Banksy Sculpture Vandalised by Spunky Tees Fan

admin    T-Shirt News     Banksy, T-Shirts, sale, spunky

You may or may not know that Banksy recently “took over” the Bristol Museum in the UK (I’m sure they welcomed him with open arms). Anyway Spunky T-Shirts have posted a rather amusing photo that one of their fans has sent in. It seems their fans are getting everywhere these days. For all those who (wrongly) argue that street art is merely vandalism, here’s an example of counter-insurgency in the graffiti scene to back up your view. Take a closer look, yes that’s a Spunky sticker, fame at last!

Anyway whilst I’m at it Spunky’s legendary sale is still on so hop over there now and take a lookie ;)

The Art Of Politics At RetroCampaigns.com

admin    T-Shirt News     JFK, democrat, political t-shirts, presidential, presidents, republican, retro campaigns, retrocampaigns.com

Re-imagined, digitally aged, and carefully printed on vintage-style fabric Retro Campaigns have just released another batch of past presidential campaigns for the politically nostalgic t-shirt fan. Expect more familiar names from the American role call of leaders, the good, the bad and the ugly are all present to swear their oath of allegiance to kitsch fashion on a monumental scale. Look out for new tees featuring landmark characters of the political landscape such as JFK, Bobby Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, as well as less well known campaigners such as Barry Goldwater and Adlai Stevenson.

It must say something about our present culture when politics of a bye-gone era can warm our hearts and bring a smile to our faces. Perhaps it’s simply because there was a distinct lack of marketing savvy, image branding was something you did to a cow’s rear end, and a spin doctor was more likely busy selling phony medicines and potions from the back of a car in a one-horse town than teaching the future leader of the country how to effectively ‘bend the truth’ to his own advantage. Don’t get me wrong, politicians were always crooked, in fact I prefer the ones who lie about who they bedded and where than those who decide to lead a country up the garden path without a by nor leave, ending their term halfway through a bloody war, recession, political cover-up, or a rather brutal combination of all three.

The truth is no one person is in charge these days, besides the fact we live and die to serve a so-called global market, hence the constant hand-shaking and brow furrowing of just about every leader in the world, but beyond that it’s the corporate world, or rather the few that own the lion share of the remaining profitable corporations in the world. They call the shots. The president of the USA, no matter what his or her name or colour of their skin, and every other president and prime-minister of the democratic world serve the money men, and charge us for the privilege. If there’s money to made then some faceless billionaire or other is sure to back a political (marketing) campaign to the hilt, but always under certain conditions, be it corporate taxes, citizenship, or turning a blind eye to environmental damage, for instance. Still, we always have the soft focus of rose-tinted nostalgia to help us take our minds off the state of the world today, so let’s take a dip back into the corny campaigns of presidents past, and smile at the naivet√© of what was once considered state-of-the-art political coercion. read more

Full Tilteed

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     Threadless, designer tees, t-shirt business, t-shirt competition, t-shirt contest, t-shirt prize, tilteed, tilteed.com, win money, win t-shirts

Everyone in the t-shirt blog community is writing about Tilteed.com – another t-shirt vote community but with one vital difference, well actually quite a few. First off “wow”, I mean $5000 in prizes for the launch? That’s $5000 in total for the two winning designs ($3500 for the grand prize winning design, $1500 for the runner up). That is some serious commitment on Tilteed’s side, if you’re a great t-shirt designer, and I mean you’ll have to be the best of the best, then I’d recommend you sign up and upload your finest tee designs now (the winner will be announced on the 29th July) or be prepared to miss out on one hefty prize. It’s about as near to instant fame, glory and wealth that any t-shirt designer can hope for, more than any of the competition, including the behemoth of t-shirt voting sites Threadless.com. If you want a head-start make sure to download their submission kit too.

