Studio Script Tee

Gorgeous, if you’re going to design a logo tee this is the way to go, even I’d wear this one… besides the advertising goes to a good cause ;) I love the way Craig has incorporated a paint brush and the back detail is a nice extra. Available in S-XL for $20 each.

See his other tees at www.castudio.bigcartel.com.

It’s all about the detail with Innerspoken, as far as connecting with their market this label are almost like a well trained sniper team, before you know it their t-shirts are making you think, something that many people seem to have a natural aversion to these days. I love the simple messages, saying “hi” always helps, and this line from their blurb is a classic “The ampersand is the only thing I want to come between us. Can you make my wish come true?“. This is an indie label with a corporate clout, they know how to design, be it their site or their tees, they’ve nailed the concept on the head… quiet, personal, individual, emotional, true.

Hi Tee

I love the idea, great design, let’s hope it brings a few more people together or at least stop them fighting amongst themselves. Available in gold and aqua, sizes XS-XL for guys and S-L for ladies for $20 each.

Snowflake Tee

Simple but effective. Every snowflake is as individual as a fingerprint or DNA, nice idea. Although I would have made this shirt an extremely limited edition just to back up that idea of individuality! Available in blue and red, sizes XS-XL for guys and S-L for ladies for $20 each.

The Ampersand Tee

Nice detailing and it great message… aww. If you want to come over all smoochy with your other half then you could get one each and freak out all your friends :D Available in white, black and asphalt – sizes XS-XL for guys and S-L for ladies for $20 each.

See the rest of Innerspoken’s tees at www.innerspoken.com.

When you buy a t-shirt from Print Liberation you’re buying a message, you’re opting in to an ethos that hasn’t reared it’s head in decades. Big bold upper case fonts declare their ideology like a heavyweight knock out blow to the head. Don’t expect ‘pretty’ or exuberant illustration – that just isn’t what Print Liberation are about. Don’t expect glib and throwaway sentiments either, this brand doesn’t mince their words, this brand is about as close to an ‘anti-label’ as anyone has managed to create in decades. Their home grown basic design ethic is born out of experience and need, not ambition or fashionable attitude. You get what you see, and what you see is the truth.

They offer a range betwixt the big bold and rather glib typography tees that flooded Britain in the 80′s and the highly politicised tees of the 60′s and 70′s psychedelic era. Avoiding the petty thoughts of famous bands of the time like Wham’s “Choose Life” and Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s “Frankie Says“, and taking on a deeper and more politicised line more suited to the revolutionary downturn of the hippie movement. Yet there’s nothing sentimental or amateur about Print Liberation’s presentation, with a total lack of pretension, their designs get to the point straight away. There’s no room for art when it comes to this label’s idea of fashion, their hard-edged design ethic tells you why and how it is the way it is. They never cushion the blow, they never ‘decorate’ the truth with illustration and a spectrum of colour. They think the way many of us think, and in turn, their customers help to spread their message.

Founded in 1999, a moment when much of the media touted the world as we knew it would end, well if the Millennium Bug had had its way, a bedraggled collective of burnt-out advertising executives decided to turn the tables on big government and big business. Using the same talents prostituted to the corporations in the name of profit, they began to brainstorm their way through to a new beginning, an new era of indie urban fashion and art. The message would always be the truth, the mechanism for delivery would be popular culture, and the ideology revolution. You’re either with them or against them, that’s just how they roll, live with it.

Destroy Fox News

I spent a considerable time here in the UK, during the run-up to Obama winning the US Presidential elections, skipping between BBC, CNN and Fox News, and I what I found most enjoyable about my exploration into the political process in America was the rapid decline in cheap shot journalism and snide reportage as the producers and presenters of Fox News realised that Palin is an idiot and McCain was about to lose. One of the greatest moments of Fox News has to be the coverage of the empty hall (bar a solitary cleaner sweeping the floor), where McCain and his party faithful were supposed to be consoling each other in a celebration of what they had managed to achieve, even if they hadn’t won. They didn’t, they all left seconds after McCain’s farewell speech. The news reporters were silent and sullen, it was the most miserable night in the history of Fox News. Whilst the rest of the world celebrated Obama’s dramatic win, Fox News sulked. Hilarious. If you’d rather not see ultra-right bias conservative opinion-based news spouted across the airwaves, then vote with your chest and sport the Destroy Fox News tee for $15 in white – sizes S to 2XL.

