“You guys have really pointed me in the right direction on some of your past reviews of t-shirt fulfilment sites but I can’t make heads or tails of this one.
Thanks, Steve C.“

Well our first criticism is that UST aren’t purely a t-shirt fulfilment site although thinking about it there are plenty of those out there already! What would make the site a far more attractive prospect for designers of all kinds is a clearly laid out categorised theme, some way for both producers and consumers to track down what they want without having to sift through heaps of handbags and shoes and beaded necklaces to find it.

I’m convinced the whole site is actually based on a WordPress blog, I even recognise the theme which funnily enough seems to disappear the moment you hit their store. Looking a little more closely I’d say they’d forgotten to add a background colour or a .png there, I can just about recognise the logo faintly through the glare of an expanse of white, and all in all I’m starting to suspect that the whole site is the work of a desperately underfunded amateur with ambitions beyond their budget. The store seems to be filled with lots of products entitled “Coming Soon” and priced at $0, if they maintain those prices I’m sure there will be a lot of demand :/

Anyway, next to their voting section at this incredibly disorientating fashion blog meets store which you can find here – if you check the correct boxes you’ll be able to miss out everything but the tees and focus purely on what matters – t-shirts! Well that’s the theory anyway, in practice they also bolt on a section for models (wearing t-shirts) which doesn’t really make much sense, I mean sure if you’re attractive enough and can’t think of anything better to do, go and wear clothes for a living, but to actually focus everyone’s attention on models rather than products seems rather ridiculous.

What’s more the images themselves automatically change every few seconds, and the transition effects are also extremely ditracting, i.e they scroll up and down, disappear and are replaced by a new set. I’ve actually had to stop this review to get myself a headache pill, not the most auspicious of returns for a t-shirt blogger I know, but there’s only so much bad website layout and design I can take in one session.

When you see a t-shirt you like click it quickly or you’ll miss it, set yourself into “bad arcade game” mode and you’ll get the hang of it. If you like what you see you can vote or click for more items by the designer. So finally I found some t-shirts and as it turns out they’re not too bad! Here’s a few for your perusal…

Tora‘s portfolio is available at http://ustrendy.com/tora/portfolio/2541/tora/ – she creates rather cute t-shirt designs, a little bit girlie for most people’s tastes (even girls) but Chris badgered me to include these so take a look at her funky alien design. UStrendy have included a mini-blog for each designer which makes this overly-graphic fulfilment site a little more user-friendly, still take a look at these.

What’s most annoying about some of the designer galleries is that they insist on folding the t-shirts in half, so you can’t really get a good look at what’s on offer. Furthermore if there are no close-up images of each design it’s even more irritating. Still a very cute design from Tora.

Now things get even more confusing, I spotted a few extremely recognisable designs and at first thought – hey someone out there is ripping off Linty Fresh! Then I realised that the designer Gameyy IS Linty Fresh! So What’s going on here, is this simply a showcase site for other designers, if so then why is there a store? UStrendy needs to get their act together and decide what they want to be. Besides the confusing layout, the overbearing graphic-laden layout and the miserably small product detail images, UST have to narrow down their ambitions. If you want to be a model join a modelling site or even a “hot or not” blog will give you some idea. It’s bad enough that the mainstream corporate fulfilment sites offer printed mugs and mousemats and large scale printed artwork without UST adding to the confusion. Anyway here’s Gamey’s portfolio – http://ustrendy.com/gameyy/portfolio/3780/linty-fresh-tshirts/

This whole site needs a rethink or at least an alternative low-res layout, how about a nice simple list of all the designers for a start? Perhaps an option to avoid the graphics effects and simply lay out what you want when you want it. I would usually sign up with most sites I review to test out every aspect of their functionailty and service but this migraine is killing my will to get any more involved than I have to so onto another designer.

