The second of tee to fall out of the envelope from
Your Eyes Lie this week was Skull Bow. Well, I presume its called Skull Bow, YEL don’t really name their tees, but thats what the product ID says so I’m going to roll with it. In my review earlier this week I spoke a bit about the passion that YEL have for their product and what they’ve been through to get where they are, and I’m not going to repeat myself about that, so check out the first review if you’re after some background on the company.
It seems like I’ve spent a lot of this week talking about how it isn’t necessarily that important to ‘get’ a design or understand the meaning behind a t-shirt, and when I’m presented with an image of a skull with a bow-tie wrapped around its non-existent neck, with three rings in the skull where the ear should be, I’m inclined to suggest that not understanding the meaning of the shirt is okay here too, rather than attempting some ill-informed pop-psychology. I really like the image itself, the black on white print in the photocopy style gives it a washed-out grittiness, whilst it also has a few lines around the top of the skull that make it look like an illustration that you’d find in an old school textbook. I do have to take issue with the three ear rings though, they give it an almost cartoon-ish quality that doesn’t sit too well with what I regard as a fairly macabre image, even if the bow-tie is probably there to provide some comic relief.
The quality is impressive, I know YEL spent a long time creating a stock tee to print on and I think all the effort was worth it, they really have produced a beautifully soft, high-quality t-shirt that I know lasts well with washing and doesn’t lose its shape. The print quality is decent too, and doesn’t fade too much with repeated washings, although I think that tees of this style are well suited to a vintage look, so fading probably wouldn’t be as bigger deal as usual if it were to occur, I guess.
Costiness=£15.50 Link
I’ve got the feeling that there will be people out there that won’t
get this range of tees, because they are pretty bizarre, I’ll be the first to grant you that, but I think they’re funnier than a lot of ‘funny’ pun-based tees out there.
Basically, AerWear Designs take photos and puts captions with them that on their own aren’t really that funny, but when you put them onto a t-shirt, and you don’t know any of the people in the photo, its just about weird enough to go past ‘what the hell?’ to something that’s pretty funny, although like I said earlier, you’ve got to get it.
With a range like this, you’d think that quality would be an after-thought, in fact, I guess if you were going for a really a authentic look then the worse the quality the better, but AerWear actually offer each design on a ‘standard’ t-shirt and the hipsters favourite, American Apparel. Prices are very good too, just $9.95 for a standard tee and $12.95 for one printed on AA stock.
AerWear Designs
I love how
Johnny Cupcakes seems to have an attitude that magic can happen, and he makes it happen. Its an attitude that I like, and would like to emulate, but unfortunately I don’t own a successful t-shirt business, so my ideas remain stuck in my ideas book (I really do have one).The above picture is a good example of that. Johnny Cupcakes is opening a store on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles and he’s got the guys who make engineering projects for Disney to create some custom made contraptions that will help to make the shop extra special . That green thing that JC is stood next to is just a tiny corner of a massive 10 foot tall vintage oven that will be in the shop (more pics in the thumbs), presumably non-functioning. I can’t imagine how cool that the shop is going to look in mid-June when it opens, so I’ll be keeping an eye on JCs blog for more photos.
Just so that this post wasn’t a total tease, this weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) you can get free shipping at johnnycupcakes.com by using the coupon code UPS step four of the checkout process. Please note this only applies to US Ground shipping, sorry my international friends.
Johnny Cupcakes
Artefacture are a company that just nail it for me every time, and their Spring 08 range is no exception to that. The tees range from $28 to $32 and are printed on a variety of tees, including American Apparel, organic bamboo and their own in-house SuperLux Tee cut, so make sure you check the size chart before making a purchase. More pics after the jump.
Artefacture [click to continue…]
At first I thought “ha, cool”, but then I realised that this would likely be a bit of a nightmare, there’s a reason why people don’t make carpets like t-shirts. I’m not ragging on the crafter since its a cool project, but I can’t imagine it lasting very well. If I were to attempt something similar (and if I were to have a HYA-only office, I think I probably would) I’d lay the tees on the floor and then have a thick layer of glass or perspex raised up a couple of inches above it. That’s probably overkill, but hey, you
know it would look awesome.
T-Shirt Rug @ Instructables
I guess its kind of an aggressive message, but I really like the way that they’ve got an image running across all the words, and the massive print looks pretty good too.Costiness=$24
Link