Screw The Holidays Tee

Christmas is cancelled, or it should be, unless all the bankers of the world decide to shell out and pay for it this year, I mean. What the hell did the huddling masses do in The Great Depression for Xmas? They’d have been lucky to have found a roof over their head and a crust of bread. Yet still the mega-corporate machine trundles on, consuming all desires for a more balanced way of living and spewing out nostalgic sentiments designed to guilt-trip parents into digging deeper. Santa is on crack, Rudolf has been roasted over an oil drum hobo barbecue, and the trees are all dead from pollution and land clearance for bio-fuel. Get over it. Buy the Screw The Holidays tee for $14 in white – sizes S to XL here.

You’re Not Dead Yet Tee

Wake up, get on with your life, don’t give up… You’re Not Dead Yet is a t-shirt that delivers a powerful message. Even though it might seem that things can never get better, this might be it, sure you can have religion if it makes you feel better, but what if there’s nothing more, you die, you’re finished, kaput, zip, nada. If the world were filled with people who thought this was their only chance at existence I’m sure one of two things would happen, either no one would give a damn, or they would. We’d enjoy life no matter what, we’d appreciate it, instead of clouding it with ideas of what comes next. Perhaps, just maybe, we’d even all look out for each other more too. Available in lemon at $18 – XS to XXL.

Fix Health Care Tee

If you don’t you’ll be too ill to do it later. We have the NHS in the UK, it’s a mess but at least it works upon a humanistic principle. Letting people die simply because they don’t earn as much is tantamount to murder, it’s the ideology of some of worst rogue states in the world. The tyrant, despot, billionaire sheik or king have their own hospitals, for themselves, family, friends and foreign dignitaries, whilst the rest have to rely on an untrained ‘healer’ living in a damp and squalid hut in the village. Healthcare for everyone should be a human right, otherwise you may as well hold a gun to the head of everyone earning a pittance right now. Get the Fix Health Care tee for $16 in white – sizes XS to XXL.

Check out all of PL’s feisty and politically charged tees at www.printliberation.com or if you’re in Philadelphia visit their Flagship Store!

Threadless.com

What’s more a lot of their best artists have naturally come to the conclusion that if their work is making enough sales to support the staff and directors of a multi-million dollar operation why not set out on their own? Plenty have, plenty more have been ‘poached’ by the competition and literally treated like artistic royalty, sure they’re not exactly riding around in limos (yet) but those with the business savvy to make the grade have managed to get a far fairer slice of the pie when it comes to profits.

The fact is that for most of us humble designers it’s more a case of who you know (and how many) rather than what you do. It’s become a numbers game and that’s no surprise considering the size of the operation. If you have an army of friends and fans on Twitter or Facebook you might just make the grade – I mean – you’ll still need to create something stunning but a legion bigging you up will always start a wave of positivity given the right conditions. Timing, markets, originality, it all comes into play… but this isn’t another griping review of Threadless, it’s a feature on Type Tees, and seeing as the ballpark is wide open on this one, if you have a flair for one-liners you might just be in with a chance at this still relatively early stage of the game. You don’t need to be a typgraphic expert, you don’t need to be able to draw, you just need to make wise cracks until the sun goes down and all will be well with you and the world of Type Tees!

So, the other reason I’ve been slow off the mark is that text t-shirts aren’t really my favourite things in the world, perhaps it’s trauma brought on by a branding burn out, at school and college so many kids wore Nike and Adidas that if an alien had landed and walked in the canteen they’d have assumed all our parents had very little imagination and called us all by the same names. But these aren’t sports brands, these are, for the main part, jokes. There’s the other problem, once you know it you don’t usually want to hear the same joke twice – unless you didn’t get it the first time – but hey some people like to make strangers laugh, so who am I to get in the way of a few anonymous chuckles? No one, just a miserable git with a graphic t-shirt fetish that’s all.

