Definitely worth keeping an eye on these guys!

The fact is I’m snowed under with a million things to do at the moment. What with my personal blog, my new arts blog at ArtUrban.co.uk and now the latest addition to the Bainsey network, RateTshirts.com. I’ve had this domain sitting around for years, I thought it might have sold by now, but thinking about it I’m glad it didn’t. It means I can still keep a hand in as far as t-shirt design goes, sharing my love for the latest and greatest in t-shirt design and so can all of you!

Come and check out RateTshirts.com today, yes it’s a Rumplo/Awesomer clone but damn do you know how much competition there is to get on those sites these days? Besides, if RT takes off it should rank just as well on Google seeing as it does what it says on the label hah. Anyway Threadless, Design By Humans, t-shirt community and indie t-shirt designers, anyone with a smidgeon of talent in the field are welcome to submit their own designs to Rate T-shirts.

Check it out now!

http://www.ratetshirts.com

Anyway let’s take a look at a couple of Assault’s freshest releases:-

Razor Metal T-Shirt

Loving the concept for this tee, the Razor Metal t-shirt design combines photography featuring a selection of metal scrap yards and various choices in typography. A completely abstract-impressionist t-shirt as far as I am concerned, a brave choice and a powerful piece of imagery. It might just be a little ahead of the curve, that being said the fashion business moves fast, and in my heart of hearts I can already tell that 2010 will be embracing this kind of style more and more. The age of the simplified t-shirt design will eventually fade, detailed graphic tees are always far more popular than simpler logo and branded styles, and eventually abstraction and expressionism will I believe replace more obvious self-explanatory designs as the consumer craves more individuality in their fashion choices. The fact is this design is an interpretation of an emotional reaction rather than the more usual literal depiction attached to a one-liner philosophy. Great work, available for the reduced price of $22.99 for men in sizes S to 3XL (add $2 for 2XL / $3 for 3XL).

Retro Galaxy T-Shirt

Perhaps my all-time favourite t-shirt to ever leave the hallowed gates of Assault’s HQ, this time we’re transported far off into the outer reaches of deep space with the superb Retro Galaxy tee. This is a superb shirt, great graphic control over what could have been a rather chaotic and over-complicated concept. Yet they’ve pulled it off, the detail shots of this tee truly reveal the expert handling in which Assault have appropriated images from the Hubble Deep Space Telescope and combined them to create a shirt worth shouting about. If I’d known I would have had this one on my Christmas list. If you’ve still got some cash after the holidays, check Gran’s card again you never know, then snap up this shirt for the reduced price of $22.99 for men in sizes S to 3XL (add $2 for 2XL / $3 for 3XL).

See al the latest at Assault today!

Let’s just say that something very big has been happening at Disturbia, there might be experimental drugs in the water supply, or perhaps they’ve tortured their artists until they’ve excelled beyond everyone’s expectations, but things have evolved incredibly fast since I last wrote about this label. I have already found a couple of instant classics there that will blow your t-shirt craving mind. Wait a minute. Ssshh. I can hear a disturbance outside. Yep it’s those damn zombies again. Okay when they burst in make sure to shoot them in the head, if you don’t they’ll eat your brains. In the meantime let’s drool over some Disturbia newbies to their personal asylum of macabre and appocalyptic vision. In other words let’s look at two of their new tees :/

Mary Tee

Mary Mother of Christ – it doesn’t get much better than this. This t-shirt, the simply but aptly named Mary is probably going to end up being my favourite design of the year. It’s not just beautifully drawn, it’s so jaw-droppingly offensive, I know a lot of Christians will hate this, unless there are a few goth and emo followers of the big cheese out there with a taste for worshipping a zombie god, but man, wow, lost for words. Take a look at that insane detail, it’s just stunning isn’t it? I truly believe that Disturbia have outdone themselves this time, it will be extremely difficult for them to keep their artists working to this high level of concept and polish. As it happens the next t-shirt comes very very close. You can buy this incredible tee for men and women at just £20 in black sizes S to XL.