Black Sea has some very cool designs on offer, they’re real t-shirt store is at http://www.blackseaapparel.com but as the dutiful reviewer I am I will stay focused on the conceptual monstrosity that is UStrendy – perhaps the least user-friendly fulfilment site in history. Anyway here’s some of Black Sea’s fantastic designs at their UST portfolio – http://ustrendy.com/black-sea/portfolio/898/black-sea/

If I ran UStrendy I’d have a major rethink about what I want the site to do, if there’s a store then why isn’t it filled with rated tees and other fashion items? If not then why have it at all? I’ve found at least a few t-shirt designers who already have their own store so I’m guessing that UST’s main objective is more concerned with raising the profile of undiscovered designers, and if that’s the case what’s with all the models? Do they really need to clutter up every page with everything they can get their hands on? Even the search function has its faults, if I search for men’s t-shirts, why am I presented with Mens and Womens tees and models? This whole experience as welcome as a hole in the head. There are some good designers if you can find them and don’t mind wading through a sea of extraneous graphics. It could be worth promoting your t-shirts here, but only if you have your own store because as far as I can tell UST are either still in the early stages of development or never intend to join up all the dots and essentially offer a real fulfilment service.

I can understand Steve’s confusion now, UST appears at first glance to be a fulfilment site, bolted on to a fashion community, with its own store ready and waiting to sell items rated by the public. But once you struggle to wade through the site for a while you realise the whole thing lies disconnected and for the most part for the sake of appearances only. Let’s hope they clean up the design, remove the graphics, standardise the layouts, offer real fulfilment services for every designer and weed out each section to its own subdomain. How about Tshirts.Ustrendy.com? That would work rather well I think.

If you still want to you can sign up with the site as a fan, fashion designer, model or artist?

Enrique Flores, one of the people behind the Nonoloa label directed me towards Issuu.com which reveals more of the story and concept behind this avant-garde collective. Essentially they are as international as you can hope to find, their artists hark from every corner of the globe, ranging from as far and wide as Spain, the United Kingdom, Lebanon and even Tehran. I was astounded that a label could source so diverse a community of artists, each with their own pertinent input, both visually and conceptually, towards the Nonoloa platform. Incidentally some of their artists have even exhibited at the famed Tate Modern Gallery in Britain. You can see their works at Tate.org.uk.

Nonoloa have a fascinating history too! In April 2004 a friend F√©lix moved to the coast to open a t-shirt store, Juanjo Barreda, a designer offered to help with the first collection, however it came to nothing. By 2005 Juanjo decided to take a chance on his own with the directive of producing something more resonant than a mere graphic pasted on a t-shirt, as a form of self-inspiration and discipline he formed the name ‘Nonoloa’. Combining the Aboriginal word ‘Mauna Loa’ meaning ‘big mountain’ or volcano. To soften its effect, he combined it with a childhood word repeated to help him sleep ‘Nono’. The two merged and created the name ‘Nonoloa’. For the next few years he struggled to sell t-shirts wherever he could, even sidling up to stalls full of ‘colourful pills’ at music festivals across Europe. Soon he had his own website, researched more advanced printing techniques, soon tired of working alone he redesigned the website and formed a new arts collective to further enhance his vision of style manifest, and the rest is history.

The whole site is written in Spanish, English and I believe Japanese (I’m not too au fait with the latter), to further imbue the international feeling of the site and label. I’ll feature a t-shirt by each artist in residence just to give you a feel of exactly what they do at Nonoloa.

This the Ipunx T-Shirt at Nonoloa (available in four colours), power-packed with attitude, very punchy, very in ya face! If you want to know more about Ipunx, who as far as I can tell live in secret residence somewhere in Hackney, then check out their website at Ipunx.com – they’re actually an illegal ‘mash-up’ duo who have done some fantastic remixes in the past – care to listen to their mash-up of the venerable Beastie Boys’ track Love and Hate? I think it’ll explain exactly how they came to create their unique t-shirt style. There’s plenty more available including an incredible mix of Roxanne by The Police and My Sharona by The Knack – see the video here. They also sell it all on vinyl here. These guys have restored my faith in mix tracks, they mash-up about five to six tracks at a time on a bunch of old PC’s, they rock!