Patrick from Tilteed contacted us at Buy Tees today and apart from seeming to be one of the nicest guys in the industry he revealed a few more interesting details, it seems he used dabble in t-shirt blogging himself but couldn’t ‘keep up’ with myself and Andy from HideYourArms.com – another great t-shirt reviews blog if you’re desperate for more tee news! What’s more it looks like big things are planned for Tilteed, once they’ve launched they’ll be printing a new t-shirt every 72 hours and paying the artists $500 plus $1 per shirt sold – which should definitely keep the designers coming back for more and judging by the incredible quality of many of their submissions that goes for the customers too. Tilteed aren’t taking any chances when it comes to gaining custom either, just take a look at what they’re offering as prizes just for voting!

The more votes you submit the more chances you have of winning one of the following:-

Members Grand Prize: A choice of one of the following gaming consoles – PlayStation 3 80GB Console or an XBox 360 120 GB Elite Package (which includes Halo 3 and Fable 2) or a Nintendo Wii 2 Player HD Sports Bundle. Plus free t-shirts for a year which clocks up to grand haul of 26 tees in total!

Second Place Prize: Free tees for a year.

Runner Up Prize: Five tees of your choosing.

I only have praise for Tilteed, I love the logo, the layout is clean and fresh, the traffic is already rolling in from plenty of sources including Facebook and Twitter, the designs are superb, and the blog is extremely informative – they even have a forum! But let’s get down to business and check out some of their superb t-shirts, if you want to buy any of these you will need to get voting now! read more

In-House Humour From Collapse Design

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     collapse design, collapsedesign.co.uk, designer, designer tees, font, font t-shirts, text shirts, text tees, typography

Those in the graphic design trade have little to laugh about these days, clients want more and more yet want to pay less and less. In fact many of them think they can do a fine job on their own and end up making a mess of everything from company brochures to website design, but what can you do? Well if humour is still the best medicine then maybe you should try shopping around at the Collapse Design, they offer a fine range of design trade tees, every one of which has a proverbial tongue-in-cheek approach to the labour of love that is graphic arts.

British t-shirt label Collapse Design have a particular penchant for typographic jokes, well known typefaces such as Helvetica and Garamond get the full comedy treatment as this band of merry designers work their magic on familiar tools of the trade, as well as a few deft references to some of the more stressful aspects of the job. ‘Deadline’ features a zombie, ‘Helvetica’ is transformed into a creature of the feline persuasion and ‘Full Bleed’ gets the film-noir/Hitchcock treatment. If you’re sitting in your studio, or perhaps a small grey partitioned area of one right now, then you can probably do with some cheering up. So before you eventually go blind or watch your hands fall off from the worst case of RSI ever recorded, treat yourself to a laugh and roll on over to www.collapse-design.co.uk. Even designers need cheering up once in a while;) read more

A Kindred Spirit at Kindred Market

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     kindred market, kindredmarket.com, sell your own tees, set up t-shirt brand, t-shirt business, t-shirt start-up

Now, I get a lot of submissions here at Buy Tees from Cafepress and Spreadshirt designers and time and again I explain to them that one of the major reasons I won’t review them is that I don’t see the point of passing on kudos and PR if it simply goes down the drain of a corporate behemoth with a marketing budget that could feed a small country. Besides any company as big as say Zazzle doesn’t really give a damn if you make money as a t-shirt designer, all they want are premium store fees and more and more online traffic. The usual advice is to use a third-party merchant like Big Cartel and then print your own or use someone local. But, and here’s the biggest but I’ve seen in a while, I did come across another alternative recently, KindredMarket.com, at first I guessed their site was simply feeding the general public the usual hype, but I’ve been studying Kindred Market in a little more detail recently and I have to admit I am impressed – and here’s why.

