Experiment with T-Shirts

T-shirts are one of the more interesting forms of expressions in the current age. Where once we were required to actually stop and talk to each other to exchange political ideologies, favorite bands, and the occasional joke, we now simply emblazon our chests with a picture or slogan and broadcast it to the world. Perhaps it's just a symptom of our being bombarded with advertising since birth, but I for one am a t-shirt addict.

Some of my favorites from my personal collection:

• Nixon in '78


• +20 Shirt of Smiting


• Monkey-With-A-Gun


• Chillin' Like a Villain, San Quentin State Prison

As you can see, my personal aesthetic leans toward the humorous, obtuse references to sub-cultures and the non-sequitur. I'm constantly on the hunt for new shirts for myself and my friends and sometimes walk a thin line between "artistic expression of ideas" and "just plain tacky".

I'd come across CafePress before when looking for t-shirts. The idea is quite clever. They allow anybody to upload images which you can then either buy for yourself or re-sell in a little boutique shop. They take care of all the details like charging credit cards, printing the shirt and shipping it.

Their catalog of shirts is MASSIVE. With some 18 million products in their marketplace (they don't just do shirts, they also do mugs, mousepads, buttons, books, CDs, etc.) you can be sure to find something in there that catches your fancy, and if you don't, your dream shirt is only a PhotoShop session away.

I've often thought about creating a few shirts for myself and maybe even making a few bucks on the side, but I don't have any illusions about my artistic talent or my ability to come up with ideas that can stick out amongst 18 million, so I never bothered.

That is, until I decided that it'd also be a decent experiment in how difficult (or easy) it is for a boutique web-store with (hopefully) a few worthwhile products to succeed in the current state of the internet.

So I took the leap: Clash Culture T-Shirts.

I'll let you know how it goes in follow-up posts.