The next tee was created by Gee.Oh.Dee (a.k.a Pablo & Javier) and is available in grey and light blue at Nonoloa.

This is a very cool abstract shirt with just a hint of fifties paranoia meets eighties iconic i-D Magazine about it, very nice composition, kind of old school Francais, but I love that whole eclectic style, as you’ve guessed by now. Check out more of Gee’s work at Geeohdee.com designer’s blog and Beliomagazine.com.

Carp remains the best selling shirt at Nonoloa, the design is even incorporated in the website design.

An absolutely beautifully illustrated Ancient Eastern design, I can understand why this would be the favourite at the store, and essentially it shows once again how diverse the offerings at Nonoloa. It’s been a privilege to review the site, an inspiring visit for anyone who wishes to witness the elements of design, form and function, and the collective nature of the artist’s world at it’s best.

MOMA even bought a few of his toys in 2007, and almost all the designers who’ve ever worked with him have gone on to fame and fortune in their own right, Budnitz is a magnet for publicity, style, cool kids and kudos. The t-shirt collection has built up quite nicely over the years and seeing as I found myself drooling over the designs there (once again) I thought I’d share a few of my favourites with you.

If you want any of these beware, apart from a few select stores and their own online shop you’ll have trouble tracking these down, besides which just about anything that leaves the KR stable ends up as a collector’s piece (some of his toys sell for up to $20,000 these days), so if you like it I’d nail it a.s.a.p.

Redrum by Frank Kozik, one of the least cute tees at KR, but just as confident in panache and flair, I love the splattered blood, fish guts never looked so appetising. If you’ve not heard of Kozik (where have you been?), he’s been credited with single-handedly reviving the medium of the concert poster. Originally from Spain he’s been praised for some of the coolest posters, album covers and flyers out there. Now based in California, he’s worked for years in the left field of the alternative music scene; designing for artists like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, Neil Young, Sonic Youth, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane’s Addiction, Ice T, George Clinton, Green Day, Beck, The Offspring, He’s cool, I promise you. Check out his incredible prints and look out for his Snorkin’ Labbits at KR. Anyway Redrum is most likely a reference to the classic horror movie ‘The Shining’ so you really can’t go wrong with this shirt!

Slick, slick, slick. So slick I’m slipping off the page. As a designer you know when you’ve got it just right and KR surely has with the Radial Halftone Tee. So Op Art, so Pop Art, so cool. I’ve seen a lot of abstract tees, and a whole heap of halftones but it takes a very big pair of designer cahunas to slap it down at this scale and let it stare at you, right in the face. It’s hitting me right between the eyes and I’m not spinning off in a bad acid flashback, he must be doing something right.

Here’s one more for the road, the Kidrobot Head Tee (Blue) for Women. You can get this in red too, and there’s a torso chunk version for the guys, I love it, very deco, very pre-Disney when toons were always scary and weird without meaning to be. All the essential design elements are there, a nod to Manga, the pie-dish eyes of yesteryear, and even a fin to keep it streamlined. But what’s best is the fact it’s not a piddling little graphic floating in the middle of a sea of blue cotton, KR really understands how much scale can top off a perfect design.

Check out all the tees, sweats, hoodies and of course some mad, mad toys at Kidrobot.com – go on have some fun!

First on offer is the ever popular “Lowercase” which is back in a new Black Version, for all those tempted by the dark side. The original white “Lowercase” has also been restocked in all sizes incase you’d rather come to the light…

They’re also releasing a brand new design “And Then I Woke Up” which plays off the classic ampersand shape with a twist of subliminal text. Printed on heather gray American Apparel Tri-blend shirt, this is definitely one of the most comfortable shirts monk has ever worn.

