Fontastic T-Shirts at Type Tees?

Threadless.com have spread their wings, expanded their empire, and generally made their next play for dominion over the t-shirt market with their latest venture TypeTees.com (along side The Select Series and Threadless Kids – yes yes I will get around to them one day). I have to admit I’ve been holding back on this review, the fact is I’ve had some crummy experiences in the past with Threadless, it’s quite a brutal place if you’re thinking of submitting a design, I’ve seen some rather similar ones to my own scrape through when mine have hardly made it past the first stage.

What’s more a lot of their best artists have naturally come to the conclusion that if their work is making enough sales to support the staff and directors of a multi-million dollar operation why not set out on their own? Plenty have, plenty more have been ‘poached’ by the competition and literally treated like artistic royalty, sure they’re not exactly riding around in limos (yet) but those with the business savvy to make the grade have managed to get a far fairer slice of the pie when it comes to profits.

The fact is that for most of us humble designers it’s more a case of who you know (and how many) rather than what you do. It’s become a numbers game and that’s no surprise considering the size of the operation. If you have an army of friends and fans on Twitter or Facebook you might just make the grade – I mean – you’ll still need to create something stunning but a legion bigging you up will always start a wave of positivity given the right conditions. Timing, markets, originality, it all comes into play… but this isn’t another griping review of Threadless, it’s a feature on Type Tees, and seeing as the ballpark is wide open on this one, if you have a flair for one-liners you might just be in with a chance at this still relatively early stage of the game. You don’t need to be a typgraphic expert, you don’t need to be able to draw, you just need to make wise cracks until the sun goes down and all will be well with you and the world of Type Tees!

So, the other reason I’ve been slow off the mark is that text t-shirts aren’t really my favourite things in the world, perhaps it’s trauma brought on by a branding burn out, at school and college so many kids wore Nike and Adidas that if an alien had landed and walked in the canteen they’d have assumed all our parents had very little imagination and called us all by the same names. But these aren’t sports brands, these are, for the main part, jokes. There’s the other problem, once you know it you don’t usually want to hear the same joke twice – unless you didn’t get it the first time – but hey some people like to make strangers laugh, so who am I to get in the way of a few anonymous chuckles? No one, just a miserable git with a graphic t-shirt fetish that’s all.

Moving briskly along here’s the low down if you have a joke burning in the back of your mind and you fancy making a few spare bucks. A very healthy $500 in fact, not bad if you’re a pub bore with a few hundred corny jibes you can knock out – one of them is bound to grab some attention. Okay that’s unfair but when I think of all the worst t-shirts I’ve ever seen they’re nine out of ten times a dodgy joke like “I’m With Stupid”, the only idea I’ve ever had for a slogan tee was way back when fashion casualties were wearing big bold lettered print tees with the words “Rave On” in the UK – we are going way back here. I was s**tfaced with a mate at an illegal rave in South London when two of them walked through the door with red faces, soaking in sweat, necking vodka and cokes at the bar like it was free – anyway I made a joke that the tees should have said “Brave On’. Cruel I know, but I doubt they’d have preferred my alternative anyway.

So to cut a long story short – let’s see if we can have a larf at Type Tees :p

Don’t expect my usual in depth quality review, I mean, they’re one-liners, cue the drum roll, and no booing at the back okay?

I Supplement My Personality With Witty Shirts Tee

Kinda says it all really – this should be Type Tees motto as far as I am concerned. It’s probably one of the more funny – I started writing this review yesterday and then was rather waylaid by other committments – when I returned I immediately noticed my original chuckle had reduced to a smirk. I suppose there are people out there who love to tell the same joke everyday, if you meet a lot of new people all the time you too can be known as the guy that Supplements Your Personality With Witty Shirts ( or rather the lack thereof).

The Internet Was Closed So I thought I’d Come Outside Tee

Haw haw haw. Type Tees is like that old bloke at the office or the local pub, the one who knows a million one-liners, none of which are particularly funny. “Knock Knock” “Who’s There?” “Type Tees” “Sheesh Don’t You Know When To Stop?” I can imagine walking into TT’s HQ and being greeted by this guy…

Here’s Colin ‘Type Tees’ Hunt in action…

The Internet Was Closed Tee is the sort of t-shirt Colin would love I’m sure. There are plenty more bad jokes including:-

My Other T-Shirt Is A Hoodie, My Wife’s So Fat She Uses This T-Shirt As A G-String, I’ve Lost The Famous Brand Label But This Tee Cost A Fortune Honest and the classic I Couldn’t Make It At Threadless And So I Submitted This To Type Tees. Sure I made those up (submit them if you like) but I’m just making a point here, dumb jokes doth make a great t-shirt, not.

Type Tees is the fashion equivalent of The Piano Keyboard Tie, there’s no two ways around it, if you wear one of them you might as well get a foam hammer, a hat made from nachos and a squirting plastic flower for the lapel of your clown suit whilst you are at it. The Internet Was Closed – the ultimate dufus tee.

I hunted around for more ‘hilarious’ shirts and found these two.

Drop It Like You’re Clumsy Tee

Drop It Like You’re Clumsy Tee – Seeing as it’s only $9 I can’t be too harsh on this one, cute custom font and a nice twist on a rather corny ghetto girl saying, still I don’t know how many hot hip hop babes would want to wear it, more likely clumsy people with an inferiority complex, let’s just hope they don’t do anything vital in society like manage health and safety in a nuclear power plant. Doh!

Death Tee

This is as near as you’re going to get to the t-shirt version of Bill Hicks at Type Tees, it’s funny, dark, sombre, pensive, thoughtful, well at least it’s black so not too many will notice you’re trying to be funny. Death – our nation’s number one killer tee says it all really, we’re all gonna die so we may as well have a laugh. I like a laugh, I do, honestly, I just like a good reason to do it. By the way does this only apply to America? Then I’m looking forward to immortality over here in the UK.

If Type Tees was a charity site then I’d be behind them all the way, it’d be a great way of pulling in donations and lightening the mood on some of the darker aspects of society and life in general. But it’s not, but at least it’s cheap tees start from $9 up to $15. If you really want a laugh try T-Shirt Hell.