Akumu Ink have taken things in a different direction for their latest design, putting a lighter twist on their usual dark designs by employing a cartoony style. I really like the way that the cute design and dark subject matter come together to create some weird kind of balance.

Me, I’d have made the skull in the speech bubble bigger, but you know what I’m like when it comes to oversize printing, so I guess that might not be to everyone’s taste. As ever, this tee is printed by Joey and Dora in Montreal on an American Apparel tee.

Costiness=$21 Tee Link (also available in other colours)

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Tags » akumu ink • American Apparel • Canada • death • Mens • Montreal • New Designs • releases • skull • skulls • Womens

In my previous looks at Akumu Ink I’ve mentioned more than once that they’re pretty dark (in the literal and figurative senses), not that that’s a bad thing, but having designs that are always printed onto a black tee are going to pigeon-hole you a bit. I guess that Summer must have arrived in Montreal (here’s some bad pictures I took when I was there 6 years ago), because they’ve seen the light(er colours) and are now offering some of their designs on Army (olive green) for the guys and raspberry for the girls.In addition to adding two new colours to their palette they’ve also added two new designs to their inventory. Death’s Embrace (shown in raspberry) is a rather Nightmare Before Christmas style design in which a skeleton is shooting itself in the head. The skull on the character is actually handpainted, whilst the rest of the body is screenprinted, and AI sent over some exclusive for HYA (and Kat) that I’ve put at the bottom of the post. The Black Rose (shown in Army), has a really cool print placement that wraps the thorny stem of the rose around the side of the tee.One point that I raised in my sample review was that AI put a pretty large print of their logo on the lower back of each tee, one of the joys of individually screen printing each t-shirt is that if you don’t want that logo being printed there, you don’t have to have it printed there, you just need to let them know and they’ll sort that out for you.

One last bit of AI news, they’re going to be at ‘Northern Ink Xposure‘ at the Toronto Hilton, June 13th-15th. I don’t really know much about tattoos, but if you do, and you’re in Toronto, then I imagine you’d want to swing by this event.

Akumu Ink

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Tags » akumu ink • American Apparel • Canada • Exclusive • green • New Designs • pink • placement • releases • skulls • tattoos

I have to make a little admission about this tee before I get to the meat of the review. Usually, when someone e-mails me and asks if I’d like a sample, I tell them my size (although I do tell people to send whatever size they want), my address, and I don’t pick a design to be sent to me. I didn’t do that with Akumu Ink, I asked them to send me this design (I didn’t insist upon it, it was just a request) because I really liked its look, and I thought that a detailed print like this would test AIs mettle.

In what seems to be a recurring theme, I wore this t-shirt on a night out with my friends so that I could get the opinions of people that don’t spend all their time writing about t-shirts, thinking about t-shirts and talking about t-shirts. They all liked it, hell, even my mother liked it, which surprised me since a t-shirt with a horror theme could be a bit heavy for some people, I think that the print is a genuinely arresting image, and printing it in blood red could make a few people a bit uncomfortable. But if you’re into this style of design, which I am, it is very easy to like, especially with the use of negative space being used so effectively.

Like I said in the first paragraph, part of the reason why I asked Akumu Ink to send this t-shirt was because I thought that the print would be a decent test of their printing skills, or at least the skills of their printers if they get some other company to do it. They passed the test with flying colours, although I guess that in the case of this tee its just flying colour, but they still did a damn good job anyway. The print is pretty thick, ensuring that the colour is solid and vibrant, so I guess there could be some cracking issues down the line, but it would be a long way down the line, so you probably don’t have much to worry about. The t-shirt itself is of AA stock, so its fair to say that you know what to expect there. One cool little extra for this tee is the toe tag that has been attached to the hang tag. It is customised for each order, stating your name, place of death (your address), what caused your death (the name of the t-shirt) and a case number (your order number presumably,mine said ‘666′). One word of warning, there’s a pretty large logo print on the lower back, which I’m sure some of you will hate.

Costiness=$21 Link

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Tags » akumu ink • black • blood • horror • negative space • red • review • Reviews • T-shirts

When you look at the designs that Akumu Ink puts out, you’d think that they were a pretty dark and brooding bunch, and yet in their e-mails they’re really nice, they even use smiley emoticons!

AI have dropped two new designs, one featuring broken hearts and one featuring skulls, ahhhh, classic emo design fodder. I really like the placement of the heart design, the way that they rise up from the bottom of the tee, almost as if the wearer was being swallowed up by a sea of misery (umm, I might be reading too much into it). The skull design is a bit hardcore for me, seeing as I’m not a fan of impaling heads on spikes, but I can imagine a lot of people liking it. Both tees are available in mens and womens sizes, printed on American Apparel blanks.

Costiness=$25 Links: Impaled/Shattered

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Tags » akumu ink • American Apparel • black • emo • hearts • Mens • skulls • T-shirts • Womens

Akumu Ink have got a couple of new shirt available, including the one above, Nevermore, which is in that most rock of colourways, black-on-black.

They’ve also got a few tees with 15% off, which isn’t exactly a massive price cut, but it might sway those of you that were on the fence about buying a tee. One last little thing, and I’m not sure if this is new or a long-running promo of thiers, but if you spend over $50 you get a free tote bag.

Akumu Ink

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Tags » $15 • akumu ink • black • discount • sale • t-shirt • tote bag

So, ever wanted to wear a horror movie poster on your chest?

Admittedly, this design doesn’t commit seppuku (italicised to make me feel smart) by going the whole hog and putting in words and other movie promo staples, but the image really reminded me of the style of horror movie posters. I’m annoyed at myself for not coming up with a decent description of this tee, because it is quite clearly amazing, but I refuse to go down that line of ‘this tee is so good I don’t need to write about it’ since that’s just lazy blogging. Luckily, writing about my inability to articulate myself counts as writing in my book, so this post is done baby!

Costiness=$21 Link

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Tags » • akumu ink • black • face • horror • red