It’s a rare event to see new tees at Ugmonk.com so it’s well worth grabbing one now whilst they’re still available, if not you’ll have to pray for a miracle because who knows when Jeff will next reappear from his contemplator’s solace…

Design By Humans are an absolutely miraculous t-shirt design label, apart from the superb quality of t-shirt design available they have available there, the site, the format, the regularity of new and inspiring t shirt designs, and their honing of the Threadless method for selling t-shirts (to a far more select group of design geniuses who can really deliver), all amounts to one of the most pleasurable t-shirt shopping (or even browsing) experiences around. Here’s some proof to back up my point, enough said…

Once Upon a Time by CasJordi at Design By Humans – an incredibly elaborate and detailed surrealist dreamscape, I can see this artist doing very well indeed!

Country Club Nouveau by J3Concepts at Design By Humans is an old school/retro feast for the eyes! Again the detail of illustration is astounding, this designer obviously loves his vectors!

FlyCycle by Edelia at Design By Humans offers us a level of gruseome underground comic-style surrealism rarely seen on a t-shirt since the early 1970′s. I love the mosaic treatment of the fly’s eye in particular.

Bear Hug by JaynaJaynaJayna at Design By Humans is another highly popular tee, yet again surperbly executed, and Jayna has a miraculous eye/hand for complexed line drawing. Very apt title too!

GoodBye Old Friend by Sonmi at Design By Humans an excellent example of traditional 1930′s illustrative technique. The colours are perfect and the theme is particularly endearing.

Underwater Deer by FawnFruits at Design By Humans is another highy evocative t-shirt design, I do admit I love early retro advertising art, especially from the Art Deco period.

I’ve been impressed by the quality of designs at this site, perhaps even a little intimidated, however I’ve recently found out that they only accept .PNG and JPG format submissions, which leads me to believe their tees are printed using Direct to Garment machines, which means no vectors, something that can really slow down the design process for me. I couldn’t imagine anyone physically cutting out pieces of flock or screen printing at this level of detail! I’m going to try out a design on them and see what happens, hey maybe you could vote for mine (if it’s good enough!).

I’ll tell you where the beef is, it’s creeping up behind you and aiming to actually form a real network around you, before you’ve even had a chance to close that browser page. Exaggerations aside, I am in the midst of building a few more t-shirt-related sites to pique your interest and eventually trap you in my Axis of T-Shirts – where no t-shirt creative or fanatic may ever escape alive.

Two things before I continue, firstly I am in a silly mood, Friday evening (woot?), old habits do die but the urge to freak out and groove the weekend away always hits me hard by the Summer nights. Secondly, well secondly I really need to lay off the italics. You may be feeling a little dejected right now, no one likes a tease, you want pages of content here everyday, and why not, you deserve it, you managed to find my blog after all (which is no mean feat – come on hurry up SEO guy!) – Yes I have an SEO guy – I found him at DigitalPoint.com – if you’re anything or anywhere close to a Webmaster (is that word still around? Shouldn’t we all be playing Dungeons and Dragons then? I never have but I have been told it’s great – by the geekiest geeks who’ve never seen the light of day). So, SEO (Search Engine Optimization …ooh), not my thing but it must be done, if I ever expect anyone other than you and me, and the cats here to read this blog, and they only like the pictures. I need the blog ranked, but that will take time, in the meantime there’s a few tricks up my sleeve.

On my travels on the Net I’ve come across a few niche t-shirt areas that haven’t as yet been conquered by the likes of Cafe Press and SpreadShirt. Firstly there’s the deal about fuel, it’s getting more and more expensive every single day, I mean if I was rich I’d be betting on it rising further, but I’m not, because whenever I do have a chance to do something like that I start thinking, woah, this is kinda bad Karma! The Stock Market is just a betting shop anyway, it’s just their bets are so widely spread and the horses take so long to ride in that most laypeople become confused and eventually disinterested – I know it sounds Marxist – it probably is – but money really sucks – I wish there was some way we could all avoid it – but I’ve had that argument with too many people too many times to bother worrying now. It seems like we have to make it until the world’s run out of everything and there’s nothing left to buy – then perhaps I’ll get a few nods in my direction. Until then let’s get on with the dirty old man of culture, business…

So what and why am I setting up other sites, shouldn’t I focus purely on the blog for a few months? Well I’m sure there are experts who say I’m spreading myself too thin (on toast even) but in all honesty a blog gives some immediate impact for most ideas, products, people, as long as you have some good content and don’t fill it with Buy This or Sign Up to That! Sure I sneak in a few affiliate links here and there, I don’t try to hide them – I know you can with Javascript but what the hell, it’s hardly a pocketful of coins by the end of the year for most affiliates out there. Besides I don’t network, well not properly, I have a habit of keeping in contact with people I like rather than those that are useful but have infuriating personalities, or worse, none at all.

