VintagePimps.com has been selling vintage t-shirts since 2004 and enjoy every second of it, if anyone is in love with retro chic and cornball nostalgia, across the board mind you, it has to be these guys. They sell their finds at Ebay and remember these aren’t reprints, in fact they may be the last of their kind in the world, so you’re going to have to pay through the nose for a slice of T-history. Here’s one of theirs I’ve picked out…

Vintage Prince T-Shirt (1982)

Totally mad original Prince tee, way before he became ‘symbol’, you know, back when he knocked out stompers like 1999 and When Doves Cry. This ultra rare, and take it from me almost all of them for sale at Vintage Pimps are, excellent condition Prince ’1999′ Tour t-shirt will set you back a massive $200 and only in a small size!!! Yes for Prince fanatics and potential stalkers only. Okay maybe not, but he is open to offers, not sure how much anyone can knock him down, but I bet that in the next few years this one will end up at a retro/vintage store in a trendy quarter of a city somewhere with a price tag at double that amount.

I thought whilst I was roaming around Ebay land I’d check out what else was on offer there and realised it wasn’t so easy to find genuine originals. You have to watch out, the word ‘style’ is a big giveaway, it means it’s a reprint, some might be fakes too, if they include a photo of the tag and it looks genuine or you know your t-shirt history you might even snap up a few vintage bargains without the seller even realising what they had! For mere mortals you will most likely come a cropper from time to time, so many merchandise t-shirts have been reprinted time after time, still if it’s obscure you’re probably safer.

Still I did find another major Ebay seller who specialises in genuine vintage tees, their feedback is superb and they try wherever possible to include all the info they can on each shirt including photographing labels and any defects. Labels give you a big clue, it doesn’t take long to realise if a t-shirt printers was even established a few decades ago, let alone if they had a license to print at the time of the original license. Sounds tricky but if you do your research you could make a tidy packet from selling on used tees just like Black Rebel Vintage.

Vintage ‘The Runaways’/Joan Jett ‘School Days’ European Tour T-Shirt (1977)

This seems to be the real deal, especially when you look at tag and the price, which is a record-breaking $1,499! Yes it’s rare but I can’t ever imagine paying that much for a tee, and I have a horrible feeling that someone probably dropped it off in a local charity store without even knowing the value. The fact is there are people willing to pay this much, imagine what an original official 1950′s Elvis T-shirt in mint condition would for? Probably enough to buy a new car at the very least.

Vintage Harley Davidson/Evel Knievel Tee

Supposedly 30 years old, it looks new because it’s ‘deadstock’ as in stored in a box or crate for decades without being sold to the public. It’s an incredible $999, again a mad mad price, but obviously it’s real slice of  Americana. Who knows, you might see one like this crop up at your local thrift store one day. You know what to do if it does ;)

If you’re thinking of retailing genuine vintage tees through your own store or site you might want to check out the British fashion sourcing company The Vintage Clothing Company. They sell real vintage tees by the pound (as in weight) to vintage fashion shops around the world. They grade them by quality and rarity, essentially nothing new gets through. Well worth a think if you’re tempted to set up shop.

But as always when it comes to real vintage bargains, the first place to check out is TeeCycle.org – they donate $1 from every sale to charity and even if their tees aren’t as rare they’re cool and affordable!

Vintage Beastie Boys Tee (Ladies)

Original Beastie Boys tee for women in a large size for just $15 + $3 shipping here!

Here are a few more worthy mentions:

Thriftstore Cowboy

Ghetto Vintage

Stormcrow Vintage

But to be honest you’re better off popping down your local boot fair, thift store, charity shop, flea market, you name it, if it’s cheap and local the effort of finding a rare vintage tee is worth it!

Anyway check out Rooster King by Adam Doyle / Jagdalack.

Yes it’s pink, and I suppose that will put a lot of us guys off, especially the older dudes like me, who knows it might be aimed at the metrosexual market, still the design rocks, and looks as if it took quite a bit of time to sketch this one out. If you’re feeling particularly cocky you’ll be relieved to know BAHC will be shipping this one out in the next week or two so keep your eyes peeled or why not pre-order one just to be on the safe side? To see the rest of their tees click here.

Anyway now for the latest t-shirt contest, the theme is Pin-Up Girls! Before you red-blooded makes get too excited remember they won’t want anything too hardcore, a garter here, a little leg there, a touch of cleavage… you get the picture. Sure they’re bad, but they’re not that bad.

So calm down and take a jaunt back to the age when less was more, and titillation did wonders compared to the bare-all plastic beach bunnies that fill the screen these days. These women were all women and knew exactly how to excite the prim and proper men of the past and they never had to try as hard to get a reaction!

