quick to the point and rather amusing in it’s own strange little way. I must remember to get a flaming torch the next time I need to hail a cab there, maybe it would help who knows.

I’ve noticed quite a few by Kanari, one of the more popular designers at Wordans, check out these two, Gangster and Hip Hop Baby:-

So there you have it – a real quality act all round – I really like the way that Wordans.com obviously appreciates its designers, they offer a decent subdomain for each store, and by the looks of it plenty of opportunity for designers to customise their own little corner of the web, and Wordans definitely know how to sort the wheat from the chaff. If you’re sick of ‘I Love Some City Or Other’ tees, and flags and hearts and all the usual gumpf then you should really check out Wordans, they are already breaking the mould, one to look out for at the very least.

If you enjoyed this article please consider sharing it!