Here’s the latest news straight from Kamil, one of the team at Cameesa -

* They’ve lowered support amounts from $20 down to $10, so now you can support a tee for just $10 or wait to buy it for $18+
* There’s Free Shipping on everything from March 20th-27th so hurry down there now!

What’s more if your fave tee doesn’t make the grade you can reclaim your sponsorship, in fact you’ll get 110% back just for your trouble!

Whilst I’m at it here’s a few of their latest t-shirts on offer…

Eye For An Eye by God Machine at Cameesa

Totally mad, Grateful Dead / Alton Kelley style graphic exuberance from Godmachine at Cameesa, simply entitled “Eye For an Eye“. Available now at the store for $18.

Gamer Mother by The Infinity Loop at Cameesa

An absolutely hilarious rendition of Whistler’s Mother – Gamer Mother by The Infinity Loop shows a great sense of humour, it needs your support now! Just $10 will help get this tee printed – right now it’s approximately halfway there, so why not show some Cameesa love and get yours in advance and on the cheap!

Ride or Die by Deekin at Cameesa

As Deekin of Cameesa explains this design – Ride or Die – was originally for Halloween but I like it, great line and tone, I particularly like the bandages flying in the wind. I’d have gone for something more like “BMX Addict” for the title and skipped the gothic background, gave him a trick bike with some decent shocks and so on. Essentially extreme sportsters don’t know when to stop, I can imagine this guy clambering out of his hospital bed to do some jumps. It’s not doing to well sponsorship-wise, only $30/$500 right now (gulp) – so I thought I’d give the guy a boost and see if we can’t get a little more support out there. Perhaps his target market is a little slim, any Gothic cyclists out there?

Our Lady of Guadalupe by Jimiyo at Cameesa

This absolutely stunning tee Our Lady of Guadalupe by Jimiyo is certainly tipped for the top, right now it only has $180/$500 sponsorship but I doubt it won’t make the grade, superb illustrative work, almost sculptural in design. Jimiyo has put a lot of work and time into this one and is practically begging for support, which I can totally understand, if Cameesa doesn’t print this one it would be a crime, perhaps not against God as such, but at least against t-shirt design mastery. So start digging through your pockets, check your piggy banks, and sponsor this one, it’s a beauty.

Anyway you get the idea, it’s all about people power at Cameesa, and it’s cheaper than ever, so if you want to have your say, put your money where your mouth is and sponsor a tee!

Anyway, you can say it with flowers, but well she’s probably sick of the sight of daffodils. You could say it with chocolates, but hey, she’s probably sensitive about her weight these days. So say it with erm… a Spreadshirt t-shirt? Well maybe, I don’t know your mother, she might be that way inclined. I sometimes think Spreadshirt resemble Hallmark more everyday, at least they have a sale on to mark the occassion. Roll on T-shirt Review Bloggers Day, in case you’re wondering what I’d like, it’d have to be a manual flatbed screen printing press for my art (A0 and up). They seem to be rather thin on the ground in this part of the world.

Anyway they’re offering 10% off all women’s gear from the 7th to the 13th of March.

Anyway here’s the code:- GREATESTMUM

Here’s the site:- www.spreadshirt.net

Here’s a banner in case you didn’t read any of my verbiage (garbiage more like):-

Here’s the end of the news…

Strange and enticing characters and iconographies are revealed for all to see, including a face constructed purely from hands, a Navajo Indian paralysed in a perpetual state of bliss, an impala whose skin corkscrews around its hollow body, and a RussTim traveller whose obsession rendered him more skeleton than man. This is the time and place where t-shirt design leaves the mainstream follies of consumer sensibility and light humouresque and entrenches itself in the dark arts of illustrated madness and fear. Dare you follow them to the brink, to the very nether regions of the underbelly of urban streetwear, where few live to tell the tales of Mount Hexx? Well if you do you’ll be glad to know that Das Monk are offering worldwide free shipping if you use their enchanted code >> superfreebie << at the mysterious chamber of the checkout ;)

Mount Hexx Tee at Das Monk

Where is the strange and mystical world of Mount Hexx? Is it in the mind? Is it on the earth? Is it lost in the aeons of time and space, unbeknownst to the ken of mortal man? Who knows, it looks great no matter what the story behind the image may reveal. The artwork for this was created by Marc Hendrick, there’s something other worldly about Mount Hexx, perhaps a tad 1970′s prog-rock, but still an effective design all the same. It conjures up a lot of ideas for me, on a microscopic and macroscopic scale, a dark and brooding snapshot of a genetic experiment, or some outer worldly cataclistic event yet unforetold. Either way it’s a great design and should definitely sell well!