There will be two winners each receiving 200.00 cash plus 50.00 in store credit, plus $1.00 residuals per shirt sold. If you’re a vintage/pulp/retro maestro t-shirt designer you’ll need to download the T-shirt Template Pack and then submit your t-shirt here. But get a move on, the competition only runs until the end of the month :o

John Keddie contacted me simply to bring my attention to their latest design ‘Drill Palin Not Alaska‘ (Don’t worry John you’re getting the full kaboodle), which ticks all the right boxes as far as I’m concerned – although to be honest I’d rather not drill either. I do worry for America, and even the world, when any sane person could seriously state that they’d consider a gun-toting, bible bashing, moose shooting, fundamentalist for second in command, and let’s face it, with the state of John McCain’s health I can imagine she’s gunning for a fast lane promotion, wouldn’t be surprised if she ran the guy down herself just to get the job done that much quicker.

It’s ironic that America has spent the last decade harping on about extremists around the world and here they are (or rather a minority of them) heaping praises on what could be potentially one of the most backward-thinking and let’s face it potentially ‘dangerous politicians’ this century. This isn’t sexist talk, I’ve lived under a Thatcher government (though she was more of machine – hence the nickname The Iron Lady, and Hilary wouldn’t have been so bad a backup if Obama hadn’t sailed through the nominations, but come on, pro-abortion, guns, anti-Russia, anti-everything, whatever your opinions, the USA aren’t going to make any friends spouting that tripe at the UN or the G20.

On a lighter note, a far far lighter note, here’s a little beauty called ‘Real Men Don’t LOL‘ which really got me thinking (and laughing but apparently not lolling). The irony is my spell checker’s fine with the word lolling, which essentially conjures up images of dogs with their tongues hanging out rolling around on the floor like idiots. I took years to accept the word LOL, yes I’m showing my age there, I didn’t even know what it meant for the first few months of using this awful Internet adage, but essentially I learned to adapt. Ha Ha seems a little ‘in ya face’ for my liking and as far as the rest go well they’re downright exaggerative to say the least. I have never crapped my pants laughing, or roared, or any of the alternatives on offer out there, in truth my surfing (is surf still a viable online term?) experience is rather a silent one on my part. Sure I might have a little music playing (but usually pumping from my tinny Macbook speakers, but me, myself, silent, perhaps a cough or a tut now and again. Still you want to at least give the impression you’re enjoying the pleasure of the virtual company of strangers, so what do you do when they think they’re being funny? I suppose honesty is the best policy, I’ll either record my laugh and blast them with it or otherwise state ‘funny’ when they’ve managed to hit the right note. I’m as grumpy as it is, someone please tell me what’s the socially acceptable yet patronising phrase for showing false appreciation of lame humour?

Bloody hilarious, I’m guessing VV don’t know any male OCD‘s seeing as the Rearrange My Furniture t-shirt is only available for women, but I’m telling you I’ve met a lot of control freaks of both sexes and hardly any of them were gay. Chris my long suffering partner probably wishes I was a little more obsessive and compulsive when it comes to tidying up the house but I as many human beings have lower standards than some of the mentals out there.

Anyway Chris has a friend called Claire, and until recently we’d both guessed that she was the worst we’d ever know, I’ve not met the woman personally but I’ve been bullied on the phone by here numerous times and taking account of some of the stories I’ve heard I can guess she’s pretty much a nightmare to live with.

Well Claire has met her match recently (in more ways than one), I don’t know much about the guy, in fact I can’t even remember the bloke’s name offhand, but what I do know is that he sounds worse than her, he likes everything in its place, almost alphabetically ordered if possible, he can’t stand their cats, probably because they won’t line up in the correct order.

Simple, sweet, and highly effective. I could’ve chose one of a dozen more for this review, I was going to pick out Advertising Helps Me Decide because I love the grunge-text and the sentiment (I’ve been trying to market my art recently – don’t ask). Then there’s Voting Is For Old People which is true, so painfully true, but I’ve already show my age by harping on (and on) about the US elections, I suppose the older you get the younger politicians look (McCain being the exception), until you start to think to yourself, hey, I know better than them, I should waste an hour or two shouting at my TV for the hell of it.

So, my final choice is Get High On Yourself, why? It works, it’s a clean-cut nostalgia-in-a-bottle design, unpretentious, straight-to-the-point, and un-hyphenated (unlike the end of this review). I’ve been attempting to clean up my act recently, I’m hitting the big 40 this year and I’ve been bang on it in a wide variety of ways over my time. I still have the cigarettes to wean myself off but compared to my wild and highly psycho-active 20′s and even early 30′s a few cigs and a cuppa now and again seem almost purgatorial in comparison. I don’t know if I can get high on life, or even on myself, but this review has most definitely given me more than a smidgeon of a buzz. Check out Vintage Vantage, free nostalgia trip included ;)

(One small criticism John, spruce up that logo, you obviously can illustrate till the cows come home. I had a terrible time squishing it down for the review :p)

So, what’s up? Well I have at least half a dozen requests for t-shirt label reviews which I’ll be sorting out over the week, and a pile of retorts and explanations from both Spreadshirt and Conduit.com which doesn’t surprise me. Essentially I’ve trodden on more corporate toes (as usual). I’ve added a rather self-congratulatory blurb from SS at my latest Spreadshirt-based post and added a few of my latest gripes to even the balance. As for the t-shirt toolbar Conduit essentially want me to retract my post, hey it’s only little old me, who the hell am I anyway? I’m just a blogger, I’m not a computer whizz kid and I certainly don’t make any money from this but I appreciate what they’re trying to do.

