I finally stumbled upon a couple of guys who like T-shirts as much as we do!
If you haven’t seen the currently-going-viral video “T-Shirt War,” it’s a cute little production, which used over 200 t-shirts in its making.
This is the stop-motion You Tube equivalent of a flip book cartoon. But, it’s fun to watch.
Enjoy T-Shirt War!
Dave
You know it’s time to post a blog entry when not one but two people send you the same article link in the same day. Even if for two different reasons. Plus, it’s been a while anyway.
John, my partner in creativity and the other co-founder of Channel Shirt, sent me the first link to the now relatively infamous “Three Wolf Moon” shirt that has taken the internet by storm. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can read about it here:
http://tinyurl.com/3wolf-article
“Now,” says he, “if only we can get an internet fad like that to happen on one of OUR shirts!” I’m paraphrasing, but he has such a good point. In this day and age of LoLCats, Leeroy Jenkins, and FAILblogs, marketing seems less about having a good product or a good business plan, and more about having your quirky turn of phrase be the unpredictable, runaway hit on the internet this week.
I think I keep treating internet memes like these as fads. I can feel myself being righteous even as I type this. They SHOULD be fads. They should be gone by next month, barely to be remembered a year later. And yet, they continue on. Not only do they continue on, they seem to snowball like the lies of a guilty teenager. Or an average politician.
Just recently, they had ROFLCon: an entire convention all about these internet memes. My mind reels. They might as well have a convention about bell bottom pants, or Beanie Babies. Wait… do they?
Yet, it appears these new fads are here to stay. I should just write all my blog posts in motivational poster format.
Of course, I’m just jealous. I’d be happy, and quite a bit less bitter, if the sales of one of our own funny t-shirts increased by 2000% because of an internet fluke. And, the Three Wolf Moon guys are laughing all the way to the bank.
Meanwhile, my brother sent me the same link. He suggests we do a Three Hippo Moon shirt. What a great parody. And, I love a good parody. Maybe we’ll make that our next hippo shirt. Maybe I can get the Nooma Nooma dance kid to wear it for promotion…
Dave
For my first tutorial, I figured I’d start easy. Well, easy NOW. As with everything, this stuff was rocket science to me before I learned it. And, as usual, John had to talk to me like a 5 year old and send me pretty pictures until I understood it.
Many t-shirt designs have text. So, to make them, we use fonts. Fonts are often kinda lame when it comes to spacing between letters. Sometimes they look fine. But, usually, they don’t. They have gaps between some letters, and not enough space between others. To fix this, we can use tracking and kerning in Photoshop. And, with only a minute or two of work, you can make text look brilliant and professional, rather than clumsy and amateurish.
So, take a look at this little video tutorial to learn how to use tracking and kerning to improve the quality of your text designs.
Enjoy!
Hi, all!
As you know, my name is Dave, one of the supernatural creative forces behind Channel Shirt. As you may know, I’m a computer guy. What I’m NOT is a designer or artist, by any means. I have trouble drawing stick figures, in fact. So, I tend to leave that stuff to John, since he could draw the Mona Lisa while in a coma.
But, I couldn’t leave all the work to John. Especially because I have t-shirt ideas, too! So, I’ve taken to learning some things about how to design and create the graphics for some of our t-shirts. And, I figured, if I have learned something valuable along my journey, maybe someone else will benefit from it as well.
So, this blog section is designed to be a place where I can post tips, tricks, tutorials, and other information that I have learned about anything to do with making t-shirts. it might be useful if you have ever dreamed of making a shirt and selling it, or, heck, making an entire t-shirt business. Either way, I hope you enjoy and benefit from the stuff I’ve had to learn from the school of hard knocks!
Welcome to the awesome new design and layout of Channel Shirt!
John and I have been working tirelessly to bring you a new, enhanced site design, which is as sleek and sexy in form as it is slick and moxie in functionality.
Channel Shirt now has a cool remote control to help navigate through the various different channels, each of which has a different genre of shirt design for you to enjoy, and then purchase. Also, in the new design, we’ve added links to the shirts we WISH we had designed. Yup, we’ve chosen some of our favorite shirt designs from all over the web and added them to our site, so Channel Shirt has not only cool original designs, but also designs from our friends and partners from around the web.
Lastly, this, the blog, is finally live. We’ve had so many ideas we’ve wanted to post, but kept putting it off, until the new design was running. Well, now that the site is working, watch out! We’ll have lots of new categories and posts up soon. The Designing Dave section will be host to cool tips and tutorials on various aspects of computing, design, and other stuff that I’ve learned along the road to t-shirt success on the internet. We anticipate sharing what we’re learning about internet marketing, CafePress tips, and just about anything else we think might make a difference for other young, struggling entrepreneurs, who are eager to learn.
In the meantime, please browse the new site, enjoy our shirt designs, stock up on presents for your friends and family by buying every shirt that makes you laugh, and feel free to drop us a line, either by e-mail or blog comment, so that we know we’re not alone in the universe!
Cheers!
Done reading our blog, and ready to buy some shirts?