Rasputin Tee

Ra Ra Rasputin, Russia’s greatest love machine. The immortal words of Boney M. I don’t think they’ve seen him in a while, death doesn’t suit his former lifestyle as a beard toting, crazy-eyed, sex mad, guru and prophet of the beyond. Still I am sure he can still turn on the charm when he needs to, or at least hypnotise his victims with the maddest stare in history. I’ve seen photos of the guy taken just after his death, even then he had a look in his eyes that could turn anyone to stone. Enigmatic doesn’t go halfway to explaining this man’s power over everyone he met. I love the slight biblical references in this design, the blessed fingers remind me of a Monkey moment, you know, when he whistles and calls down his cloud. Lol – you probably had to be there (meaning: be old enough to watch badly dubbed TV classics). Still, back to this beauty – absolutely beautiful textures on this tee, a zany spiral background and a skull can never go amiss. This t-shirt has it all, history, zombies, mystical powers, what more could a dead Russian icon ask for? Another fantastic t-shirt available for men and women at just £20 in black sizes S to XL.

Check out the whole collection at www.disturbiaclothing.co.uk – absolutely superb!

If you want to grab one of their latest designs hurry, here’s a few of the new ones we like here at Buy Tees :D

Smiley Headphones Tee

Y Love NY Tee

Tachebot Tee

See plenty more of their new collection and a few remainders of their old – (including one by me titled “Old School” :) – whilst stocks last at Spunky.co.uk

Men’s
Organic Men’s T £24.99 ‘TKO’ by PolyEsther	Organic Men’s T £24.99 ‘Afro Rain’ by Cons Pinc	Organic Men’s T £24.99 ‘Monkevolution’ by Matt Littler	Organic Men’s T £24.99 ‘Krowd’ by Scruffy Maine
Organic Men’s T £24.99 ‘Back Flip’ by Chris Ringwood	Organic Men’s T £24.99 ‘Appaloosa’ by Gabriele Sarti	Organic Men’s T £24.99 ‘Old School’ by Paul Baines WOOT!!!!	Organic Men’s T £24.99 ‘Lethal Sounds’ by Pritul Modha
Organic Men’s T £24.99 ‘Ye Olde Music’ by Herds of Birds	Organic Men’s T £24.99 ‘SPUK Vs BIONYC’ by Hero73	Organic Men’s T £24.99 ‘Bitey’ by Jon Burgerman	Organic Men’s T £24.99 ‘Escaping Records’ by Joe Blakey
Women’s
Women’s T £7.99 ‘Sunny Days’ by Jodi Muter	Women’s T £7.99 ‘When the Stork Comes’ by Joe A Scerri	Women’s T £21.99 ‘Jumping Toy’ by The Boy Fitz	Women’s T £21.99 ‘Appaloosa’ by Gabriele Sarti
Women’s T £21.99 ‘Yes No’ by The Boy Fitz	Women’s Organic Hood £34.99 ‘Appaloosa’ by Gabriele Sarti	Women’s T £21.99 ‘Chicken’ by Andy Council	Women’s Organic Hood £34.99 ‘Monster Say Ra!’ by Peskimo

Ah well it might not be that exciting to you but I love the idea that one of my designs is out there and hopefully getting snapped up (even my girlfriend Christina saw it in her email at work) – you couldn’t get better publicity than that. Sure I’m only getting £150 and a free tee but still it’s a thrill for me :D

Take a closer look at Old School – maybe you might even want to buy one yourself!

Let’s start from the beginning, the very beginning. Now, if you believe in fate, hey you have to believe in something, then you’re probably not the most ardent fan of coincidence. I’m not, in this grizzled addled brain of mine I like to cling on to the small hope that perhaps some things in life have a purpose, and that on those few occasions you should grab life by both horns and wrestle it to the ground.

Now, human beings are complicated creatures, they have individual lives and emotions, each has their own perception on why we are here and what we should be doing, and that means that a lot of us will never meet and if we do we will never agree on the most fundamental precepts of existence. Sometimes that’s a good thing, it means avoiding wars and most painful experiences in life, but sometimes it can be a real shame, glancing back and realising you’ve missed a great opportunity to help (in some small way) others find their way in modern life and all that it entails.

i want to introduce you to two guys, two very different men, both have a love of t-shirts, both want to find their way in the industry, and until recently neither had any idea of the other’s existence.