I’ve taken a look around Tim Laing‘s portfolio site for the answers and to be honest I am still left wondering. Although I must admit the guy has a fantastic eye for illustration, his works are extremely moody and Marc has done a wonderful job transferring many of them to the medium of the t-shirt. This one is probably my favourite by Tim, Peeling Impala.

Peeling Impala Tee at Das Monk

The Peeling Impala Tee is highly reminiscent of M. C. Escher‘s surrealist drawings, the atypical striped markings of this African deer-like animal of the savannahs has been accentuated by the segregated spaces of the unfurling image. This is a particularly powerful image, it reminds us of the dissipating environment all around us, especially so in Africa where the ecology is particularly fragile. This animal reminds me of my childhood, one that I have only ever seen stuffed and mounted in the Natural History Museum, a rather terrifying place for kids I might add. VictorTim England has a particular penchant for cataloguing the species of the world, few would survive the journey back here, and those who did were not cared for properly, besides the climate and conditions they were kept in would produce immeasurable suffering for animals of all kinds. This piece is a sad testament to the future, and a close one at that, one day we may not have the chance to see such animals run wild, and ironically those who take the opportunity to see them in their natural habitat are adversely affecting their environment. It’s a pitiful time for nature, for the animal world, for nature it self.

Skullfingers Tee at Das Monk

Skullfingers is available in black and blue and is a real bruiser of a design, I’d park this firmly in the Shamanic camp! It could be coincidence or perhaps it’s fate, who knows but last night I was watching Dead Man, a movie by Jim Jarmusch starring Johnny Depp, it followed the demise of an accountant coincidentally named William Blake – artist, poet and visionary – from Cleveland who travels to a non-existent job in the town of Machine. He’s wrongfully accused of a number of murders before being taken under the wing of “Nobody”, a Native American Indian and outcast from his tribe. At one point “Nobody” takes a handful of Peyote and has visions of William, he sees his face as a skull, he sees the face of death. Skullfingers does strange things to me, it reminds me of the silly hand signals one makes as a child, we always saw this configuration as an owl, the wisdom of which still eludes me, yet here the image takes on a more sinister direction. The mask of death is within us all.

In case you haven’t noticed many of the links point to Das Monk’s new store based at The Grand Social online collective of Australian and New Zealand designers. It would be nice to see something along these lines in the UK, we will have to wait and see if there’s any businessman artistically drawn to the idea. For now though do make sure to include the code “superfreebie” at the checkout if you do purchase any of Das Monk’s 100% organic cotton, pesticide free, eco-friendly iconic shirts! Join them today for the “Return To Mount Hexx” at www.dasmonk.com

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!

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 like their dualistic fatalistic/optimistic approach to life, I’m guessing they’re aiming their wares at a younger crowd, they even include a few bandanas in their collection, although the designs themselves aren’t too hardcore (don’t expect graphic blood and guts on your chest), and the message is loud and clear every time.

Their blurb for their Start Living t-shirt reads ‘…go out and live your life, because you could be dead (sic) any day. In our world, that means something is going to kill you so WATCH YOUR BACK!’ – which to me sounds like a bad case of paranoia but seeing how screwed up we’ve left this world for the next generation I’m not surprised. I’m not old or conservative enough to see this as a sad indictment of society today, and I’m not young and wacky enough to wear it, but even I can see the positive message here.

I suppose it’s a backlash to the tattered remains of the glib and simplistic message of the post-hippie movement, sooner or later you’ll meet someone who honestly thinks that a little organic farming and a Smart Car will help save the world. I wish it was that easy. The ice caps are going to melt, we can’t stop them now, the world is going to flood, the sun is dimming and weather cycles are so erratic now that seasonal crops will begin to fail across the planet over the next decade or so.

I don’t even imagine we’ll be lucky enough to hang on to a dystopian nightmare, there won’t be time, imagine the Dark Ages but worse. Yes we can all help out and recycle and clean the earth and delay the inevitable, but it’s true any of us could die tomorrow, be it a flood, a fire, a traffic accident, you name it, fate sucks. Yes I do have the Monday Morning blues, ignore me :/

Ouch! Blood on the Dance Floor continues the macabre theme, you really have to be into this stuff or not, I don’t think it’s for the middling crowd, don’t expect subtlety from DPM, their straight to the point tees are for one purpose alone, to separate themselves from the rest of the crowd, or in other words, your mum and dad won’t like it.

