The Chop Shop is a relatively new find for me, and it hasn’t been featured here on T-Shirt Review Blog before. Chop Shop is actually a spinoff of The Chopping Block, a graphic design studio from New York. I have a hard time categorizing their tees, but there are consistent design elements that grab my eye.
Right off the bat, I notice the incredible attention to detail. Many designs include dozens and dozens of small silhouettes of pop culture elements. Shirts featuring 28 classic rock stars, 55 film and TV vehicles, and 50 film and TV aliens invite you to play “how many can you recognize?” over and over. The ones you can’t get will drive you mad. It’s a really clever idea, and it’d be interesting to see what they come up with next to explore this style of design.
There are also strong overtures to robots throughout the site. The collection is quite impressive really, and anyone into sci-fi would find several shirts that suit them. There’s a small handful of shirts that seem a bit out of place topically, and that makes it difficult at times to determine where the site is going as far as voice and theme are concerned. The science fiction tees on almost every page serve as a redirect though to enforce the idea that this is the Chop Shop’s strong suit.
That said, it’s worth mentioning that the site makes extensive use of Flash to tasteful ends. There are numerous easter eggs scattered around that are lost on the casual observer, but are gems to those willing to explore with their mouse. I usually am not a fan of Flash sites, but the Chop Shop experience pleasantly urges me to reconsider.
I recommend checking out what Chop Shop has to offer and seeing if there isn’t something there to tickle your fancy, especially if you’re into science fiction or robots. I think this could be the go-to place in the future for robot t-shirts if they choose to pursue that. The aforementioned “how many can you name?” t-shirts can’t be forgotten either. Those are particularly clever, and I’d like to see where they go with those tees.
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