Big thanks to Adam from Spreadshirt for hooking me up with a “super limited edition” tee that they’re using to help promote the latest incarnation of their print-on-demand/webshop/marketplace service. I especially liked how there was a beta invitation code printed where the tag is usually printed/sewn in. Admittedly, it isn’t exactly hard to get a beta invitation code, but it was still a very cool touch.

Spreadshirt are probably my favourite of the print-on-demand services, largely because they’re the only company that I’ve actually dealt with on a personal level. I still wear a tee and hoodie that I had made up for my personal blog back in 2005 and I was really impressed by the quality, actually, pretty much everyone in my house at uni had something that we designed together and we really liked the idea of making up tees based upon the meta-jokes that we had going. Of course, with it being a shop that consisted of in-jokes, the only purchasers of our designs were people I lived with, but still I really enjoyed the process (we used to hook my laptop up to the big TV in the lounge and design tees when we should have probably been studying).

Okay, that paragraph was fairly off-topic, but aren’t you glad you know a little bit more about me now?

My initial thoughts on the new beta are that I’m impressed. They’ve freshend up the design, and whilst it does contain a lot of the stereotypical web 2.0 attributes, those attributes look good, everything is very clear, and it just has an overall more ‘human’ feel to it. One feature that I’m really glad they’re introducing is the ability for shop owners to put pictures of their products into their shops. It frustrated me in the past how shops had the standard photoshop style promo pictures even after they’d sold one of that design, because I get the feeling that people are far more likely to buy a tee if they can see what it looks like on a real person. Perhaps with this new feature they will move towards dispelling the myth that print-on-demand services are lacking in terms of quality. Also, the pictures make blog writers more inclined to promote a shirt, I know that Karl from tcritic has said in the past that a tee would have to be amazing for him to post it if there weren’t any real-life shots available.

I don’t know if the graphics that they have on the front page of the beta were done in-house or if they were outsourced, but I do really like them, its almost a pity that they won’t be in the finished version (as far as I know).

Oh, and the tee is pretty nice too.

Beta.Spreadshirt.net

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I thought I’d keep up the mouse theme (I guess you could also call it the companies-that-bait-Disney theme) with this interesting design by a French artist that goes by the name Chanoir, I think that this might be his website, I can’t be entirely sure but since Dadawan is a French site and that Chanoir site is also French… (yeah, it doesn’t take Gil Grissom, does it?).

I quite like one-colour sketch designs in this style, I think it really suits this image in particular, since it might have looked a bit cheesy if it was a really polished image, whereas this makes it look like someone just thought “hey, imagine if Fonzi and a cartoon mouse had kids…” and instead of drawing on a notebook they just drew on a tee.

It’s only available in size medium, so I’m going to guess that this is extremely limited edition (perhaps there’s only one?)

Costiness€29.00 URL

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I don’t really understand why this hoodie is called ‘Keith’, perahps Keith is the name of the character that adorns the hoodie who for copyright reasons I’m sure is not modeled on a certain mouse that would be known formally as Michael. Not that the name particularly matters, I just thought it was weird.

I really like the way that they’ve put the Keith pattern on the inside of the hood. It might have been cool if they had that pattern on all of the inside of the hoodie, and then it could have been reversible, although I’m not sure how well that pattern would work as an all-over.

Costiness=$58.43 URL

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It hit me just now that Johnny Cupcakes if one of the few ‘indie’ designers/labels that tee blogs feature who gets away with putting their name and logo on almost every design. Usually, I hear an argument that people don’t wear Nike, Adidas, etc. tees because they don’t want to be a walking billboard, but I get the feeling that that isn’t the case with Johnny Case, its more like people are proud to support the label, at least until they get too big and there’s a backlash (like with Threadless, not that it seems to have hurt them). Perhaps its also because the name and logo were built into the designs from day one, so it would actually be kind of weird if they didn’t have a name or logo plastered across each design.

Recently, JC released some new designs, and I’m pretty sure that this boombox tee is one of them. And even if it isn’t, that doesn’t really stop me liking it. At first I thought this tee was printed with gold foil, but on closer inspection I get the feeling its just gold ink, which is a little disappointing because with the subject being a boombox I felt as if it could really kick this design up a notch, but I guess I’ll just have to stick with Bean Dip for my gold foil boombox needs. and I was right, it is on fold foil, awesome!

The tee is also available for guys.

Costiness=$35.99 ($6 US Shipping, $20 Outside US) URL

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Quite a nice design this, nothing spectacular, but it does a lot of things right. I like the way that the floral pattern runs across the shoulder a bit, which kind of pulls the design away from the chest, and having the stars look like they’re cut from a pattern works well, far better than if they’d centred the skull and cross bones in each star. I’m not entirely sure why if the flowers on the left kangaroo pocket are entirely necessary, but without seeing the whole hoodie it would be harsh to say that they didn’t deserve to be there.

Note of interest to Threadless watchers: the FiveTone website was developed by skinnyCorp.