Moving briskly along here’s the low down if you have a joke burning in the back of your mind and you fancy making a few spare bucks. A very healthy $500 in fact, not bad if you’re a pub bore with a few hundred corny jibes you can knock out – one of them is bound to grab some attention. Okay that’s unfair but when I think of all the worst t-shirts I’ve ever seen they’re nine out of ten times a dodgy joke like “I’m With Stupid”, the only idea I’ve ever had for a slogan tee was way back when fashion casualties were wearing big bold lettered print tees with the words “Rave On” in the UK – we are going way back here. I was s**tfaced with a mate at an illegal rave in South London when two of them walked through the door with red faces, soaking in sweat, necking vodka and cokes at the bar like it was free – anyway I made a joke that the tees should have said “Brave On’. Cruel I know, but I doubt they’d have preferred my alternative anyway.

So to cut a long story short – let’s see if we can have a larf at Type Tees :p

Don’t expect my usual in depth quality review, I mean, they’re one-liners, cue the drum roll, and no booing at the back okay?

I Supplement My Personality With Witty Shirts Tee

Kinda says it all really – this should be Type Tees motto as far as I am concerned. It’s probably one of the more funny – I started writing this review yesterday and then was rather waylaid by other committments – when I returned I immediately noticed my original chuckle had reduced to a smirk. I suppose there are people out there who love to tell the same joke everyday, if you meet a lot of new people all the time you too can be known as the guy that Supplements Your Personality With Witty Shirts ( or rather the lack thereof).

The Internet Was Closed So I thought I’d Come Outside Tee

Haw haw haw. Type Tees is like that old bloke at the office or the local pub, the one who knows a million one-liners, none of which are particularly funny. “Knock Knock” “Who’s There?” “Type Tees” “Sheesh Don’t You Know When To Stop?” I can imagine walking into TT’s HQ and being greeted by this guy…

Here’s Colin ‘Type Tees’ Hunt in action…

The Internet Was Closed Tee is the sort of t-shirt Colin would love I’m sure. There are plenty more bad jokes including:-

My Other T-Shirt Is A Hoodie, My Wife’s So Fat She Uses This T-Shirt As A G-String, I’ve Lost The Famous Brand Label But This Tee Cost A Fortune Honest and the classic I Couldn’t Make It At Threadless And So I Submitted This To Type Tees. Sure I made those up (submit them if you like) but I’m just making a point here, dumb jokes doth make a great t-shirt, not.

Type Tees is the fashion equivalent of The Piano Keyboard Tie, there’s no two ways around it, if you wear one of them you might as well get a foam hammer, a hat made from nachos and a squirting plastic flower for the lapel of your clown suit whilst you are at it. The Internet Was Closed – the ultimate dufus tee.

I hunted around for more ‘hilarious’ shirts and found these two.

Drop It Like You’re Clumsy Tee

Drop It Like You’re Clumsy Tee – Seeing as it’s only $9 I can’t be too harsh on this one, cute custom font and a nice twist on a rather corny ghetto girl saying, still I don’t know how many hot hip hop babes would want to wear it, more likely clumsy people with an inferiority complex, let’s just hope they don’t do anything vital in society like manage health and safety in a nuclear power plant. Doh!

Death Tee

This is as near as you’re going to get to the t-shirt version of Bill Hicks at Type Tees, it’s funny, dark, sombre, pensive, thoughtful, well at least it’s black so not too many will notice you’re trying to be funny. Death – our nation’s number one killer tee says it all really, we’re all gonna die so we may as well have a laugh. I like a laugh, I do, honestly, I just like a good reason to do it. By the way does this only apply to America? Then I’m looking forward to immortality over here in the UK.

If Type Tees was a charity site then I’d be behind them all the way, it’d be a great way of pulling in donations and lightening the mood on some of the darker aspects of society and life in general. But it’s not, but at least it’s cheap tees start from $9 up to $15. If you really want a laugh try T-Shirt Hell.