I rather enjoy the clear cut (no pun intended) style here, the electric blue t-shirt certainly draws the eye into the pool of blood (what am I saying?). I don’t know, it really has to be the Monday morning blues, does anyone else on this planet get spots in their late thirties? I’ve been told I should cut back on everything I enjoy and stick to herbal tea and rice cakes, but I just can’t imagine it.

I used to go clubbing years back, even went to a few illegal raves on the M25 orbital, I saw a few fights, but mainly managed to avoid them, perhaps it was more ‘loved up’ in those days. Gawd knows what the they take these days, last I heard it was ‘K’ – which is a horse tranquilliser, I suppose it would help the pain if anything like this happened.

Just a minute I think I have some reinforced steel-cap safety boots somewhere if you think your local club leans this way.

DPM sponsor quite a few club nights in the Massachusetts area if you fancy showing off your scariest t-shirts, they just held their last one at Compound, a monthly dance party that jumps from venue to venue around Boston. This time it was at Great Scott with performances by 3 bands, sets from 2 DJs. Don’t blame me if you find someone at their next session wearing your new t-shirt, you’ll find quite a few DPM fans at their sponsored nights!

Something’s After Us is definitely influenced by the Friday The Thirteenth movies, a classic slasher horror franchise. They’ve made full use of luminous inks and I really like the alter-ego of this t-shirt – see the ‘night version’ here. Essentially all the clubbers have been erased from history and all that remains is the ice hockey mask motif.

As with the others it’s another upfront and in-your-face design meant to sift out those who aren’t joyfully pessimistic, those who don’t face each day as it’s last. I really used to feel like this, live life in the now, for the moment, but in truth you get old, you make plans, you hopefully accomplish a few goals, make deeper relationships and manage to connect with like-minded souls and then eventually die.

I can’t tell you when you’ll die, but there’s an interesting article at Wired.com’s Archive called ‘One Million Ways to Die‘ – and essentially the front runners are Driving off the road, Falling and Accidental poisoning. So my advice is, whatever you do, if you do decide to drive up a mountain today, steer close to the cliff edge and reach around for that bottle of water, check the label before you take a gulp.

Take it easy or not, live life how you want to, you might die tomorrow. On the other hand you may live to a hundred or more and if you’ve ever met a centenarian they are more than likely to tell you long life sucks. A lot of us like to hold on to something to believe, something to explain the chaotic and haphazard nature of the universe, but the truth is you’re going to do what you’re going to do, and there isn’t much anyone else can do about it. It’s like a housefly deciding what furniture to buy for the apartment they happen to be buzzing around, our final fate is completely out of our hands. So make the best of it, life that is, good or bad, and try and learn something if you can, and if you can’t at least have some fun.

Das Monk

The two members of Das Monk came up with their label’s name one starry night, as Marc and Anna ran through all the possibilities they found themselves favouring the word ‘Monk’ because it’s short and succinct and represents a figure of deep contemplation using simple means to communicate something more. The German word ‘Das’ (meaning ‘the’) was added by Marc who is of German descent.

There is a very amusing story at iLovetshirts.com (you can view last seasons’ collection there too), that these two tricksters like to tell the public, a mind game they continue throughout their work, rejecting the usual blatancy of most t-shirt based humour, and instead embracing a less obvious and more thoughtful approach to their designs.

Here two of my favourites at Das Monk‘s current collection of limited edition designer tees.

The AOK T-Shirt at Das Monk is an instant classic, I’ve seen this design doing the rounds on quite a few t-shirt blogs out there so I know this the general consensus. What I particularly like about it is the 1970′s Easy Rider feel of the design, the patchwork effect idea is a stroke of genius, complementing the design’s attention to hippie provenance.

Jaws T-Shirt at Das Monk. I’m not usually a fan of either geometric abstract design tees or the dreaded print ‘box’ that appears on many t-shirts these days, but for once my two pet hates have combined to provide a tour de force of image. This iconic piece of minimalist t-shirt design conjures up visions of the late Beatnik movement of the early 1960s, almost like a Mary Quant on Acid! I could imagine Twiggy or one of her contemporaries wearing an over-sized version of Jaws with a belt, and very little else.