They offer a top-notch service for beginners at the t-shirt business, they don’t drop any of the usual bombshells on you that their competitors like to do so often, right now they have just 17 brands on their books. Yes ‘brands’ – they treat each designer as a brand, just the way it should be, and I’m not sure how the application process is carried out because as far as I can tell they have a handful of superb designers on the site. (and then some not so good ;) My problem with most services of this kind is that they seem to go more for quantity over quality, some like Spreadshirt have almost abandoned the idea of supporting their creative users and simply offer a D.I.Y application for any idiot strolling by. KM seem, at least on the surface, to be pulling out all the stops in order to build up their reputation in the t-shirt industry as a truly high quality print to order t-shirt company. In fact even if you have your own stock they’ll still help you sell your wares.

Here’s a breakdown of their profit-sharing scheme:-

* If they sell one of your t-shirts at their online store you receive 32% of the income. The rest goes to cover their costs such as stock, printing, site administration and advertising.
* If they sell your brand to a boutique (shop with less than 10 stores) you receive 16% of the sale before shipping costs.
* If they sell your brand to a Medium sized Retailer (has more than 20 stores) you receive 8% of the gross sale before shipping costs.
* If they sell your brand to a Mass Retailer (has more than 200 stores) you receive 4% of the gross sale before shipping costs.
* If you’ve printed your own stuff they take a 30% commission excluding shipping and taxes (Which will be your responsibility).
*What’s more they also offer to sell your artwork at a 10% commission, plus 3% Paypal costs.

Unlike many similar companies out there they let you keep full rights to your designs which will come as a big relief to many of you I am sure. If you decide to deactivate your account they will have 60 days to fulfil any outstanding orders and then you’re free to hit out on your own. I must admit I am a little disappointed with the URL structure, if these are truly brands I’d have expected sub-domains at the very least, but that asides I doubt you’ll find a company that will go this far to placate their designers. Oh actually one more problem, a small technical error I am sure, when you select how many brands you want to see per page you get a line of PHP output, one for the programmer to take a look at there.

KM’s site is well designed, comical, humorous, quirky but clean. They even feature a brand every week at the top of their homepage, you can vote on their brands too if you need a ‘Threadless fix’. To make it real easy to get started you can read their short tutorial here. Now here’s the most important point, I get quite a few emails asking about alternatives to the usual range of high-priced graphics software packages out there, well KM have taken care of that for you too. They offer all their brands free usage of their online Phoenix image editor from Aviary.com which more than passes most people’s requirements. Imagine Photoshop 7 but a little more user friendly. So if you’re desperate to start your own t-shirt brand, are not impressed by the major print to order labels out there, then I’d recommend you follow the lead of these featured brands and set up your own at Kindred Market today! read more

Against The Wave Tee

admin    T-Shirt News     Katsushika Hokusai, against the wave, springleap, surfer, the great wave

Springleap‘s latest winner is Cmatos – a talented girl from Brazil. She’s taken her influence for her design Against The Wave from the classic 1832 painting The Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai. This iconic image has had a few appearances in the t-shirt world. Even I’ve had a stab at it myself in the past, but let’s start of with Against The Wave and take it from there!

Beautifully illustrated, this adaptation of Kanagawa’s painting is one of the best t-shirt transitions I’ve come across so far. The detailing is excellent and it’s sure to sell well. You can get it yourself today for R183/$19/‚Ǩ15/£12 in 5 colours and s/m/l for women and s to xxl for men. Cmatos’ interpretation reads as follows “Man against the power of nature. The power of nature within the man. When next I have seen the sea will the sea have seen me, he pondered.” read more

Win A Free Finroo Tee

admin    T-Shirt News     Finroo, Finroo.com, free t-shirt, t-shirt community, win a free t-shirt, win a free tee

I’ve been chatting to the extremely friendly people behind Finroo.com and just to let you know they have something very big planned, for now I’ll keep you in suspense but if you want to stay up-to-date with all the goings on at this fun and frolicking t-shirt community make sure you sign up to their monthly newsletter. What’s more if you do you will automatically be entered into their draw for a free tee, so I am sure many of you will be heading over there and taking a dip at Finroo!