Bomb G aka Bombardier Darren Gray has led a fascinating life, here’s how he introduced himself to me and his website www.BombgTshirts.co.uk – “Many people say that a web site name has to be relevant to the products or services you sell, others say it needs to be wacky and way out there… I had this mad idea of a web site that sold pre-designed T-Shirts whilst was serving as a Bombardier in the Royal Artillery, the abbreviation for Bombardier is Bomb and my surname ‘Gray’. I was known as Bombardier Gray, an old soldier who was coming to the end of his time and well known among the senior ranks, I was often referred to as ‚ÄúBomb G‚Äù and as my site sells t-shirts what better a name than Bomb G T-Shirts.”

Coincidentally (or not depending on your belief system) I received another email that day from Mark Freeman, a creative soul with a distinctly superior talent for draughtsmanship. Here’s what he had to say, “I would greatly appreciate it if you would be able to review my website and its designs. The site is relatively new and still within its infancy but includes many of my own original designs with areas to control and customise all products in several of my online shops. My website can be found at: www.rebirth-creations-clothing.co.uk. Please check it out and email back if you would like to include a review of the site on your website. It would really be beneficial for me as I’m only a small time and cannot afford real and valued advertisement. Thank you for reading this, Rebirth Creations Owner, Mark Freeman.”

Mark is a slave of Spreadshirt, a corporation that I have less and less respect for each day, they like their competitors treat their designers like dirt, they take the bulk of the profit, all of the traffic and leave their greatest assets to struggle with responsibility of marketing their designs in a dog-eat-dog world of t-shirt sales. No matter how many embeddable widgets they offer, there’s no disguising the fact you’re at a Spreadshirt site and not an independent t-shirt producers site. What’s more Mark has made a terrible choice of domain names, two dashes and very little marketing savvy has most likely left this site at the bottom of the Google listings for quite a while. Then again take a look at a couple of Mark’s designs, they really are his saving grace :-

Excuse the tiny images, that’s just one of the problems with Spreadshirt – they simply don’t encourage bloggers to feature their products or images, f you want to buy any of the above as Spreadshirt t-shirts visit www.rebirth-creations-clothing.co.uk for more info, Mark also sells products (including sneakers) through Zazzle too – so if you’re after any of these there are your options, there are a few other designs too incase you care to take a peek. My main problem with Mark (apart from the severe limitations of the site) is the fact that this artist has no theme, his collection is too disparate for my liking, but that’s not the point, that can be fixed, taking his talent somewhere that will be appreciated had by now become my priority.

Bomb G (Darren) had a completely opposite problem, the guy is as enigmatic as they come, he has a story to tell, a former war photographer and bombardier who already has a successful online store at www.garrisonpri.co.uk selling military presentations, clothing and accessories. What’s more when it came to creating www.BombgTshirts.co.uk jit took Bomb ages to find the right designer to create a professional set up he could be proud of. It’s a very smart site but it only has one problem, the t-shirts there, for the most part, are kind of sub-standard. He too had a problem with the theme of his label, he had a concept in mind, had the store built and then needed to source the right designers to create the designs he needed to set his site off with a bang. He’s made sales but to be honest (and Darren later admitted the same) the t-shirts he’s selling right now jsut don’t cut it. I’ve picked out a few of the better ones, but in all honesty I’d never normally feature most of these…

actually like this one, Peace Tank is a great piece of graphic design, and in essence it’s exactly the direction that Bomb G should be taking, unfortunately this approach is scant on the site to say the least. Darren commissions designers and for the main part it seems he has little creative control over the project, which is a real shame, because his basic concept of what his collection should be is sound, very sound indeed.

Now, just to prove a point I’m going to show you some of the bad ones (be warned they are so bad I won’t link to them) …

I just can’t show you anymore, it’s not Darren’s fault though, he didn’t design them, it’s down to the lowlifes out there who make money licensing tees, they snag every new t-shirt store owner out there and sell them the same old jokes, the same old dodgy slogan-based tees that places like Busted Tees dumped years back.

Now I hate refusing to review t-shirts, but if I find the quality of either the site or its products are not up to scratch I have to deny them a post at Buy Tees. I just don’t see the point of wasting your time or mine, there are so many great designers and labels out there it really wouldn’t be fair. But something about these two guys made me decide I needed to do a little bit of matchmaking. The fact is they couldn’t be more different if they tried, Mark has a fantastic drawing style and Darren has a lot of business savvy, a great site and a potentially fantastic concept for a t-shirt store, i.e cool military style tees for a Banksy-loving, anti-Bush, post Iraq generation of artistic media-aware trendies.