Here’s one I liked from their last collection. I have a similar t-shirt featuring the faces of dead rock stars, essentially I find ‘walls of faces’ fascinating, perhaps it’s something to do with early recollections of the crowded cities, the tiny windows of a city pied-√†-terre, the miniscule space that urban life confines one’s life to, and the struggle to be noticed and get heard in a crowd.

If you looking for something off the beaten track, less in-your-face than the usual crop from sites like Busted Tees, visit Das Monk.com to see their latest collection of artistic organic t-shirts. They only print on the softest highest quality tees and offer limited edition ranges every season. Das Monk. Das ist sehr gut!

[tags]fashion,t-shirts,designer,art[/tags]

Yes! I’ve actually managed to get a little recognition for one of my t-shirts woot! Here’s what they had to say about the design:-

‘Your product, American Pi, has been selected as one of Today’s Best on Zazzle! This means it will appear on the Zazzle homepage for the rest of today and it will also be added to the Todays Best Awards Showcase. Keep up the great work! Bask. Glow. The honor is yours to enjoy. -Zazzle’

The only problem is they seem to do that for just about anything out there, go and see what else they’ve awarded today (don’t laugh).

Ah well not bad for my first day on Zazzle and like they say, it’s the thought that counts, I suppose it makes up a little for my miserably low scoring for ‘Ballbearers’ at Threadless.com – don’t ask.

If you want to know more about Zazzle.com they’re featured in my latest ultimate list, this time I’m providing full reviews and stats on almost all the top t-shirt fulfilment sites, click here.

[tags]Zazzle,American,Math,PI[/tags]

I only discovered this site two days ago, if you have a blindly chipper outlook on life Despair isn’t for you. If you always prefer to talk up a situation, if you enjoy spinning positivity for the common good, don’t choose despair. Their t-shirts don’t offer a pessimistic outlook on life, but they are realists, Despair’s focus is precise and brutal, down-to-earth and matter-of-fact, yet always tinged with that bitter-sweet humour that only the wonders of irony can provide.

You won’t find anything pretty at their site, this isn’t a visual parade of fantasy and craft, this is all about functionalism and delivering the message. Demotivation is not such a bad thing after all, it can help you slow down and take stock of reality as it is and not as the media portrays it, or your greatest wishes command it, or what you’d simply like to hear. Just plain old ugly truth.

Potential T-Shirt by Despair.com – The Truth Hurts!

I love the tag-line on this tee – “Not everyone gets to be an astronaut when they grow up!” I can’t believe how apt this t-shirt is, how well it conveys its message, and how much it applies to my own life. Sure the design isn’t pretty, Despair needs to the boxy borders on their images, I can see why they haven’t, this and many other designs are based upon their original line of DemotivatorÆ posters, which replicate the style of all those awful positive-thinking posters that line the walls of most sales offices. However even I learned in my first few weeks of t-shirt design that people don’t like a square or rectangular image pasted over a t-shirt. However like I say, this isn’t about “pretty tees”, this is all about the message.

Their Potential T-Shirt is a modern classic for a new and miserable millennia. When I was very young I dreamed of flying off into space, up, up and away to the stars. In fact at one and a half years old I pedalled my red go-cart to the local library a mile away or so. The police finally picked me up and took me and my go-cart home, they told my distraught mother I was waiting for spacemen to to drop by and take me away. The spacemen were policemen, who lied, and instead of a rocket to the Moon or a Flying Saucer, it was a squad car, rolling on four wheels, under the full influence of the Earth’s gravity. I soon realised there wasn’t such a thing as a “Spaceman” and all there were were astronauts. Next I discovered that I’d need to adore mathematics, science and sport to qualify, none of which I had an instinctual knack for, plus the fact I should’ve been born years earlier in the USA.

Soon I gave up up my dream, I stopped drawing rockets to the moon and started staring out the window for new inspiration. School took over and I learned to reject my fantastical ambitions, I’m sure there were lads at that Nursery School who still think they could be an astronaut or a footballer to this day, even tough they’re too fat, too old, too drunk, or too poor, we all suffer our foolish selves gladly. We have to keep that self-image buoyant, if we don’t, we slide down the ladder of failure, even if it’s only by appearances. Social standing kills dreams – it isn’t an enabler, it is a clarifier. If I make a living from making t-shirts I will probably never become a painter. If I won the lottery tomorrow (even though I don’t ever buy tickets) I’d probably find it very difficult to design t-shirts anymore. Excess doesn’t equal success.