Let’s get this straight, I’ve handed over control to Anthony aka Profits of Teefeeds.com fame and although I’m not promoting it anymore I’m sure he can do wonders with it, I’m just not the co-branding kind, it’s probably unfair of me to lay in so hard on Conduit, they offer the best service of its kind out there – as in free toolbar technology – but it isn’t for me – if I receive complaints I have no power to resolve I simply call it a day, be done with it, learn from the experience and move on – that’s my paltry philosophy – if it can be so called.

Anyway if you’re looking for a free co-branded toolbar and are prepared to wait a while (and rant in your blog to get more than enough support) then conduit are your guys. I’m currently trying to recover one of my long abandoned old PC’s so I can dabble with a few toolbar makers, software that will enable me far greater control which is the way to go as far as I am concerned. In truth I’d rather something that makes Facebook widgets but you can’t get everything you want handed on a plate (unless it’s food i suppose).

So to cut a long story short Spreadshirt are lovely, so are Conduit, don’t listen to me, I am not a corporation, what possible effect could my opinions have, I must be wrong, confused, lost in my own oblivion of how the ‘real world’ works… ahem.

It does make me laugh how over-sensitive some companies are though, I mean do they really think I can jeopardise their grand plans? If people disagreed with me (apart from their staff) I’m sure this little blog would be comment bombed left right and centre. Anyhoo…

Some REAL t-shirt news woot!

Spunky.co.uk who I’ve propped plenty of times before are actually selling one of my designs at last! It would be nice to see payment as promised, after all I signed over the design months ago, but I won’t start lashing out until I am definite, vis-a-vis not jerking me around on this. Besides it’s great to finally see one of my own tees appreciated, I hope, plus Spunky have just opened a new store in Brighton (UK) which funnily enough is where I grabbed my Arts degree so my time wasn’t completely wasted there.

Take a lookie at Old School by err well me!

Don’t worry I won’t let the success go to my head, although some dosh for my bank account would be appreciated! Anyway I don’t make a penny if you buy one or not, I sold the design on a whim, so no pressure, buy if you like. Personally I do but I would ha ha.

Anwyay it’s probably going to be a one-off – I’m moving away from t-shirt design and into the highly pretentious world of post-modern art (which suits me fine :p) – I always was a show-off with too much to say for myself – I’ll keep blogging here and promoting t-shirts as art but my unique perspective on the world seems to leave most fashionistas rather befuddled so it seems only right to try and confuse others who deal with confusion everyday – i.e art lovers – a strange and somewhat intense bunch of people who for the main part feel the stranger the better.

So – I will finally get some sleep tonight (never stay at a riad unless you hate sleeping – they are noisy as hell!) and will resume normal Buy Tees service tommorrow – plus I’ll get cracking with my latest work (which has nothing to do with tees but who cares) – called Reigning Men. If you want to see my strange Indoor Street Art check out http://paulbaines.co.uk

Take it easy!

Luckily the current generation of NZ fashion addicts can rest easy, Kowtow.com has it all under control. They tick so many my style boxes, that it’s hard to fault anything about these guys. For a start their designs mix the absurdist theatrics and wordplay of the Surrealists with a highly acute sense of style, something reminiscent of both American underground comics of the 60′s and the early British punk movement of the 70′s. Stylish and funny, gritty and colourful, it’s been fun roaming their collection, there should be something there for all of you to enjoy.

I was rather perturbed by the prices, fortunately they’ve shown all of them in New Zealand currency, rather confusing at first, but not quite as pricey as I’d initially thought. Many of their tees are on sale right now at $52.25 NZ which is actually around $34.8250 USD. Furthermore all of their designer t-shirts (and hoodies) are fully certified fairtrade and organic by the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation and certified organic by the Control Union Group, which goes some way to explaining the higher price tag. I think this is a problem we’ll all be facing in the future, with rising costs around the world smaller creative companies will have to consider outsourcing farther and farther afield to compensate the costs, and their respective accumulating carbon footprints.

Bus T-Shirt. I’ve heard of a road to hell, but a bus to purgatory? The adventure of travel is over, or at least it is for now (barring a sudden development in warp-drive technology). Almost every square inch of this planet has felt the weight of a human presence, whilst we as a race continue to grow exponentially. Within 20 years we could have a population of more than 9 billion. Our urban conurbations have grown to the size of all the earliest kingdoms of the world. Ancient Rome had less than a million inhabitants, modern London has almost 8 million inhabitants, Mumbai over 13 million.