Essentially I need to pull everyone in and on board, I can’t make enemies, I can make friends, I can’t ‘do marketing’, but perhaps eventually I won’t need to worry about that part of the process, it’s all ground-up they say, they, those magnificent experts of every field imaginable, the one’s that write newsletters on the dot every week, some even write books about it, how boring. I wish I could love marketing, but deep down I hate it, and so do most people I like, it’s just an end-of-the-world thing I s’pose – I’m sure it will all blow over, we’ll be running cars off our own farts and eating from Star Trek Replicator booths, sure it will mainly taste like farts, but at least it will be free (as long as you serve the damn Federation). I wonder how many other easily distractable people are finding it more difficult (than usual) to concentrate on business at the moment? I had a dream, it’s kinda freaky, but character was so laboured I can’t get it out of my mind. I’m sitting at a desk and an old Don (I mean the Dreaming Spires kind not a Mafia boss) is pointing at four lines on a blackboard. Food War, Fuel War, Bio War, Earth War. Great, I’d prefer to think of it a flashback induced by too many repeats of awful 1980′s Sci-fi movies than portent and prophecy, I’m the sort who’d just sit down and close my eyes and hum if I knew the end was imminent (I mean 5 minutes imminent), I couldn’t manage it more than a short while before I’d get bored and want to get on with something more productive. Human nature is a funny old thing, stick with what you know, till the end, that’s evolution for you.

Back to the elusive point of this post, The Axis of T-Shirts will comprise of your beloved Buy Tees blog, and 2 more sites in the making…

TshirtPrinter.org is a t-shirt printers directory (pretty self-explanatory domain name there), as I may have explained before I’m aiming to offer free featured advertising to all Organic and Fair Trade t-shirt printers, so if you are one of the few, sign up here for a free upgrade, (yes that was marketing, did you see it?). My aim is twofold, firstly to encourage more people to use local t-shirt printers wherever possible, this should cut down on the industry’s carbon footprint enormously. I use Spread Shirt and Cafe Press amongst other sites and I’m going through a rather deep cycle of guilt at the moment. There I am putting my recycables in their correct bins and then the next moment I’m contributing to world pollution from the comfort of my own desk. So this is some small recompense to the world until I can get my junk together.

What’s more I’ll be featuring Fair Trade and Organic T-Shirt Printers for free, that should further redress the balance, and every t-shirt printer receives a free lifetime local listing anyway, so should be rather good Karma all round there. Eventually I’m hoping for an enormous database of t-shirt printing resources from around the world, (if I play my cards right). It should help my blog’s Google PR (although I’ve read that doesn’t mean much nowadays), furthermore I should make quite a few contacts in the organic/fair trade t-shirt field, (filled with flowers it is ;p), and then I have another domain name to help unify them, learn from them, join them myself. Sounds like a hippie version of The Borg, but don’t worry, it’s just an ethical co-operative of t-shirt printers around the world who’d like a little more exposure. If the traffic continues to improve here should be a year or so before the site is ready, OrganicTshirt.net.

In the meantime I have another mini-site in the making RateTshirts.net which is really just a little bit of fun. If you’re a t-shirt designer and you want some immediate feedback on your latest design, this site should be up and running in the next few weeks! It’ll be another “hot or not” t-shirt sites like many others except for one thing, a terrific domain name! It should rank well (eventually) if I promote it enough. You maybe wondering what’s with all the domain names, what’s the Axis of T-Shirts? It’s just a network, something that many site owners used to build way back when, I remember being on the Net (briefly) in the early 90′s and noticed how all the networked sites seemed to rank better. Nothing has changed.

