Another reminder that some of our products will soon, sadly be unavailable. Its a little Spreadshirt spring clean, clearing some space on the shelf ready for summer. Some other reasons
Archive for March, 2007
…You provide the punchline! Best one gets the glory of being Spreadshirt’s Most Humourous…
A t shirt walks into a bar and asks for a drink. The barman says:
LaFraise is celebrating Women’s Month with a Women’s Week. With designs and new special products especially for the ladies. A personal favourite: the v-necked Zen shirt. Or try out the spicy set shown here, available here.
Slate also takes on “zombie brands” - reinventing the un-cool brands of days of yore. Unearthing the brands that lie deep in our psyche seems too good to miss. Companies use the brand for a mash-up: “same name, different product”. Including: Tab Energy, Ford Taurus, Radar mag. And Vanity Fair, which has in the last decades come back with a vengeance (and just recently launched over here in Germany. You can listen to the article as a podcast.
Slate.com takes on the growing American Apparel machine. The news: “American Apparel was taken over by Endeavor Acquisition Corporation, which plans to open 800 new stores around the world, in addition to the 145 that are already in existence”. The writer, Lucinda Rosenfeld, asks if the American Apparel enterprise will maintain its edge, unlike the Gap another company that soared, and then fell, on cotton basics.
Rosenfield makes three AA categories: “hideous”-chique, risque-chique* and boring-chique** (”wardrobe basics as luxury objects”). And then tries to weigh, not as successfully as the triumvirate, global economics in a couple of paragraphs. If you really care, Yahoo has an article with more speculation with numbers.
*Inspiring my personal favourite line of this piece: “body-conscious fashions for people who are younger than you and who get laid more often”. I was afraid of that.
** That’s what we stock, with an emphasis on the chique.
Finally, the big break for air guitarists. CSiRO have invented a shirt with imbedded sensors that interpret your strumming on your tum into actual sounds. How does it work? The scientists* over at CSIRO found a way to “recognise and interpret arm movements and relay this wirelessly to a computer for audio generation”. You can even it do it tipsy: “There are no trailing cables to get in way or trip over”!
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I thought the joy of air guitaring is that you got to imagine that you could sound like Twisted Sister, without having the actual “talent” of Twisted Sister. I’m sure there are many talented, talented air guitarists out there just waiting for this big break. But for me, I’d rather keep on projecting my talent, than actually be responsible for the sounds coming out. Although, I guess you can always turn down the volume.
* not rocket scientists, rockin’ scientists. get it? ha!**
** not even my own joke
The shirt that gives you a “virtual hug” everytime your phone rings. Someone send you a “hug”, your mobile phone tells your Bluetooth, which tells your shirt to hug you, just like that friend would. Made by CuteCircuit. Inventors, among things of wearables integrating apparel and your tech needs. For example, the need to be able to be virtually connected. Get sleeves that wrinkle at the murmer of incoming call. Or the need to wear multiple outfits in a day: the morphing skirt (”The garment is designed to allow a user to transform her style during the course of a day out, allowing for easily adapting to different contexts and situations, such as work meetings, a walk in the city, a night out, enhancing the style of the wearer”).
But back to the Hug Shirt. According to the website, it’s “not meant to replace human contact, but to make you happy if you are away for business or other reasons and you miss your friends and loved ones!”. Ah, the perfect blend of “technology and emotion”. CuteCircuit tells us that “Humans need physical contact with each other. Technology should allow for a pleasant Human-Human Interaction”. Via Bluetooth. This makes me all cynical. But what do you think? Is this interesting? Would you buy one? Would you give it as a gift to your paranoid enemies?
PS: And to answer your question, CuteCircuit assures you: “And yes! It’s completely washable!”
Today, March 15, a number of musical artists were born. Among them:
a) Markus Hoppus (Blink 182, +44)
b) Bret Michaels (Poison)
c) Dee Snider (Twisted Sister)
d) Ry Cooder
e) Phil Lesh (The Grateful Dead)
If you had to choose which one was never born, which one would you choose?
Also born on this day, the man who inspired this homage: “In response to all the questions about his eyes — They are crystaline blue - very striking in person. They do sparkle. They look flat in the photo. Trust me - they are not.” See those, in-real-life-three-dimensional eyes here.
There’s a really great tshirt from the tshirt subscription service T-post designed from the geniuses at Imaginary Foundation. Signing up to t-post will get you a new shirt through your letterbox every six weeks. The designs are exclusive to T Post. Its a little surprising that people are willing to pay upfront for a product that they haven’t seen, and can’t opt out of owning. There are four or five of these service’s around though, so there must be an audience.
T-Posts analysis of the humble tshirt is also really great:
“The message of media today is its own ubiquity–it’s everywhere, all the time. We no longer just make or consume media. Rather, we are media. Once upon a time, a t-shirt was just a lightweight, knitted, pullover shirt. Now it’s an instrument of meaning, a mode of conversation, quite literally a piece of media that we slip into every morning like a hot bath.”
We’re really happy to be the people working behind the scene’s to allow you to create that meaning, have that conversation and, erm …..put water in your bath?
Links: Tpost, Boing Boing write-up, Imaginary Foundation
*Shameless re-post alert*
Our US counterparts are continuing their really popular webinar series with a double whammy of informative sessions. For anyone who couldn’t attend the previous one’s they are archived on broadjam
Hitting the Right Chord with Your Band Merch
Great merch can help you and your fans promote your band. Join us Wednesday, March 14 at 5pm EST to get tips on branding your band, designing trendy merchandise, and secrets on how to successfully create shops that sell. Click here to reserve your virtual seat.
40 Minutes That Take the Mystery Out of Great Shirt Design
We know some things you dont know
and were sharing! Join us Thursday, March 15 at 2pm EST when well reveal the best practices in t-shirt design weve learned over the years. Well cover print techniques, vector graphics and more! Click here to reserve your virtual seat.