We will have to get used to the fact that from the day we were born someone somewhere has already seen what we have not even imagined. Beyond that, what we do find on our travels pales in comparison to our own imagination. I have ventured forth the idea in many a drunk argument that we are in fact living in purgatory right now. There are hells on earth to be sure, but they are mostly the making of an evil dictator, the cruel fate of nature, or our own idiocy as a race. Without a journey of the unknown, a travelogue of the senses, we are all in our own self-made purgatories. If re-incarnation does exist, could I please book my next life on another planet? This one has lost all its sense of adventure.

Banana T-Shirt. You can’t go wrong with a banana, it’s iconic (re: The Velvet Underground), it’s subconsciously offensive to the moral minority (bent phallus), and always seemed a little alien to me, I used to think bananas were from space when I was a kid, gawd knows why. I suppose the pod-like casing did it, and besides it actually felt like a treat compared to most fruit when I was that age, if it tasted good it was alien. British food sucked even worse then than it does now. Then again we were all poorer in the UK, we couldn’t rely on refrigerated tankers hauling them across the sea every week, and the climate wasn’t even warm enough for greenhouses (except the Summer of 1976).

So what’s Kowtow up to? A tribute? A phallus? A call for all of us to eat more fruit? It doesn’t really matter, the image is proven, it works, and so much better than most fruit-based connotations out there. a pineapple = a cheesy tropical holiday, an apple = religion, learning to spell, dentists, a grape = a drunk…

Corset T-Shirt. This sexy little number is for the girls, it’s simple and direct and definitely creates an impact as a t-shirt. I’m not usually keen on trompe l’oeil or rather, illusory t-shirts or any fashion of that ilk (piano key tie?). I’ve created a few of my own and know how corny most of them are, but this works and I think it’s all down to the laborious contraption they’ve featured. I’m assuming it’s a Victorian or Edwardian undergarment here, and we all know the hell women went through back then in the name of beauty.

I know that women these days do much the same, but I can’t imagine any self-respecting girl deciding to have a few ribs removed to perfect her hourglass figure. You can take a pair of fake breasts out, you can’t put a pair of ribs back in. The corset is a perfect representation of the divide between man’s desire for woman and woman’s need for perfection of beauty.

There’s plenty to think about at Kowtow and they take no prisoners with their designer collection, so prepared to be shocked, cajoled, titillated, and flabbergasted by this New Zealand team of art bullies!

P.S To further bring awareness to Kowtow’s ethical garments, Kowtow is supporting independent and unsigned artists by giving away a free compilation c.d. with each Winter ’08 garment!

I’d venture to say there’s a bitter-sweet theme that runs through all of Steve’s works, a quality I find both reassuringly honest and revealing, especially when put in the context of his fine collection of unique and pithy t-shirt designs. All of his tees are fair trade, 100% cotton American Apparel, hand-printed and highly original for the most part, so it’s well worth taking a gander the next time you’re passing.

Steve’s outlook on life may be on the dour side, but he still has a great sense of humour, I really think he should be British, we’re all like that over here, except the Scottish who are just dour, (I jest, we’re all miserable bleeders over here, especially since we haven’t had a Summer this year (or not one that you’d notice). Talking of the weather…

A Chance of Reign suits my mood (and the current politically charged mood of the world) perfectly, I’m currently working on my second artwork for my new site PaulBaines.co.uk, which takes a similar path of cynicism towards world politics. Steve is extremely adept at pushing his message across both conceptually and visually, if I was the sort of reviewer that blagged t-shirts for reviews, then this would be the one.

Funnily enough umbrellas fascinate me (design geek alert), perhaps I used to make them in a previous life, their construction, shape and name seem to afford a false sense of security, something akin to the current message peddled by the majority of Western Governments these days. “Everything’s fine, don’t worry, carrying on working, earning, spending, travelling, the world is perfectly safe as long as you do what we tell you to do.”

The truth is there are as many reasons to hate life as there are to love it, and there always were and will be. Democracy allows you a unique option, the ability to choose between a life of perpetual fear or ignorance, that’s a free choice given to every citizen of every democratic state of the world. The alternative is to simply live in fear, as do most citizens of most war-torn, rogue, corrupt, or fascist states out there. Someone living in the Middle East (for instance) will have ‘bombs on their doorstep’ marked as a higher priority than global thermonuclear war or the accelerated decimation of the polar ice caps, but they’ll not be bombarded by any other campaigns, than those of terror. Through social networking I have made friends and acquaintances who have lived through all kinds of turmoil and political unrest, war, feudalism, Political campaigns, advertising campaigns, military campaigns, we can read all about them, watch the footage on TV, listen to the debate, and even risk venturing an opinion without being shot, although for the majority the opinions of the public are seen as little more than a nuisance in the great office of power that is the western democratic system we call government.

Talking of government check out Robit’s Ragingly Inefficient T-Shirt.