Take T-ShirtCountdown.com (please take it), they have a lot of high ranking pages, tons of traffic and they’ve been running or years. I forked out $50 last month to try out their banner advertising (what was I thinking?), as you can expect the response was lousy. Most of their traffic is geared towards getting their friends to rate their tees and slate their competitors’ designs all in one quick sweep, and then they’re gone. In truth it’s hardly more than a top list script, the more hits a site brings in, the higher their banner climbs until they’re above-the-fold on a PR5 homepage (which must be a big incentive to funnel those clicks through each month). The only problem is they’ve not sharing that PR, I’m careful to at least give each reviewed site at least one do-follow link, I’ve only got a lousy PR1 (link to me – go on ;) but I still share. As a leader of a religious cult once told me (I thought I was making jewellery for a bunch of hippies – turned out the MD was the ‘Living Master of Love and Light’) – Share Your Knowledge and Gain More. Sort of like Spring Cleaning for the brain I suppose, I don’t know why I took that one on board, the rest was utter claptrap, but that one stuck. So I’m sharing.

I don’t pass out PR to affiliate links, or Flickr, YouTube, or anything else mildly corporate, hey don’t need it. Another site that has Google PR coming out of its ears is the aforementioned T-ShirtCountdown.com – a very successful Google PR5 t-shirt top list, but why? Their Axis of T-Shirts of course!

Here’s their axis – T-ShirtCountdown.com – T-shirtforums.com – T-shirtlinks.com

Now normally a dash in the domain name can work against you, as in “Buy-Tees.net” has lower importance from the outset than say “BuyTees.com”, however I’m convinced that with enough decent content and the support of your good self I can overcome those initial limitations. In this case things are different, namely the word “t-shirt”, which is in fact the truest form of the search term, ranks well with Google. However it doesn’t fair so well in social bookmark sites that use spaces rather than commas for tags. Either way it’s a pretty strong axis, except that no one would normally associate the term “countdown” with “t-shirt”, so I checked the backlinks and found that the highest PR site linking back to each of these sites, was each other!

I suck at SEO, but even I can see the correlation. essentially building one “authority site” and forming a network of similar sites around it creates a high Google PR network. Now even though I’m coming to the conclusion that PR doesn’t matter, many t-shirt printers still do, and so I’m hoping to gain traffic and PR from an eventual stream of reciprocal links, even directory links to my t-shirt printers directory, then spill some of that PR and traffic towards organic and fair trade sites, some of which may in be part of the OrganicTshirt.net co-operative. Perhaps I’m dreaming, who knows, either way it’s good to have some kind of marketing strategy, even if you do hate selling. The truth is I see it more as a Public Relations campaign than advertising. People rely on me for various free services, they pass the word around, and I eventually have an audience for my co-operative. It could work, if I can tap the blogging/social bookmarking sector instead of the traditional “top list” and “banner exchange” market I may just have a chance.I’ve already managed to add a few bookmarking links to TShirtPrinter.org. I can look forward to a few more dreary weeks of data input, filling the database with a global/local directory of major cities. It’s taking longer than I thought, but the script doesn’t respond well to MySQL imports, and so I’m doing it all by hand (gulp). At least you can suggest categories and so there’s always the flexibility there.

Like I say, I’m no expert when it comes to marketing, I just feel that sharing my thoughts on the subject, my plans for the future, and a few not-so-significant discoveries I’ve made along the way, might be of help to someone out there in the same position. Something I’ve found very useful for a little instant fame are the more specialist “creative’s social bookmarking sites. I’ve mentioned a few before but I have recently joined a particularly friendly site for artists at IndieRepublic.com.

They provide some excellent support in all aspects of selling your own art, fashion, design, you name it! Plus they give you a free badge like the one above with my ugly mug on it to scare away the punters.

Iv’e always felt “if you build it, they will come”, is that from the Bible or a Stephen King novel, don’t tell me it’s from “Field of Dreams”, I really don’t want to build my business on the back of a Kevin Costner script.