Costiness=$67.95 ($8 for shipping, free if you spend $75 or more) URL [via Stylehive]

*Someone in the comments has suggested that FiveTone may be a scam, and that they won’t send your goods, I don’t know how true it is, and the commenter left no real name (and probably a made up e-mail address) but I thought I’d better mention it*

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Eagle-eyed readers may well have noticed that I added an asterisk to the header graphic a few days ago. Even though technically summer doesn’t start until June 21st (although there are lots of different dates), things are definitely getting warmer, so there’s rather less hoodie wearing to be done, and it feels a bit silly to be recommending hoodies whilst the sun is beating down through the window. Long story short, I’m gonna start posting more tees, and the * stands for “…and other stuff I like.” This isn’t a permanent situation, but I think it makes sense at the moment.

I really love the colours in this tee from the constantly-wonderful Imaginary foundation. I’d love to see how this is in real-life, and also how well it stands up to wearing and washing because it is pretty detailed and I’d imagine that maintaining the brilliance of the colours is pretty key to making sure this design remains looking good. Also, I don’t know what the two guys are there for (perhaps just for retaining the sense of surrealism that often permeates through Imaginary Foundation’s designs), I had originally thought that maybe one of them made up the quote “there are no limits, there are only plateaus”, but it turns out Bruce Lee said that.

Costiness=$30 URL

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I guess that I should have probably waited until July 1st to post this hoodie since that’s when the smoking ban comes into full effect in England (hurrah!), but I’m sure I’d forget so here it is.

Let’s blurb it out:
“Appliquéd and embroidered smokers lungs onto a black 100% cotton hoodie. Lungs appear in a lovely shade of brown jersey; with a withered appearance (artistic liberties have been taken since real smoker’s lungs are enlarged and pretty much black). Trachea and bronchial tubes are made from a light brown woven cotton. Maroon and black veins embroidered freehand onto lungs. Available in X-Small, Small, Medium, Large and X-Large. Please specify when ordering. (All sizes are unisex.)”

Its a nice twist on the usual skeleton style/semi-anatomically correct clothing that I usually see. I’d quite like to see a printed version of smokers lungs, since just looking at this hoodie I don’t immediately think of smokers lungs since the embroidery and applique make it a bit more abstract and it looks more like a representation of normal lungs rather than a shocking image of blackened lungs.

Costiness=$80 ($7 US Shipping)

URL

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Threadless‘ latest $10 sale is now on and running until June 3rd.

Their news post which has all the details (new designs every day and a couple of contests) is… here.

As ever, if you see something you want, buy it, because if you hold out it’ll probably be sold out by the time you look again.

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Subscription tee services always feel like quite an odd thing to review, because I’m not just looking at a tee, I’m looking at a service, and it feels like I have far more responsibility when I’m recommending a service than just a one-off purchase of a t-shirt. Frankly, it’s quite a lot of pressure. Then I remembered that this tee was from a company called MOMI TEeA PARTY, and even though they use capitals in their name (argh, shouting!) there’s no way that I could feel pressured by something that sounds very similar to the casual art of drinking tea and eating cake!

Basically, its two chairs, one seems to be floating on top of the other, I’m not going to claim to understand what it means but I will tell you that it is a very cool design, lines are crisp, and the colour palette works really well.

Since MTP is a subscription service I guess I should probably mention slightly less fun stuff like price and postage. Unless there was some unforseen hiccup in production, tees arrive on doorsteps on the 3rd or 4th week of the month, and come in a cool shiny-yet-slightly-see-through silver plastic envelope. My package came with a few postcards of the previous month’s designs, but I don’t know if they are standard with every package or if they were put in my envelope so that I could get a better feel for the brand. In terms of price, they aren’t the cheapest tees in the world at $30-40 a month, but you are getting a very high quality product, I think they’re using custom blank tees, fitted (though quite stretchy), and incredibly soft. There’s no tag on the interior of the shirt, just their name, the tee size and edition number, which have have been printed with a slightly faded vintage-look print.

Costiness=$120 for 3 months, $210 for 6 months, $360 for 12 months URL

Click through for more pictures and close ups.
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Teetonic: Their Sixcities Design Festival competition has come to an end, and the heavyweight designers (including Wayne Hemingway and Peter Saville) have come up with some very nice designs. Well done TT (and yes, that is an Englishman congratulating a Scottish company, savour this moment guys!).

Monstar Clothing: MC are kicking off summer with a sale, personally I didn’t realise it was summer yet, but I guess with global warming we all have to shift our expectations a bit. the sale goes from today until the 28th (Monday), and from what I can tell, everything will be $10.

Brooklyn Industries: Live in Brooklyn? Think your dog is awesome? BI are holding casting calls for the ‘best’ dog in Brooklyn next month with the winner getting star treatment and lots of goodies (for the owner as well as the dog). Its a strange bit of marketing, but I do quite like it.

Jealous much?: I bought a touchscreen Prada phone, and I’ve been showing it off to everyone I meet, so why not mention it here (also, feel free to add me as a Flickr friend)?

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