
Ahhh, classic Glennz.
Costiness=$21.95 Buy it at Glennz
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Time for something a little bit different from the usual cotton-based items that we see on HYA, iPhone cases. You may be cocking an eyebrow and wondering if I chose to take this review just because I wanted a new case for my beloved iPhone, but there’s actually a lot more crossover here than you would think. Much like t-shirts, a few companies dominate the iPhone case marketplace, and many of those cases tend to be utilitarian and not particularly inspiring when it comes to design, which is why it’s good that there are people out there like Life in Plastiq who are making really interesting cases with attractive and arty designs on them. And yeah, I thought it would be cool to have something to jazz up my phone!
Life in Plastiq are hunting out designers that they like (often designers from the t-shirt world, they have a couple of Threadless alumni in their catalogue), but they do also operate a design competition to find new talent and designs to go on their cases. Winning designers are paid $200 upfront and then 15% off sales up to a cap of $1,500. With the success of design competitions in the clothing world it’s hardly surprising that someone has seen a gap in the market with a design contest for iPhone cases since they are perfectly sized for artwork and as something that people carry around with them just about 24/7 they are something that people want to customise to express themselves.
The cases themselves add little bulk to the phone, made of a hard plastic that I think it would take a decent amount of effort to break when off your phone (I did bend one with my hands but it just felt wrong to try and break it, and it did spring right back into shape), if it’s on your phone I don’t see any way in which it could break. Fitment is nice and tight, there’s no small gaps at any point around the edges, which means it does a good job of not letting dust in, after a couple of weeks in my pocket when I switched from one case to the other there wasn’t much dust back there, much less than with my Griffin case. The dock connector isn’t obstructed, and nor is the headphone jack in the top, which is a problem I had with the case for the GoPano, which was a bit annoying that every time I wanted to use my headphones (and the only time I do that is the gym or in my car, and the gym is a fairly high risk area for phone droppage), so it’s good that this case doesn’t require removal for any normal usage of the phone.
If you want something that will make for a shockproof you have to go up to a much larger case but that is of course going to be something to consider with any case of this style which doesn’t add too much to the form factor of the phone. Personally, I feel that it provides enough protection, I’m a bit clumsy and have dropped it on the wooden floor in my house a couple of times and whilst my heart was in my mouth there was not visible damage to the phone and it’s still working fine, which is all you can hope for from a case as far as I can tell. With the cases being high gloss they can get small scratches on them. After a couple of weeks with mine in my pocket (the same pocket as my keys) it has developed some small scratches. You have to look for them, and they aren’t deep at all, but it’s worth mentioning that over time that they could become noticeable on the sparser designs, the patterned designs will show up any scratches much less. This isn’t an issue that’s specific to LiP cases, very few cases are scratch resistant, and of course the case is there so that it gets scratched and not your expensive iPhone.
The designs are completely subjective, different strokes for different folks and all that, but I think that if you’re the kind of person to visit and read Hide Your Arms then you would find something to like amongst the designs which are available at the moment. Hopefully that speaks a lot of the quality of artists they’ve been attracting in these early days and is something that they can maintain as the move along.
Price wise you are looking at $19 for a case, and that includes free worldwide shipping, which I think is about right considering that with every sale there is money going to the artist, and I do like that connection that when you buy something you support an independent artist even though you’re buying from a larger company (not that Life in Plastiq are huge, but you know what I mean). However, at the moment they’re actually running a massive sale which they just extended to July 8th, in which everything in store is half price, so you can have an artist designed case for your iPhone 4/4S for $9.50 all in, which seems like a pretty great deal to me.
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New start up Life in Plastiq offers artists with a new canvas by printing tee designs on iPhone snap cases. Featuring designs from a bunch of Threadless alumni like Procrastninjation from Anna-Maria Jung and Hello Again from orlandoSOYyo. The site is having a 50% off sale until Jun.30. And just for HYA readers, here’s an additional 20% coupon code “HYA20”, also valid until Jun.30.
Andy: This post is a little bit off the beaten track for HYA, but I do think there’s a lot of crossover between the tee and iPhone case world, especially when your artists have a t-shirt design background. That, and I have an iPhone so my interest is raised a bit more than with other non-clothing products.
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Pretty impressive stuff from Anything Goes, looks like they’ve put together some really nice quality products, and it’s cool to see them branching out to the bamboo iPhone case as well.
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Glennz designs are the good fit for the back of an iPhone, though I do feel that $34.95 is quite a lot for a case, than again I’m pretty cheap and I’m still using the Griffin one that Apple sent me when they had the handling issues during the launch phase of the iPhone 4.
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The guys who do all those Exploded designs are back with the Exploded 4s. It can be ordered individually, or as part of a Trilogy at www.teetrilogy.com.
Andy: I’ve always like these ‘exploded’ design and this is no exception.
This post was submitted by dion briggs.
