One of the things I find in the t-shirt world is that if you want to hire a designer, it isn’t an easy task, there’s a lack of transparency, and there’s an awful lot of leg work. Maybe that process makes the final product better, but I can’t help it could be streamlined. Famed t-shirt designer AJ Dimarucot has stepped into the breach to help clear the cloudy waters somewhat by creating a site called Hire A T-Shirt Designer that is essentially a folio of t-shirt designers. There’s an image of a designer’s work, and a link to them, hopefully this will make it easier for line owners to discover designers eith the end result being that there will be more good t-shirts in the world, which is essentially my mission in life, getting people to wear good t-shirts (… I’m wasting my life).
I like what AJ is doing here but I feel I have to go full disclosure on this one. I’m working on a site that has a similar subject, but has a much larger scope, it’s early days so I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but if my partner and I can pull it off (oh hell yeah it’s a collaboration!) then it will become a great site that the whole t-shirt community will benefit from, which will be no mean feat but it could be big.
It’s exceptionally rare that I’ll post about a tee being reprinted, especially a
Threadless one, but it’s almost universally accepted that this design is 110% badass, so I just had to mention it. Oh, and why’s it printed on American Apparel, I thought Threadless only used their own shirts now?
Costiness=$20 Available from Threadless
You know whose very, very good at creating t-shirt designs? AJ Dimarucot, that’s who. Frustratingly, on the product page for this design there is a photo of the lady above wearing a
hoodie with this design on it, but there is no option to buy it… drat and double drat,
Threadless, stop hoarding the
hoodies for yourselves!
Costiness=$18 Available from Threadless
When I first mentioned the
2008 Bestees I said I wasn’t going to provide any picks because I don’t follow
Threadless closely enough to make an informed decision, but now that they’re down to
20 finalists from the
331 designs released last year I feel as if I can have a stab at it. I don’t really know how I should be judging this, because the name of the award is ‘design of the year’, yet I feel as if really we should be picking the t-shirt of the year. For example, I think that
RED by Kneil Melicano is a fantastic image (as is
“The food Chain” by Olly Moss), but as a t-shirt it doesn’t particularly wow me, you know, I’d wear it, but I don’t think it would be a showpiece in my tee collection, so what are people meant to be voting for, the best image, or the best t-shirt as a whole?
For me, it should be the best t-shirt, which is why I eventually decided that “When Pandas Attack” by Jimiyo and AJ Dimarucot was my pick of the bunch. It’s probably indicative of how my tastes have slowly moved away from the stereotypical ‘Threadless style’ that I would pick a design that most people would probably feel was more suited to Design By Humans, but I must admit I was pretty tempted to pick Fail by Budi Satria Kwan because it’s so damn cute, or “Foam Monster in Emotional Reunion with Severed Limb” by Aled Lewis because it’s so damn funny.
So, any bets on Threadless reprinting all 20 finalists when they announce the Bestees?