Take a look at what I wrote to each of them next and beware these are long old emails, the first one is to Mark of Rebirth Creations and before you read these, take a look at the example images I used to convince them of the theme, quality of design and products their alliance could eventually produce.

The above images are of Banksy’s Bomb Hugger, Robit’s ‘Chance of Reign‘ t-shirt and Glennz Tees’ classic ‘Ground Defences‘. I used these to argue my case with both Bomb G and Mark.

Now the email to BombG :-

Let’s just say the response (after some initial hesitation on both sides) was miraculous, I’m glad to announce the two are beyond initial talks and are now discussing the details of design and product theme for the future of what I and they hope will be a major new t-shirt label. Fingers crossed I’ll be updated when new designs arrive and have to admit I’m looking forward to what they’ll produce.

In case you’re sitting there scratching your head, I did it for the love of t-shirts, I haven’t got a cut in the company, Darren has said I’ll have free tees for life if this takes off, but I’ve told him I won’t take that offer seriously! All I know is if you’re there at the right time and the right place, what the hell, lend a hand, help give birth to a new t-shirt design house and who knows, the mysterious universe of karma might pick you out one day and give you a break.

Now everyone, whilst you’re feeling hopeful about life and everything in general, go and buy my art haha.

So for now let’s take a look at three new tees at SplitReason…

In their inimitable toon stylings this one made me laugh, ever fancied an exotic pet?

Rainy Day at Umbrella Corp T-Shirt. If you’ve ever played Resident Evil (who hasn’t?) or seen the excellent trilogy of sci-fi horror films starring the skinny but exotic and alluring ex-model Milla Jovovich you’ll know what this one’s about. A story of genetic experimentation gone mad, this t-shirt is a hilarious take on the whole theme, I’m sure you wouldn’t get much trouble from the local thugs that breed Rottweillers and the like, (have they banned those in the UK?), although I doubt you’d be able to strike up much of a conversation with dog walkers in the local park. I’m not sure if I’d fancy one of these mutant monsters climbing up the curtains and terrifying my cats but I can see the advantages. You’d never be short of silk for a start, what’s more you’d never need a fly zapper, although they’d probably eat you out of house and home.

Fate works in mysterious ways, I’ve just reviewed Blood is the New Black, and now it seems that SplitReason’s favourite colour is dead!

The Colour of Dead T-Shirt. I was never a fan of crayons, except as a kid when I had a tendency to eat them, along with (as I am reliably and erm hilariously informed every Christmas by one or other of my parents: paper, cardboard, polystyrene, plastic, wood etc.), I must have amazingly strong bowels, not the sort of thing you expect to read at a t-shirt reviews blog.

Let me warn you now, telling people about your bowels is a definite conversation killer. I’m not sure if these crayons are quite dead enough for me, I’d like to see more bits of the dropping off, the colour of death is usually a putrid brown, with a few flecks of green and red if your lucky, but then again who’s going to buy crayons of that colour? Zombie crayons – definitely a new one on me.

Peek into the Dark Side is one for the Star Wars fans, if you have The Force, don’t use it for good or evil, just use it to have some fun, and who knows maybe you can make a little money out of it too.

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have unlimited powers, I’d probably want to explore space, there’s only so many mere mortals you can pick on before you’d get bored. I used to love Star Wars, I even saw the premiere in 1977 (showing my age again), my mum and dad had just got divorced (which was unheard of back then) and a friend of mine Darren Cole (useless at karate, lonely but spoilt only child) had rich parents, apparently his dad was a builder to the stars. He’d secured tickets to a crazy new movie and they took me along out of sympathy, it was one of the most amazing experience of my life (and no drugs involved except for the crazy artificial additives in the sweets and drinks back then – Kia Ora high!), Industrial Light and Magic had done Britain proud (that statement is a rarity from me – putting ‘Britain’ and ‘proud’ in the same sentence), without all the fireworks I very much doubt I’d have loved the first Star Wars film half as much as I did. I stayed faithful for two more, but don’t even mention the latter three, they suck so much I’d be suicidal (if my name was George Lucas).

i can’t end a post with the words George Lucas, that would be a crime (not unlike his later works). Ah well I’ve little more to say except if you’re a geek, a sci-fi addict, a horror movie buff or toon fan you really should check out SplitReason.com – my MacBook spacebar has started squeaking by the way.

