In this episode of Thread Notes TV I take you to the park (because it’s practically criminal to sit at home when it’s nice outside here) and tell you a little bit about a sweet t-shirt Patrick from Tilteed sent me. There are a lot of things that set Tilteed apart from other t-shirt design competition, so they’re definitely worth a look.
In this episode
This intricate design from Tilteed delivers a classic 1-2 punch: it stuns you first with its attention to detail and the delicate lines on the book pages then knocks you out when you realize there’s really nothing random about it and the message is quite focused and clear.
It comes across like an illustration you’d expect to see on an old British children’s book, Danny or Christopher Robin perhaps?
It just really makes me think of all those times we had to read a book in school as child. I didn’t want to do it at first because it wasn’t a book that I picked out, but after a while I realize it’s a good story and there’s a reason the teacher picked that book.
Soon enough I’m engrossed in the story and don’t want to put it down. The imagination is in full gear and I’m filling in details and backstory on my own. Then, just as you’re knee-deep in it, somebody taps me on the shoulder and it’s like being startled out of a dream. All that smoke and color goes back into the page and you’ll left with just a bunch of words on a bunch of pieces of paper. It’s about that time that there can be a brief moment where you realize the imagination’s power to turn something so literal and concrete into such a vivid and vibrant experience.
Leave a comment down below and let me know what you think! If you’d like your t-shirt featured in a future episode of Thread Notes TV, check out my submit a t-shirt page.
Thanks again to Patrick at Tilteed for sending over Jungle Book and being so patient while the review was edited and put online. Zip over there and check out their latest designs.
Next time you see a bunch of comic books, grab a handful and throw them all in a blender on the highest setting. What do you get? A ton of shredded paper. You’ll probably piss off whoever owned the comic books too. Don’t do that. Why don’t we throw them in a metaphorical blender? That’s better. Now when we turn off the blender, instead of getting the stinkeye from a crushed comic book collector, we get Fistful Apparel.
Fistful’s artwork really leaps off the page. Sure, I’m talking about the shirts, but the website compliments the tees so well, it’s impressive. They’ve got an all-star line up of designers that clearly have their style figured out. Too often I see promising designers that, while talented, haven’t found their voice yet. These people get it, plain and simple. Bright colors and bold, oversize designs that aren’t always center-chest really grab your eye. If I saw one of these walking down the street I’d look twice. (that’s what SHE said)
Their designs walk a fine line between comics and cartoons, with some hints of classic movie posters thrown in. There’s a focus on character, which isn’t something I see on a whole lot of shirts. Sure, I’m used to seeing a person in a particular situation on a tee, but I’m not used to reading their backstory alongside the tee. It’s a pretty interesting approach.
Their blog uses lots of videos that really help you climb inside the illustrator’s head and see the kind of thinking that inspires the designs. They also post fan-submitted photos of their shirts, which is always a cool way of “completing the circle” and helping people feel connected with the brand. If you check out Calavera Comics you can see some more artwork in the same vein, available as prints. Metal on Metal is EPIC.
Fistful’s tees weigh in nicely between $15 and $20. If you decide to pick up a shirt or two from Fistful, you can use the coupon code fistfulfriend10 to get a 10% discount.
In this episode of Thread Notes TV I review a couple of t-shirts from 2600 Strange Ave. If you think Ed Hardy t-shirts are lame, you’re going to love 2600 Strange Ave.
Their tees are the perfect antithesis to all the overpriced status-symbol brands that are bastardizing the core idea of what a t-shirt is and should be. It’s also worth noting that while every t-shirt business has a story of how they started, I don’t think I’ve heard one as amusing as the one 2600 Strange Ave has.
In This Episode
This shirt cheekily points out that there’s much more to life than a $90 t-shirt. If you’re spending that much on a shirt…well, you’re beyond help and probably not reading TRB. For a shirt to be worth that much it’s got to be pretty damn special, and well, I guess magic cotton would qualify. If you think the most important part of what you wear is how much you paid for it, this isn’t the shirt for you.
This shirt lists everything you’d find on an Ed Hardy t-shirt. So why is this shirt so much cheaper? This shirt only has the words, while an Ed Hardy shirt may have the actual things. If they actually printed on this shirt all the things they list, they’d have to charge an arm and a leg for it.
You see, Ed Hardy shirts are like Mexican food. Very, very expensive Mexican food. Stay with me here. While to the casual observer all Mexican dishes are different, they all have the same basic ingredients – albeit in a unique order. Mexican food is tortilla, beans, meat, cheese, and tomatoes/peppers. Each Mexican dish takes these 5 ingredients and rearranges them into some kind of unique dish.
Ed Hardy shirts are no different. Skulls, wings, gold foil, unicorns and crossbones – those are the basic ingredients. Tweak the colors, put them in a different order…tada! New Ed Hardy shirt. If only we could all be so original.
Both of these shirts from 2600 Strange Ave get down to the core of what a t-shirt is and isn’t, and I like that. No matter how cool you feel, spending $90 on a t-shirt accomplishes only two things – making you look like a jackass and telling people around you that you have no sense of your priorities. These guys get it right.
Leave a comment down below and let me know what you think! If you’d like your t-shirt featured in a future episode of Thread Notes TV, check out my submit a t-shirt page.
Thanks again to the guys at 2600 Strange Ave for sending over these shirts. Check ‘em out!
Sometimes indie designs are just the best. Here’s a tee from Alive and Well, a small t-shirt line from the south of England. I can only imagine this colorful shirt was inspired by the classic tootsie pop ad that’s been playing on TV since…well, probably the Nixon administration. I’m sure we’ve all seen it by now:
While the shirt is cool (like the rest of the designs Alive and Well has) and the price point is right at 13 quid…what really sold me was the video of the shirt being made. I think it does a lot to sell the shirt, seeing the tee being born. It serves to remind us that there are people on the other end of the shirts we get in the mail. It humanizes the whole process to see the screen printing in action. Check it out:
Owl is £12.99 (about $19.50) at Alive and Well. (Check ‘em out on Facebook too)
I hate captchas. Half the time you can’t read what they say; then the other half of the time you’re trying to figure out if what you’re typing is really a word. I understand the point, proving you’re a human and not a bot, but come on. With all the smart people out there working on software, on security, this is the best we can come up with? Seriously guys, this is the best way to tell a person from 472 lines of code? I’m not saying I have the answer, but I do miss the time when things like captchas weren’t necessary.
Anyways, the above rant should serve to illustrate how funny I found this shirt from Rizzo Tees. “WTF does that say?” echoes the thought process exactly! Ever notice how captchas have gotten harder and harder over the past few years? I understand they need to make captchas harder to outsmart the latest um, captcha-reading software, but dammit, they’re starting to outsmart me. This just reinforces that we are (or at least I certainly am) dumber than a computer, and that the machine/robot apocalypse is coming to assure the destruction of humankind as we know it. Or something like that, anyways.
I honestly don’t know what that says on the shirt. Windolph Gossh? Windolph, Gossln? Stupid Human? Eh, I don’t know. the “Gotcha, this is not legible” bit in the corner is brilliant too, it looks so natural I’m willing to bet some people will miss it when they see you wearing this shirt. You know, probably the same people that can’t solve captchas.
While there’s not an image of a person wearing it posted on the site yet (maybe uploading photos to Rizzo Tees requires a captcha?), Chris from Rizzo Tees tells me it’s 10″ wide and chest-centered. Perfect! This shirt is awesome and has universal appeal, since we all have to deal with this crap online everyday.
See the rest of the Rizzo Tees collection, complete with a chick not wearing pants and a shirt making fun of Detroit
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