T-Shirt Mash Ups @ Nonsek

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     Ames Bros., Nonsek, limited edition t-shirt, nonsek machine, nonsek.com, remixing t-shirts, t-shirt design, t-shirt wysiwyg, unique tees

Life is getting more interactive every day, more and more companies are fighting hard to allay the fears of the recession, offering customised and personalised products to relieve the consumer doldrums. You name it someone somewhere can offer you that something little extra, gold plated and monogrammed iPods, pick your own toppings and sauces at a string of high street restaurants, cars with all the accessories and upgrades imaginable, if you can buy it, someone is selling a better version out there.

The t-shirt industry has gone through a similar reinvention over the last decade, with more and more people adept at graphic design, mainly down to advances in all sorts of software, sites like Cafepress and Spreadshirt have turned their attention to personalised tees. Essentially giving you a chance to upload your own images to almost anything, be it tees, sweats, hoodies, even cups and mouse-mats. But there’s a problem, rather a big problem in fact, and that is that the vast majority of people out there neither have the inclination or the time to both create and design their own t-shirts, they’d like to have some input, mixing like a DJ, rather than performing like a singer-songwriter. The truth is most people want to have a little fun, experience a more entertaining shopping experience, and as a result create and buy an original shirt they’d be proud to wear. Not spend hours on end scribbling out their ideas and hoping for the best.

This third way, an interactive t-shirt design and shopping experience without the tedium of using graphic design software, which is on offer at Nonsek.com. Their unique service, and I mean, there really is no other like it out there right now, draws on a vast resource of great t-shirt ideas, art by artists with a true sense of imagination, and lets you mix them up, again and again if needed, until you’ve created the perfect tee for that gig, club, vacation or simply to lounge around and impress the other half.

Nonsek offers a very simple navigational system, there’s a choice of artist channels, or for the more adventurous the Nonsek Machine which in essence remixes your favourite designs and artists into something truly special. This site offers a great opportunity for both t-shirt artists and fans to really have some fun, and don’t worry, you won’t be trawling through pages of junk (as you might at say Cafepress) to find something you like!

Instead of the usual Buy Tees review, I’m going to show you through the process of remixing your own tee at Nonsek, let’s get mashing!

You can do this in two ways, either get cracking straight away at the Nonsek Machine, or choose one of your favourite artists and then start to remix the tee. I’ll be using the second method and will choose Jay Vollmar‘s designs as a starting point.

I rather came up with a stylish take on a ‘I’m with stupid’ tee as follows:-

Not sure if this was entirely successful, so let’s have a go with another artist Charles Wilkin using the design ‘Automatic I Am’ as the base.

After clicking the remix button a few times I mixed up a new version:-

This is a rather more exciting design, I found it a little frustrating that I couldn’t change the scale and placement of each icon. It appears that Nonsek work upon a limited printing space which is a shame, all-over printing would really suit their ethos. However I like the look of my personal remix of the Automatic I Am tee, there are a limited range of t-shirt colours on offer, including white, heather grey, smoke, frost pink, amongst others. No true black and most of the shades seem rather on the pastel side. Still this particular design looks cool enough in oatmeal. I’d advise a stronger selection of bolder colours and a better selection tool, not only do the colour changes take ages, it looks as if they are using a filter which in turn affects the colour of the print in any preview image. Still not bad.

This t-shirt would set you back $20 plus shipping, if you sign up up for a free account you get the chance to save your designs for a later date too.

So as explained before there’s another option, diving straight into the Nonsek Machine which essentially means you can flick through all the artists a lot quicker, I don’t see the option to mix up different artists, which I guess is down to the problem of paying their designers. If you mix up more than one designer, who gets paid?

Anyway, here’s a few more mixes I liked…

Nonsek’s mix technology has its limitations, placement, colours, sizes, and their range of tees could be better, but the fundamentals are sound. They have some brilliant artists on their books including Ames Brothers and the site is easy to use. The fact that you can buy a t-shirt that few if anyone else has got is a great bonus. Have some fun for yourself I try a remix at www.Nonsek.com. You also might want to hear all the latest at their blog too!

http://nonsek.com/machine.php?channel=jv_rad180

http://nonsek.com/artistchannel.php/channel/jv_rad180/artist/jay-vollmar

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