Whilst you’re there make sure to check out their latest featured artist, Jason Scuderi has an off the wall style, something reminiscent of Dutch graffiti, kooky, strange and yet still iconic with a small ‘i’. I particularly like these two tees which offer something of a subversive slant on the usual bright and colourful designs of their ilk. read more

Two New Tees From Hideout

admin    T-Shirt News     BMX, British Design, Enter The Tree House, Hideout, Hideout Tees, skater, sports t-shirts

Hideout T-Shirts have just released two new designs, you may recognise the name from our previous review at http://buy-tees.net/2009/03/freestyling-with-hideout-tees. They’re a British label famed amongst the BMX community for both their unique style and extensive sponsorship of the sport. They even make their own BMX videos!

Anyway the two new designs by Tash Walkerdine and Jon Moon, two of the three designers in the partnership. Both tees are available for £12 each and are already proving to be strong sellers in the line. Due to their rather snazzy Flash site I can’t link directly to their products, but you should have fun perusing through their deck of ‘t-shirt cards’ nonetheless ;) read more

Movie Tees For The Movie Buff

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     arcane projects, arcaneprojects.com, band shirts, film tees, movie t-shirts, movie tees, music tees

Arcane Projects offer a wide range of movie t-shirts, we’ve reviewed quite a few similar stores now however I have to admit that there are two things that stand out about this label over the competition. Firstly their choice in film is a little bit more esoteric, not obscure as such, but you will really need to know your celluloid with some of their t-shirts. Secondly they offer a unique sideline, something I haven’t seen at their competitors and that is a custom movie t-shirt service. In essence you name your favourite flick and they design a t-shirt that will allude to a detail of the plot, sometimes one that only those who can really call themselves ‘fans’ might recognise.

You will of course find all your old favourites a Arcane, including Terminator (1 & 2), The Shining, Fight Club and Aliens, but there are a few titles on offer that may come as a surprise. The eighties sci-fi classic The Running Man, an adaptation of a Stephen King short story written in 1982 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, and Point Break, an early role for Keanu Reeves way before he found his place in movie history as Neo in The Matrix. However as I’ve already mentioned there’s nothing stopping you ordering your own custom movie tee, there are so many films out there that deserve this unique treatment, it would be great to see even more obscure movies get the ‘tee treatment’. As it happens I have THX1138 on the screen right now, the first and probably least well known George Lucas movie ever made, now that’s what I mean by obscure! Here are a few of my favourite t-shirts that have had the Arcane Project’s highly original going over, grab some popcorn, a giant cup of watery Coke, and kick back as we go to the movies… read more

A Hangover Cure From Xenotees

admin    T-Shirt News     Etsy, Handmade tees, Xenotees.com, cool tees, designer t-shirts, xenotees

Buy Tees are Xenotees firm fans (aren’t we all?). They have a devoted following which we soon found out about when we first reviewed them in The Strangely Exotic Mind Of Xenotees. Their appeal is both quirky and alluring, their approach experimental, and their products top-notch. So of course we delighted to hear from Noelle the creative wizard behind the label who told us she was taking up the gauntlet and extending her range of silhouette shirts with her latest creation entitled ‘Too Much Party’. Not so abstract as her some of previous incarnations but definitely geared to a wider market!

Too Much Party T-Shirt

Guaranteed for a laugh (even if you are suffering the effects of a wild night out), the print features an official vintage Pabst bottle opener with a bunch of newbie bottle caps! Too Much Party is currently available in three colours (Slate, Cranberry Red and ladies versions in Heather Grey and Kelly Green) and plenty of different sizes but as usual stocks are limited so if you’re planning to use and wear one of these tees to full effect, take some Alka-Seltzer and rush on over there before they’re all snapped up!

We’re off to London for the weekend to do much the same thing, get hammered that is, so see you all Monday and have fun!