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…

A T-Shirt Reviewer’s Review of T-Shirt Review Sites.

If I’ve missed any out don’t take it personally, I welcome any “mini-reviews” in the comments page, (but at least get one of your readers to write it), no hype or spam please). I won’t be placing the sites in any order of importance either, (I’m treading on enough toes here already!), but I will say that many are easily found in most major search engines and blog directories. Some are major players, others are just starting out (…ahem), but most show a passion (or is it fanaticism?) for t-shirt design and all that our weird and wonderful medium entails!

TshirtReview.com seems like a very logical place to start, I’m jealous of the domain name already! I don’t know much about these guys except that beyond the rather bog-standard blog template you’re sure to find loads of discounts, vouchers, freebies and specials on t-shirts from most of the major t-shirt stores out there online. Their latest post refers to a Threadless.com promotion, when aren’t they running a promotion, makes you wonder if there may be troubles ahead for what seemed to be a perfect marketing method. For instance what percentage of people who vote on their t-shirt designs actually buy them? It’s all a numbers game, they make a fortune as it is, I’m sure they can afford some wastage, I suppose I am only considering the bruised egos of past winners watching their beloved creations sold off to the lowest bidder. TshirtReview.com have plenty more great offers including a $12 sale at PrintLiberation.com, a Free Delivery Special at BustedTees.com, and of course some short but sweet reviews of what appears to mainly be BustedTees.com T-Shirts

T-Shirt Legends is run by a very friendly woman called Dana (must get her surname sometime!) and a few of her pals, she hails from Ireland and has an excellent editorial style. Dana writes her blog in her spare-time, concentrating mainly on other commercial projects that actually bring in the readies, (I must try to make some money myself one day lol). Despite the time limitations Dana has forged ahead with her insightful reviews of all the latest snazzy designs out there. I particularly appreciated the review she gave of my Cafe Press store, and even learned a thing or two about how to promote my own work in a more commercial style. I thoroughly enjoyed her post on Brev87 at Cafe Press. He has a fantastically funky eye for design, read about his exploits further at Dana’s T-Shirt Legends Blog.

T-Shirt Reviews at Wordpress.com is another standard looking blog, thankfully there are some great finds here, and I have to admit I totally see where the owner is coming from (Although I only know he’s from Cali, another near anonymous reviewer – starting to make me think there’s a t-shirt reviewer killer on the loose). He’s even reviewed one of my faves, Smurfs Attack T-Shirt By Split Reason, a great spoof of those freaky French cartoon elves with blue skin, white boots, and a sickeningly positive attitude towards life. The mysterious reviewer guy from Cali has some rare finds too, I hadn’t seen this site before, including BedlamClothing.com who seem to have sold out half their stock and reduced the price on the rest to just $6, they’re even offering 3 for the price of 2, yep 3 t-shirts for only $12 (mad!). Let’s hope they’ll stock up on Road Trip again soon!

You’ll find plenty more original choices there, they have no real affiliation to a particular designer or store, and besides they’ve got a great tagline for their blog – “Because getting dressed up is too much work”. If you’re looking for something a little different in t-shirts, but you want a straightforward bare bones review so you can just get on with the business of buying tees, this is a great place to start.

ShirtsonSale.info offer concise and thoughtful daily t-shirt reviews from sites you’d usually have to hunt down. If I ever ran a “futurology agency”, I’d want this blogger on my team, they are streets ahead when it comes to picking out the future high fliers in the t-shirt design world; plus the fact that they’ve managed to gain decent rankings, traffic and Google PR with a .info domain, which in itself is a minor miracle. Beyond that, the featured t-shirts I viewed there were truly excellent, I’d say a close tie with TShaped.com in quality. Ironically my favourite featured tee shirt there is UneeTee’s “Scream” by Yoshi Andrian Amtha which absolutely rocks as far as I am concerned. Perhaps I’m just an old hippie at heart, though I do appreciate Shirts on Sale taking a stand on a point of principle. I love disco, kitsch, retro, hippie psychedelia, they don’t, and that’s a good thing. The general public know that there is no such thing as an expert t-shirt reviewer. Most bloggers who dip their toes in list a bunch of affiliate links (I’m not saying we don’t all do that – but most of us try provide entertaining content too!), churn out a few glib responses (if you’re lucky) and Digg the poor blog to death. Like I say you have to love t-shirts to even bother writing about them, and I believe that almost all, including Shirts On Sale, have a whale of a time doing it, which is just the way it should be.