I have an inkling that no matter if the Mayan Calendar is right or wrong about 2012, someone, somewhere, will exacerbate the political or ecological climate enough to convince us all the end of the world is truly nigh. The media obsessed over the intricacies of a Nuclear Winter throughout the Eighties, I grew up expecting the Cold War to end with a big bang, seeing as Russia has woken from its pseudo-capitalist dream and started flexing its military muscles again, that paranoid childhood may have stood me in good stead. My advice is simple, if it’s going to happen it’s going to happen. Personally, if I knew a pile of nuclear missiles were heading my way I’d race to the epicentre of the blast. What humans won’t be able to control, perceptually or physically, is the aftermath of man’s existence on this planet, most would eventually die of radiation burns, cancers, or malnutrition. The ecological system would collapse, global dimming would take effect, and what would remain of the human race (if anything), would be unrecognisable to say the least.

Government as a concept is drifting into deep water these days, there are so many different factions, pressure groups, minorities and majorities unhappy with how politics has come to control the lives of everyone on this planet. I think there should be a stipulation that all potential leaders of this planet have a passion for sci-fi and in particular the dystopian nightmare proffered by so many writers of the genre in the past century or so. There’s no point taking away our freedom in order to protect us, the people of the world have a long history of compliance and revolution, anyone, anything, any seemingly innocuous event can tip the balance and send a society in to chaos. Check your history books, so many empires and civilisations end in blood and turmoil, it would be nice if a few more politicians out there took note. You only have law as long as you have the support of the people or the money to pay your police and army, if either fails, you’re talking a return (however temporary) to the stone age, no power, no lights, no transport, no water, no food, the lines of distribution are broken, the cities turn to dust. If I had the money I’d buy a plot on a steep flat-plateau island with enough sun and wind and fertile earth to grow food, and hunker up for the next decade. Looking at recent events, be it Russia-Georgia, China-Tibet, The Middle East, America’s waning economic position in the world, or the India-Pakistan stand-off, there isn’t much chance that we’ll be fixing anything anytime soon. Neither will the government, no matter where you live.

Things have got so bad these days that we’re turning history into nostalgia, to the point that past wars and historical fears of the future have become almost comforting. I grew up thinking the Russians would drop the bomb, it was tangible, it was simple, and for the main part we all lived with it because we knew that Russia would have as much to lose as the rest of us. America even dumped a heap of their missiles here in the UK, I’m assuming most have gone back there by now, following the furore at Greenham Common, however the USA are up to their tricks again and want to plant a whole load more across the whole of Europe, which will more likely cause WW3 than prevent it. Ah well, somethings never change.

Prepare For Robots is almost cheerful in comparison, I love Japanese Manga, and especially their robots, I’m not so keen on the monsters, I expect I’m working on some scale of feasibility here. Even though it would ruin Japan’s economy (not that it’s looking to healthy anyway), I’m sure if any country was to produce a giant killer robot it would be them. Japan is the only country who’ve ever announced a 100 year program for creating android technology, robots should relatively be child’s play in comparison.

Japan will more likely be wiped clean by an enormous Tsunami than a monster, a robot, aliens, kung-fu killers, or ghosts. Japan reminds me of myself when I was a teenager, I didn’t have time for reality then. Oh what a wonderful made-up place the world was then. Prepare to be dazzled by Robit and go out in style!

If I was Carlos I’d begin by creating an animated series, ‘something for the kids’, a tangible product to hang his ideas on. I don’t like ‘anonymous art’, and I haven’t an avenue to enter his strange, retro, and pseudo-sci-fi influenced universe as promised from the word go. I saw the video, which is strange (to say the least). I loved it, but it didn’t tell me much, and afterwards it felt like a rather brief and frustrating teaser, I was hoping for some kind of explanation to what the hell is going on over there.

Take a look at the promo vid …

I watched this video and was excited for a moment, I guess I was expecting a promotion for a new a film, a cartoon, a strange and bizarre theatre production, a new line in toys, something to make sense of it all, but it cut short just as the story should’ve begun.

The truth is I love the style, the t-shirts are slightly disappointing, but I think it’s because I just don’t have the background story, or rather, very little so far. Tell me more mate!?!

Someone please tell me (please for god sake tell me), that all of this is leading up to something? Is there a master plan at work here, or simply a touch of the crazies about Fast Joe. I love the attitude, he seems like the kinda guy who should be working for Adult Swim, à la Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Robot Chicken, etc.

In this case, the t-shirts seem to be and should be nothing more like merchandising (i.e all of his work is trademarked) for a Fast Joe epic of some form, this guy should be working to a far grander scale. It’s like an unfinished masterpiece…. very frustrating. I’m not Fast Joe, I don’t know much about the guy, but I am sure he has a lot of explaining to do

Here’s the bio copped from his site :-

“This is the story of 8 brothers living in one body. Born from an interplanetary union Jonathan, George, William, Carlos, Francisco, James, Emilio, and Maximo were your typical all-in-one-jack-of-all-trades carnival sideshow freak.

In The Year 2130, society has become a capitalistic dystopia and humankind has been reduced to a mindless bunch of meat puppets bent on mass consumption. Only one place in the entire world can provide original designs and merchandise…”

OK, that essentially read like a pitch for a cartoon to me, how about you? It’s truly frustrating when you come across someone with such obvious talent and vast swathes of imagination who just leaves the job half done. I don’t think I’ve ever advised a t-shirt designer to animate before, and I probably won’t again, but if I and anyone else apart from perhaps a few kids out there who just like the funny pictures, are ever expected to understand what’s happening at FJ’s, he has to pile a more creative biography and deliver some cartoon escapades, and he needs to do it pronto.