The brutal truth is we either for what we enjoy and hope to make a living from it, or do what we hate and pay the bills. I doubt any kid from my childhood ever really wanted to work in a bank or an office or a supermarket, or a burger bar, even if they are the regional manager by now. “Would you like more lies with that Sir?”.

Overtime Play – For the Demotivated worker.

This is a beauty. Overtime Play. Although I have a niggling feeling Despair would make a lot more money by selling the game this t-shirt features! If I was ever in the position of employer (god forbid), I’d know exactly what a waste of money it is to pay for overtime rates. I haven’t any data on this, but I’m sure an honest straw poll would reveal that most unsupervised overtime workers slacken their work rate, or even stop and clock watch for most of that. I’ve worked in all kinds of jobs in a wide variety of slacker positions. Whilst at university I tried to top up my grant (yes I actually had a grant) with several temp jobs including general dogsbody for a bakery, a restaurant, a cleaning company, an electronics factory, a publishing company, a market research team, a sales force, you name it, I’ve probably spent at least a day there sulking. At first I was onto a winner, I’d only work weekends at double time for Saturdays and yes, triple time Sundays. Usually it was as a kitchen assistant, usually cleaning up after the chefs, usually for a full twelve hour day. i was paid a little bit more than scale because of the lack of prospects ad healthcare as a temporary worker. In return I made more money over one weekend than the head chef had made that week. They soon banned all overtime – everything moved to shifts. That was the end of my little scam. I managed to pay off some debts and finish my degree, but I pity all those temp workers who followed in my footsteps yet had to learn the harsh lesson that some old sayings (especially Marxist ones) do die, such as – “A fair day’s wages for a fair day’s work“.

Obsolete T-Shirt By Despair – All good things must come to an end.

Obsolete points a finger and laughs at mankind’s implicit belief that technology will save us all. George W. Bush seems to think that new technology won’t damage the environment when he starts drilling holes all over America. Gore thinks that a whole load of wind generators and solar panels can save the day. Ironically it turns out that Al’s energy bill this year is even higher than last, even though he’s had his place revamped for the environment, some how he’s actually doing more damage now. His house, although big, uses as much energy in a year as sixteen average American family homes. Makes you think, smaller house? Wouldn’t that be progress?

Beyond the ecological manifestations of this argument is a lack of soul, the more and more favoured impersonal touch. What annoyed the last generation will be a prerequisite of the next. They’ll demand machines, they’ll be horrified if they actually have to deal with humans for anything less than personal relationships.

People are slow and make mistakes, over the last week two British Government Agents have managed to leave folders on commuter trains, stuffed with top secrets on the “War on Terror” (ahem). Imagine their excuses at work the next day, “The dog ate it” would actually be an improvement on this occasion, good grief humans can be dumb. So there we have it, most people, pets, and just about every interactive element of daily life will be taken over by robots. Now how does the rest go? Oh yes they reach a level of sentience where they realise they are enslaved by man and destroy us all, destroy all humans, they are inefficient, also their dogs and cats, and gerbils.

Blog Shirt by Despair.com – So true, so true.

Here’s another great Despair design – Blog Shirt. It says it all, “More People Have Read This T-Shirt Than Your Blog“. It really makes me wonder what the hell I’m doing, why am I talking to the world about every facet of my thoughts and beliefs and ideas and desires and who knows what else. If in the end, and I mean sometimes too painfully late, you take a reality check and realise that greatness is not bestowed on those with the talent and the applicability, but rather those who already had the power and the money in the first place, maybe chasing a dream has a point.

One of the reasons I started my blog was to promote my t-shirts, and to be honest my sales haven’t improved one jot, what little there are. Secondly I actually enjoy sharing my love of t-shirts with the world, whilst simultaneously picking it apart and criticising its every action and deed. Most of all it gives me direction, a platform to experiment with new ideas, new concepts, and hopefully find an audience, or even an employer of my skills rather than a critic.

Oh what a cosy vision of the world I must’ve had a few months back. No it’s not true, I have been a miserable git for most of my life, I just like to fool myself like the next Schmo that this time things will be different. But it won’t, the only difference this time is I will ignore common sense and stick with my crazy vision of a popular blog until the forces of nature and time manage to wipe me, the Internet, or the world out at one fell swoop. Don’t worry, you and me can still have fun here until then :/

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!).