T-Shirt Casserole is a well established T-Shirt Reviews blog with posts reaching back as far as 2005, however the posts seemed to have stopped in 2007 so I’d treat this as an archive. I have to admit I didn’t wade through many designs here, and although there are a few pithy one-liners, I’m not too enamoured by most of the designs. I have a feeling many of Kristen Fox’s featured designers had trouble working within the tight constraints of Cafe Press. I am torn when it comes to CP, they have an enormous site with a lot of t-shirt buying traffic, I’ve sold quite a few there myself (at a miserably low profit margin), but even I struggled when I first joined them. The main problem isn’t the quality of their printing (I’d hazard a guess they’ve one of the most expensive DTG – Direct to Garment – printers in the world), I’ve had quite a bit of positive feedback on that count. It isn’t a matter of picky editors complaining about the width of vector image shapes or image formats. Even their delivery seems relatively reasonable in price and speed. Nope, none of the above, only this; the maximum print area they allow on most of their clothing is just 10″ by 10″. Now that maybe a great figure if you’re bragging about yourself, but for a t-shirt it really does limit the directions you can take any idea. For instance, the dreaded rectangular image one eventually learns to avoid. The lack of detail that can be feasibly included in the space allowed. I’ve seen some fantastic silkscreen printed tees out there, some with images over double the size, some with over-the-hem printing, shoulder details, some completely covered with design (although the few I’ve seen like that sell at over $100). Let’s take it a step at a time, Cafe Press, if you want to be taken seriously, offer screen-printed tees that “think outside of the box” or rather “print outside of the box”. So my advice to T-Shirt Casserole is to get posting, why not try a few other t-shirt stores like Threadless and SpreadShirt for more inspiration? I checked the host domain and found a Cafe Press scraper site (I have done the same thing at RetroGod.com), I’m suspecting the blog is still there to help their Google rankings, rather than a genuine passion for reviewing t-shirts. Although I can’t blame them, you’d really have to be a fanatic to want to keep reviewing t-shirts ever week ad-infinitum (call the doctor somebody), besides you have to give them credit. Cafe Press or no Cafe Press, 2 years of reviews is a very healthy t-shirt archive by anyone’s standards!

Rated-T.com is a great idea and in essence it only needs two elements for it to work. It’s essentially a forum where members’ reviews determine the site ranking for each design. Good. There isn’t any traffic and hardly any members. Bad. Besides it’s a rather ugly site to look at, I can see they’re using a specialized forum script to do the job, unfortunately it looks like they can neither find a decent template, or have the knowledge to adapt the one they do have. I suspect these two factors maybe connected, i.e very few members and a faceless forum design. Creating a thriving forum is tricky no matter what it looks like, I’d recommend this site find some scallywags on MySpace or somewhere similar, pay them to invite and sign up a few hundred of their “friends” and reward each with a buck for making a few posts to complete the deal. It’s far cheaper than SEO and it means potential members won’t be frightened off by the apparent lack of activity. Incidentally, I’ve just managed to secure the domain RateTshirts.com, so I’ll probably be getting in on the act, although I’l most likely stick with the more traditional “Hot or Not” type of t-shirt rating site. Yes, yes, the script I’d use for the site was most probably created with pervs in mind, but what can you do?

Tshaped.com is cool! Simple as that, they pay due care and attention to their choices for reviews, they definitely know what they like and although there aren’t too many posts, what they do review is worth reviewing. A nice layout in this blog, which makes a nice change, and I especially enjoy the mix of t-shirt and t-shirt store reviews, I’d class myself as a little more in-depth where the reviews are concerned, but you will be knocked back by the √úber-Cool Tees they do feature. I especially love this one:-

There are a few fab Anti-Bush tees at Tshaped too, then again I think it might be time to move on, a lot of Brits still can’t stand Tony Blair (Ex-PM of The United Kingdom), however I haven’t seen anyone ever wear a t-shirt depicting his ugly mug to this day.