These t-shirts aren’t exciting me because, as I mentioned earlier, everything about his work feels like a run-up to something far bigger. It’s difficult, I’m in a bind, I review t-shirts here, not the potential career of what could be the next SpongeBob. I am at a loss Joe. What more can say? We all know how funny wieners are, but however great the style, the joke eventually runs thin.

The fact that Carlos/Joe describes his products as limited edition ‘merchandise’ is a big give-away that here’s a designer with far greater aspirations than lowly t-shirt design. Time is ticking, and this potential arrival in the adult/weird/retro/cool cartoon market is probably tucked up in bed right now dreaming up even more strange ideas. The thing is you have to work a damn sight harder if you’re going to be a successful animator, you’d be creating the equivalent of 1000s of t-shirts a day, and all it would amount to is a few minutes TV airtime.

As a rule I refuse to write negative reviews, indeed I’d rather not write at all than heap negatives at a stranger. If someone’s that awful I usually mail them a quick but polite note to say I’m not interested. But FJ’s ideas are too intriguing to drop, his style too deft. The site has very little traffic, no one is linking to FastJoe.com, and I think this guy needs to ‘up his game’ if he wants to be big. Which he could be, very easily, if he just steers himself in the right direction. Oh by the way – where are all the aliens? I need a better grip on all this, I love the retro style, it’s superb, it’s succinct, but how does it relate to the brief mention (so far) of Fast Joe’s world?

Keep the style and sense of humour, create a 5 minute storyboard, scan it, run it through Flash, add some sound, upload it to your site and start networking with the likes of Adult Swim pronto! If you get that airtime you can merchandise till you drop, and people will buy. I’ve always advised that designers avoid diving headlong into creating a brand for their products, creating a whole world to market is a difficult thing to do, the audience is either nervous and distrustful, or if you have the exposure, ravenous and eat ideas up like kids do candy. Worst of all if they’ve seen it before, or want more but nothing’s forthcoming, they’ll drop you like a hot potato.

So Joe, if you’re as fast as you say you are, I should be featuring your first episode at Buy Tees in the very near future.

Give us more, and make sure it’s as mondo kitch and geekfest as your ideas so far and I guarantee you, you will be the next Internet sensation! If any readers agree let me know and comment below, I’d love to have a hand in helping to make Fast Joe a household name, shall we test the power of word of mouth and give this guy the kick up the backside he needs to become the next toon guru?

{This space is dedicated to a whole heap of missing background information that could’ve made all the difference to this review}

I was busy building up my database of my t-shirts on the Buy Tees blog, (yes a little bit shameless self-promotion can go a long way), when I received an email mentioning a new Threadless Clone, amusingly named IcecreamTshirts.com. I’ll be reviewing as many lesser-known Threadless.com style t-shirt voter sites shortly, I’ve built quite a substantial list so far and am more than open to other suggestions. In the meantime, perhaps it was their cute and friendly site design, or their laid-back approach to selling t-shirts, or the fact that this is the first dual language t-shirt voter site I’ve come across, whatever the reason, I couldn’t resist designing and submitting my latest work in to their capable hands (I hope they’ve washed them first, I wouldn’t want my shirt to get all sticky!).

For the few t-shirts submitted there (a major draw for any designer competing at the likes of DesignByHumans.com and Threadless.com), I have to admit the standard is high, not perhaps the most conceptual collection, but definitely well-crafted and conceived. It was late last night and I was listening (yes the TV is nearby but I treat it more like radio these days) to a string of doom-laden featurettes on everything from the fuel crisis, to threats of mass industrial action, fears of food shortages and power cuts by Winter, and the falling value of real-estate, when I found myself transported by the aid of memory and imagination back to my 1970s childhood where all this was an everyday occurrence. Due to the Middle-East conflict at the time (some things never change), the world was on a go-slow, oil, the lifeblood of a modern society, was in short supply.

I experienced at least year of blackouts, candle-lit dinner conversations, board games galore, and a whole gamut of activities hardly engaged in since the time of rationing. I enjoyed it, I loved the pace of life then, eventually even the most stressful entrepreneurial business-types in our street had to relax. For a start Britain’s workforce was on a 3-day week, so long and frugal weekends were always on the menu. People stopped in the street and talked together, everyone spent their spare days at the Family Lido where the kids would swim and their parents would soak up the sun in an attempt to keep warm in the unheated evenings around the unplugged television. It was great actually, I even experienced my first culture shock when the economy got moving again. Soon enough our street was filled with cars and property developers, TVs blared from every living-room, abandoned hopscotch chalk marks and ‘jumpers for goal posts’ littered the local rec, and yes, no one was talking anymore, normality had most certainly resumed.

