This is a pretty cool idea, I know that in practical terms you could just draw the shape of a tee in a regular sketchbook and just draw inside the lines, but this is a really fun way of constraining yourself to the shape and it might actually even be a useful tool for t-shirt designers that don’t do everything on their computer with a tablet. Each book contains 170 pages of 150gsm paper, and whilst at $15 there are cheaper notebooks out there, this one certainly is unique.
Yes, I think $75 is a bit steep for a book, but this one is a fairly special package (with the hard cover case and sketch book), and if you’re cheap like me you can still get the regular Threadless book (which I reviewed and liked) for $15.
I’ve got the regular edition of the Threadless book on my desk right now (review and giveaway coming up tomorrow), but I thought I’d share this video of the special edition that will be released soon, looks like a really cool package.
The more I learn about Wrongwroks the more I find that he’s actually “kind of a big deal” in Asia. At a recent toy festival in Taiwan people were queuing up two and a half hours early to be in line for a signing he was doing, and they were waiting in the rain!
They were waiting in the rain because they wanted to be among the first to get their hands on Wrongwroks latest release, a book chronicling all the releases so far, as well as showing off a few previously unseen snaps from photoshoots. The book can be purchased on its own or as part of a box set in which you will get a limited edition silkscreened box and a “Supreme Ripped Off” t-shirt. There’s only 300 of these sets available worldwide, so I guess they’ll go pretty fast judging from Wrongwroks popularity.
Spreadshirt were kind enough to send over a copy of the book they put together along with Zeixs for the posts that I wrote about the recent International T-Shirt Day activities (peep some pics of the Berlin festivities here). Since I’ve got a fairly decent collection of t-shirt related books now I thought it might be cool for me to give them reviews just like I do with the tees.
When I first heard about this book I thought that it was going to be a how-to guide about t-shirt design, teaching people who were new to the industry about what makes a design ‘good’. As I discovered, this wasn’t the case at all, so I guess you could say that the title is a little bit misleading, but if you spend just a few seconds reading the description its pretty clear that this book isn’t about helping new designers, its about showcasing the best designs that have been submitted to Spreadshirt.
It’s a fairly weighty slab of dead tree, it’s diminutive page sizes being more than made up by the fact that there are 670 pages for your perusal. In terms of content, things are kept simple, the opening few pages are what you’d expect from a book about t-shirts, a bit of text about how tees are so prevalent in society now, and now that came to be that way. Once you’ve got the text out of the way we get down to the real meat of the book, the tees. Each page is dedicated to a t-shirt design, sometimes placed onto a t-shirt, sometimes just the artwork, and there’s also the name, location and website of the artist to make sure that you can get hold of the design if you really want it. The book is split into categories (logos, typographic, characters, illustrative, political & pattern) which I guess would be useful if you’re a designer trying to get some inspiration for a project, as long as you keep it at just inspiration, of course!
There’s some really great designs in the book, I’d love to rip out all the pages and stick them on my wall as a massive collage, but there just seems to be something wrong about ripping the pages out of a book that you actually like.
If you want to learn how to screen print from anyone, a company that makes really cool tees is a pretty good choice. I’ve never attempted screen printing, but I’d imagine that if I were going to give it a go then I’d need a fair amount of instruction, and my SpideyAndy-sense is telling me [...]
![13 Zeixs x Spreadshirt: T shirt Design Book [Review]](http://media.hideyourarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/13.jpg "Zeixs x Spreadshirt: T shirt Design Book [Review]")
![23 Zeixs x Spreadshirt: T shirt Design Book [Review]](http://media.hideyourarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/23.jpg "Zeixs x Spreadshirt: T shirt Design Book [Review]")
![33 Zeixs x Spreadshirt: T shirt Design Book [Review]](http://media.hideyourarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/33.jpg "Zeixs x Spreadshirt: T shirt Design Book [Review]")
![44 Zeixs x Spreadshirt: T shirt Design Book [Review]](http://media.hideyourarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/44.jpg "Zeixs x Spreadshirt: T shirt Design Book [Review]")