I’d have at least expected a “Lapdog of Bush” T-Shirt by now, I’ll leave you to imagine just how gross the design would’ve been :p We have to contend with grump Gordon Brown (the Ex-Chancellor), he comes across as a guy who hates his job, hates people, hates life in general, yet no one has bothered making a t-shirt ridiculing him either. I’ve even seen quite a few Barack and Clinton Tees now, so perhaps it’s time to move on once and for all.

Tshirt-Reviews.com is a domain name built for high Google Ranking, unfortunately once you get there you begin to regret it. Like I’ve mentioned before, there are limitations to what a t-shirt voting system can do. Whatever script I do eventually choose I’m going to do my absolute best to make the site as attractive to the eye as possible, simply having an outdated and cumbersome layout is enough to put most visitors off voting for anything, t-shirts or otherwise. They make a point of reviewing “Funny Rude T-Shirts”. Seeing as “funny t shirts” is the second most popular t-shirt related search term on after “t-shirts” it doesn’t surprise me. I just wish their submissions could qualify the claim. Essentially this is not a reviews site, it’s a ratings site, it’s a quick way for what appears to mainly be yet more CafePress.com designers to promote and once in a blue moon, sell a t-shirt or two.

Tshirt-Reviews is very very similar to the Grand Daddy of all t-shirt sites, T-shirtCountdown.com who’ve been using a very similar script since 2005! Essentially every vote button is placed next to a prominent link to the t-shirt designers cart. Like most “Top List” sites they rely on a constant supply of banner clicks to work out the most popular tees. I’d say that neither site represents the market as well as say Threadless.com that actually produce and sell their most popular tee shirts based upon ratings, but I suspect most sites are beginning to realize how fickle the average Internet user is. Cash counts, clicks are ten a penny.

T-ShirtJunkies.com has a great ideology, one t-shirt a day fix! I’d like to think I could manage that myself but as you can see from this one review, I’d probably have to sleep at my Mac to achieve that. However I was kind of stunned at how far their latest post digresses from the subject. I’m sure you can point a thousand holes in my writing, I don’t claim to be a professional, I doubt any t-shirt reviewer does, this is for love not money. I am a self-confessed wandering arguer, I like to slide off in all kinds of tangents, but I reign it back in, that’s my style, that’s what I do. T-ShirtJunkies also like to wander, however apart from a few scant details about their latest find, Synchronicity, (I won’t even bother showing you it, it’s that lame), the reviewer goes on to fill their homepage with a long yet rather sketchy example from their own life. Essentially it involves a confusion with an Ebay order for an MP3 charger. Moving along…

I feel far more at home at a blog like TroundUp.com – they describe themselves as “The T-Shirt Lover’s Blog” and you can certainly see why. They have the passion I was talking about earlier, a true eye for a good design, and a wide spread of different designers and stores on view. I especially enjoyed their selections from DesignByHumans.com, UneeTee and Fantastic Bonanza. They also have a penchant for Threadless tees as per usual for most reviewers. I like the friendly writing style and the simple clean layout to the site is very relaxing, concentrating on design classics of the future and the occasional bargain is what this site does best! What’s more they’ve reminded me of one of Threadless.com’s discount codes – if you’d like to save $3 on your next t-shirt purchase there – use the coupon code ‚Äúfacebookcoupon‚Äù.

It’s 5am and I’ve been reviewing T-Shirt Reviewers all night, I’m going to paste the rest of the list and let you make your own minds up on who you’d like to bookmark, and who you’ll be avoiding. For the most part it’s simply a matter of style and taste, some want critique, others discounts, who knows what my readers want, the meaning of life? Either way, from now on you’re sure to find more t-shirt reviewers on your travels so do post a comment and let us all know about your online travels.

http://blog.fantasticbonanza.com
http://www.tshirtreviewblog.com
http://www.best-tshirts-ever.com
http://www.shirtlog.com
http://tshirtisland.blogspot.com
http://omgtees.com
http://www.teeshirtblogger.com
http://tcritic.com