I’ve always been rather disappointed by Britain since then, envious of European culture and its emphasis on community spirit and revolutionary zeal. Here, well here we simply look out for ourselves now, there isn’t such thing as a ‘neighbourhood’ anymore, or rather one you can rely on. Sure there are little gated-communities out there, executive home developments with shared car pools, town hall meetings to fight the latest bypass proposal, the odd neighbour feeding the cats for another whilst they recover in sunnier climes. Chris and I were hoping to go a little wild this weekend and buy some last-minute tickets for The Glastonbury Festival, but it wasn’t to be. We realised however many neighbours maybe on talking terms here, we couldn’t imagine leaving a four-storey Victorian villa by the sea, lovingly restored over the years, packed with expensive laptops, computers, antique furniture, retro collectibles, and three cats, to the whims of a relative stranger.

If this was the 70′s and I was 20 years older, I’d be on my way to Glastonbury now (yes they haven’t sold out because the Emo’s don’t like the idea of rapper Jay-Z taking the headline slot). I could’ve freaked out to my heart’s content and not worried about the cats or the house, and I wouldn’t have owned half the junk I do now, so all would’ve be right with the world. Instead I’m at home, sitting in front of my Mac yet again, writing about t-shirts. There are positives and negatives for everyday, I appreciate the convenience of modern life, I relish the opportunity to speak to a slice of the world about subjects dear to my heart, but I don’t think we will ever recapture those heady days of economic failure of the 1970s, and if we do we’ll more likely be less welcoming than we are now. Most of my grandparents were a little too young to remember the Spirit of the Blitz, and I’d rather not go through a World War to experience it firsthand, but I’m sure I witnessed a little taste of it some 30 odd years ago. Hence the inspiration for my latest t-shirt design:-

Strike!

Yet again a self-explanatory design, especially when you consider my potted-history of 1970s Britain. I did have a few problems with the submission process, when I clicked a link to their Terms of Use I realised I was actually reading their ‘Termos e Condi√ß√µes’, yes the whole thing was written in Portuguese. I managed to translate the page at Google and didn’t find anything out of the ordinary, the rules are similar to Threadless.com and many other t-shirt voting sites, although it seems only fair that they fully translate their English-speaking section of the store, not everyone will be as forgiving as me.

I had quite a bit of difficulty at first mapping out the perspective of the empty matchbox in this illustration, if i had a spare $175 I would’ve plunged for a neat little CAD add-on for Adobe Illustrator CS3, by HotDoor but I don’t and in all honesty if I did, I still think I’d resist, it seems an extortionate amount for so little advantage. There’s one cheaper alternative out there but I haven’t had a chance to try it out, it’s PerspectiveGrid by Andrew’s Vector Plug-ins for a very reasonable $15 if you’re interested check it out and let me know your opinions in the comments box.

Instead i mapped everything out with a free perspective plug-in that comes packaged with Adobe Fireworks CS3 and then imported the flat PNG file to Illustrator to trace. It’s come out pretty well in the end, if I do say so myself. I’ve stuck to what I know well, retro graphics, old Soviet and WW2 propagandist imagery, something to give the image that revolutionary zeal I was after. The matches and banner literally took a few minutes to create as vector images, the rest perhaps the majority of a day, but the colours were limited by what CMYK can offer, I have to study printing processes more deeply, or dig out my old colour wheel from art school and see what I’m missing. T-Shirt design definitely teaches you to make use of a limited palette, I must have deleted half of the image by the time it came to reducing it to the required maximum of 5 colours.

The prizes are very fair, offering a very reasonable ‚Ǩ350 per batch of 200 t-shirts printed, essentially you’ll continue to receive an income of ‚Ǩ1.75 per t-shirt which is about the same as a minimum you can expect from SpreadShirt.com and CafePress.com (as long as you’re not being unrealistically greedy about it). Plus they number each shirt and include your signature, so all credit due, they seem to be offering a very sound service indeed. You can see all their latest submissions here. Wish me luck, let’s hope they like my latest offering, if they do, I’ll post the link here, just incase you fancy voting for it!

Keep an eye out for my Threadless Clones review, I will be listing a wide selection of similar member vote-fuelled t-shirt stores available on-line in the very near future!

Gerst has a prestigious arts background with a string of successful art shows behind him, having shown his work across had shows all over the USA as well as a retrospective show in Glasgow, Scotland of his rock posters. The t-shirt line was started as a mere sideline, simply another medium to explore his unique view of the world, and experiment with different ideas, whilst having fun with his audience. The instant feedback provided by t-shirt fans helps many creative minds in their quest to hone their skills and find perfection in their art. Option-G’s started selling to the public 4 years and since expanded into a variety of products, even wallpaper would you believe? Cole has a truly unique style, I’d describe him as the Jasper Johns of the T-Shirt World, take this design as a clear example:-

Ghetto Signage

Ghetto Signage reminds me of the whole ‘Outsider Art’ craze that hit the gallery system a few years back, although this is miles away from what you might normally associate with that scene, I still think the choice of subject matter and the application of design fits well with my own low-art ideals. From Marcel Duchamp to Andy Warhol to Jeff Koons to Banksy and beyond, I have always had a deep affiliation with artists who can drag street iconography screaming through the doors of any respectable gallery.