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Dexter’s Laboratory meets Mythbusters in this shirt from Teefury.
Y’know, I’ve never seen Donnie Darko, judging by the amount of shirts about it, including this one from Qwertee, I probably should (lots of shirts usually = a good movie).
Shirt.Woot have a delightful 8-bit Ghostbusters design.
Strangely, RIPT also have a Ghostbusters shirt, though with a Muppets twist.
Glow in the dark shirt from The Yetee.
Nowhere Bad have a Portal inspired shirt.
OtherTees have a nice Sherlock design. Did anyone see the last episode of the current run last night? That show is so damn good.
24Tee are selling a familiar stormtrooper design.
TeeRaiders have a Firefly design that I didn’t need to Google to work out what it was.
Quite a pretty Twitter design from Stupidhurts.us.
GraphicLab have a Portal shirt on sale all this week.
Tee Mashups is closing, which is unfortunate, though at least they are being up front about things and are sending refunds to people that will not receive their shirts.
Star Wars comes to Shirt Punch today.
Not my kind of tee at DBH today, but interesting nevertheless.
Hey look, Tilteed are selling Greg Abbott’s lovely fox design again.
Glennz has turned five of his designs into iPhone wallpapers (may also work with other smartphones, I’m not sure).
Tony over at Wrongwroks has released a parka jacket in five different colours.
Perception Apparel have put three of their tees on sale for $10.
Halfcut Clothing have released a shirt to celebrate their involvement with the Blind Tiger Collective. Use coupon code hcc10 to get 10% off your order in their store.
The official press release for the Boston Tee Party has been released, it doesn’t cover much new ground but it’s nice to have it all be ‘official’.
Big Cartel let us know about some of their milestones in 2012, such as collective store sales of over $100,000,000 from their almost 200,000 stores.
Mighty Fine are running a competition with Marvel to find an amazing Avengers t-shirt design with the winner receiving up to $2,500.
Johnny Cupcakes has a couple of new tees, and a couple of new hats in his stores.
Here’s Rihanna wearing a Celine t-shirt that probably cost more than my whole outfit.
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I think that it’s a bit too much of a stretch to associate touchscreen phones with MC Hammer’s 1990 hit “U Can’t Touch This” (did anyone think it didn’t have the U at the start?), so I’m really not feeling this shirt. If I were a meme user I’d called this a C-C-C-C-C-Combo Breaker since A Better Tomorrow are usually brilliant, but thankfully I’m above that kind of thing.
Costiness=€22 Buy it at A Better Tomorrow
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This isn’t an iPhone blog, but when Gama Go told me about these cases they were too cute to just leave in my inbox, and they haven’t even been properly released yet! There’s 8 designs and they’ll be getting 10 of each in at the SoMa store in San Francisco soon before the cases are released properly in the summer. Read more about it here.
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I was going to put together a review of the Official Threadless iPhone app, but to be honest it probably wouldn’t be as good as this review by Coty Gonzales. He has provided a really well balanced and thorough review of the app pointing out the flaws/limitations he’s found and well as the really well implemented aspects of the app.
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I think I’ve mentioned my love of the iPhone in the past, in many ways I feel that it has ruined me a bit since I use it as an alarm which inevitably means I’ll spend an hour in bed before I go to sleep answering e-mails and researching stuff, but I still love it, and I’m glad that it’s ubiquitous enough now that people don’t think you’re fancy having an iPhone.
Costiness=€10.95 (inc. free shipping in Spain) Buy it at Lola Camisetas
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We’re offering a free Haymaker 3G iPhone slider case with any order on our site: sharpshirter.com
Just put the code: freecase in the checkout.
[Andy: That would be one badass looking iPhone, thanks for the submission!]
This post was submitted by Dan lachman.
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The popular Exploded series has expanded from tees to putting a couple of designs on hoodies and polos. I’d like to see the DaVinci style hoodie have a much larger print, but it simply isn’t possible with the kangaroo pocket in the way, so there’s not much they could do about that, but the Exploded 128 design is much more accommodating of that size of print. Hoodies are $33 (+$7 shipping), polos $33 (+$5 shipping), and they will both start shipping on October 29th.
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Costiness=$50 Available from Meninos
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Unlock your heart. Yep, there’s a t-shirt for that.
Anyone not get this?
Costiness=$20 Available from Milk & Eggs Co. [via Tee.ms]
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They seem to release something every week, but I get the feeling that this Summer release is much bigger than usual, with a load of cool hoodies, hats, and tees. There’s also a new iPhone skin in the mix, and an art print, in case you have too many clothes and some space on your walls. All the items can be found in the gallery.
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As a warning to all you Cafepress haters, this tee *might* be supplied by Cafepress, as the website links through to an ‘Exploded Items’ store (though there is just the phone on there) on Cafepress.
Costiness=$19 Buy it at ExplodedPhone.com
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