Urban Tees At Affordable Prices

admin    T-Shirt News     AUC, Got Boots, Paul Wall, affordable urban clothing, affordableurbanclothing.com, urban fashion, urban t-shirts, urban tees

Now, AUC otherwise known as Affordable Urban Clothing have a strong line of t-shirt designs, and even a thumbs up from U.S rapper Paul Wall aka People’s Champ. Their site is a little bit ropey, using two Paypal buttons instead of a real checkout system, which I’d always advise against. The prices aren’t the lowest I’ve ever seen, nor the most expensive, but you’ll have to click a product photo to find them. If I ran AUC I’d fire their web designer, get a decent cart, pay for some ssl hosting and use a snazzy template with a custom header to brand the store. That asides, and I mean this is what the t-shirt industry all boils down, they do have a couple of decent designs under their belt, there’s no denying that.

AUC seems to have a fixation with killer clowns, I mean the sort you’d find in a schlock horror rather than ‘killer’ as in the coolest clowns on the block. There aren’t too many designs on offer right now, and asides the clowns and undead clowns there’s a dinosaur, a superhero and a ninja. I think AUC needs to do one of two things with their creative collection, either narrow down their subject matter, or blast it wide open. I can understand them not wanting to follow the herd and produce the usual urban designs everyone else does, but I don’t think they’ve quite nailed what they’re all about at AUC, or not just yet anyway.

I feel like their aiming for something between childhood cartoon nostalgia, and the grim reality or rather horror of life on the street, in a city, trying to make the grade, to earn a little respect. Not sure if it works. The actual brand of AUC’s tees is ‘Got Boots?’ – they’ve used a rather generic font for the logo, and it’s big, and it’s all over some of their t-shirts – which is rather regrettable. The story behind the label is, on the other hand, supremely uplifting. A story of one guy, Donnell Love, and his aim to reach out to the masses of Urban America through fashion whilst serving a charitable foundation SMIP ‚ÄúSingle Mothers In Peril‚Äù. 10% of proceeds from the sale of Affordable Urban Clothing goes to SMIP which is “committed to improving the lives of single mothers and their families by helping them overcome the polarizing issues in single parent homes.”

Where worthy causes are concerned it’s difficult not to simply shower AUC with praise, their t-shirts do have potential, but no matter what my personal feelings, that store really needs redesigning. Anyway forget the store design for a moment and check these tees…

Evil Clown Tee

So, on the site they describe this one as ‘Best Friend Tee’ yet the photo reads ‘Evil Clown’ which makes far more sense, so excusing the inexcusable of incorrectly titling products (no matter what they are) this is actually a damn fine design. In fact it’s probably my favourite on the site, I was never scared of clowns, in fact I thought they were usually rather pathetic as a kid, actually you can add magicians and puppet shows to that list. But nevertheless a lot of people around the world are terrified of them, there’s plenty of capital for evil clowns in the horror genre, go rent Killer Clowns From Outer Space if you want an idea of the humour they bestow upon the imagination of many b-movie film makers out there. Well drawn, good range of colour, strong composition, weird. I wouldn’t wear it but I’d be impressed if I saw this one on a passer-by. I’m glad they ommitted the branding on this design too. Not exactly urban as far as I can tell, but cool, available for women and men (titled ‘Gotcha Skull Tee’ in their men’s section?) at $19 in all colours (not sure what ones though as they’ve omitted that detail too.)

Tye Dye Bro Tee

Only available for women (although there is a ‘Splatter’ version for men), I rather like Tye Dye Bro, it’s simple, it’s effective, and it combines a few of their ongoing ideas, urban life, clowns, and skulls in one fowl swoop. The colours are strong, but I can’t tell what’s going on at the bottom of the design, but whatever it is I’d remove it, it’s just a distraction from the main image. The face/skull could do with a little tweaking too. $19 in all colours.

To be honest I’m not that keen on the rest. The illustration for many needs to be improved, I have a sneaking suspicion that they’re going over board on their Adobe Illustrator ‘auto trace’ function to make up the seperations for print. What’s more I can’t get over the low quality of the site, it must be one of the worst store designs I’ve come across. I’d dump quite a few of their designs too, and not offer alternative versions of those that work. One design is placed on a striped box background, that’s painful to look at, others end abruptly, either the drawing or the print just couldn’t stretch that far. I like the idea of their Graffiti Fusion tee but using the same skull again and again is tiresome. I’d recommend AUC going back to the drawing board, really studying what they’re after, and perfect it. Then again that’s just my personal opinion, you judge for yourself at www.affordableurbanclothing.com.

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