I personally chose to begin designing t-shirts in an attempt to do the same, but from a rather different direction. Paint, canvases, exhibition space, agents, you name it, if it’s part of the cycle of an artist’s professional career, it will either be expensive, exclusive, or both. T-Shirts allowed me a foot in the door of the art industry, I’d always had artistic pretensions, but the path to a successful artist’s career is a long and hard slog.

I was kicked out at the first year of my Fine Arts Degree course for daring to argue that kitsch, television, cartoons, comics, design, architecture, mass-media imagery were all as valid as any work by the Conceptual artists of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Somehow I must have eventually won the argument because I did in fact return the next year and finally graduated. The course was called ‘Alternative Practice’ – the reading list included Foucault, Eco, Baudrillard and other weighty writers. Everything I read seemed to back up my argument. Now my instincts have been proven right, art cannot escape mass-culture and vice-versa.

99 Cent Shopping Spree

A retro masterpiece! 99 Cent Shopping Spree has been executed with aplomb in the truest 1960′s vintage styles and colours, and even the faux-naive drawing style I’d expect from an old supermarket poster or plastic wipe-free kitchen apron at that time. This is the sort of talk that had me temporarily booted from my degree course, because it’s the sort of detail that only a design obsessive; a low-art fanatic, and a sucker for junked commercial imagery can truly appreciate. I love it, I wouldn’t wear it, I lean a little later on towards the late 1960s for that same retro buzz, but I can totally feel the Stepford Wives vibe from this t-shirt from here.

YouTube

This is a classic, YouTube, the words are written in ‘tube-form’ as it were, I have to admit I always have adored wordplay, ever since I first found myself trawling through books of Surrealist Art as a kid I knew they were on to something, although I have to let the ‘Dadaists’ take some of the credit. Essentially I’m a collage artist at heart, or as some prefer ‘photo-montage’ – the thing is (yes I will commence to show my age) – when I first started my Art ‘A’ Level there was one computer at the Sixth Form College and it was mainly used by administration for keep accounts, teachers’ pay, student maintenance grants (don’t get excited- even then it was never more than a few hundred quid). I was attracted to Gerst’s work by the painterly quality of his work, something I find difficult to replicate in digital media. It’s a little like the rise and fall of dance music, at first it was amateurish and fun, and then it professionalism brought a sterility to the sound, until a few bright mavericks began to experiment to the degree that imperfection became the watchword and led to more and more DJs replacing decks and software with drummers and musicians, and finding themselves in a band again. In other words, art rocks!

My Space

In one word hilarious. I love the anti-lifestyle pitch here. Life isn’t clean and highly organised, and a lot of social networkers are finding it more and more difficult to live up to their online reputations, both good and bad. I know people who spend their lives on MySpace and Facebook, tracking down old friends, uploading photos of their last drunk gathering at the local pub, reading biographies that would put the most exaggerative curriculum vitae to shame, and adding comments that are guaranteed to show bias in one direction or the other. You’re the greatest, you’re the worst, you’re amazing, you’re awful. Real friends don’t keep in touch this much, for the most part they’ve had their fill of full-on in-your-face friendship and time it for the right mood, or at least the weekend. Friends are great, but it’s partly because they’re awful. They’re messy, or they have an affinity with O.C.D, they care too much or very little, they’re funny or deep, they have their uses, but then again they can hog time and all function therein. Can’t live with them, but can take them in large and small doses. Imagine a mate knocking on your door every half hour and sticking a Post-it note on your face whilst singing a line from their other mate’s song he just wrote that completely rocks, honest.

Cole Gerst has vision, it’s nice to see he’s paying as much due care and attention to his t-shirt creations as he does with the rest of his artwork, I’m sure you have to agree, Coles’ brain is a damn sight more interesting space than MySpace. I relish reviewing work of this quality, a fellow cerebral in the t-shirt world is a rare find, if you’re looking for the wild side, then this is it. Take the Option, G.

I suppose what I’m alluding to is the level of critical appreciation that any t-shirt design can really take, line, composition, and colour can create a great tee shirt design like this one. I absolutely adore the mish-mash of hilarious and well constructed characters in what can only be described as a mosaic of wild

and wonderful creatures from the depths of a highly artistic, totally bonkers, brain. The range of colours is spectacular, initially the design was for the artist Eric Terry’s (Marietta, GA, United States) custom snowboard, a pure black and white illustration, that due to the high demand, added colour and began to sell these fantastic tees by the shed load( I’m assuming?).

I’m reminded of the animated movie “Yellow Submarine” mixed up with a little Japanese Godzilla manga, and drawn with the deft hand of a crazy underground hippie illustrator of the late 60′s underground comic scene. Excellent! Keep up the good work Eric!

You can buy this t-shirt here