Androids Always Win!

Designer Richard Leighton has recently launched his own t-shirt range, which (unlike Christian Bale in Terminator Salvation) welcomes the upcoming Android revolution.

Get On Board - $22
The t-shirts chart the adventures of Mr Tuffy and friends as they take the bus, play tennis, and prepare for world domination.

Android vs. Cylon - $22
There's a free sticker pack with every order, and you can get 10% off when you sign up for The Dept. newsletter (or use the discount code THUNDERFROGS).

For those (like me) who haven't seen it yet:

Poketo Wallet

Poketo Artist Wallet Melissa Contreras 2 - £14.99. Wallet comes with a matching button badge.

Frankie

Scottish graphic designer (and past interviewee) Euan Gallacher recently knocked up this little number, a mash-up of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the t-shirt based marketing campaign for 80s band Frankie Goes To Hollywood.
I really like the shirt, but think it would work equally as well or better without the power cords/jumper cables fixed to Frankie's forehead. Interestingly, today t-shirt titan Threadless also released a pop-culture mashup tee based on Frankenstein's monster, which also has cables encircling the face.

Coincidence? Yeah, probably. Just thought I'd point it out.

Frankie Say Relax is available from Regal Clothing for £15 (save 10% with the discount code THUNDERFROGS), and Franklinstein is $18 from Threadless.

10% Off At Lush T-Shirts - And Poll!

Lush got in touch recently to let me know about their Summer '09 line of new designs, and I found this one amusing, though I know it'll be controversial:

So, I've decided to throw it open to you Thunderfroggers with a poll. You can find it at the top of the sidebar ->

If you don't like it, click NO.

If you like it, vote YES.

VOTE NOW!

If you want it, you can knock 10% off your order when you write I AM LUSH on their facebook wall.

Why you are what you wear

[The following is a guest post from Tim from Teecycle.org.]

We always hear that you are what you eat. And it's true.

But I think it's equally true that you are what you wear. This now goes deeper than temporary fashion.

Just like food, clothes are one of the basic necessities that over the years became a cheap, disposable, impersonal commodity. Anyone could buy a forgettable mass market shirt exactly the same as the one behind it (and the one behind it... and the one behind it...) like so many McDonald's chicken McNuggets.

But no more.

Organic, healthy, socially responsible food has grown a strong identify and a movement. Once just for hippies and health nuts, it's now virtually mainstream. I believe that clothes are thankfully headed down that same path.

I believe it will start with the T-shirt. The t-shirt is visible, versatile and allows for instant self-expression. On a small scale, the t-shirt is helping the clothing industry change on two fronts:

Socially responsibility
People care about where their clothes come from, just like they care about the origin of their food. Is it coming from a factory floor, or a family farm?

The same questions are now being asked of clothes. There are protests over sweatshop labor. Patagonia is one example of a clothing company that lives its environmental philosophy. And American Apparel has made organic t-shirts sexy.


Individualism
Organics are the fastest growing sector of the American food economy, and now cater to an incredible variety of tastes that can't be found on a Value Menu. In the same way, T-shirts satisfy individual cravings we can't fill with a rack of pre-packed designs.

I don't have to belabor this point home with readers of this blog. If you're reading this, you don't fit in neatly to the T-shirt mass market, whether you find your limited edition artistic designs at Threadless or you create your own at Spreadshirt.

These two fronts mirror the organic food movement, that has been championed by both hippies (who are all about the social responsibility) and upscale foodies (who are about the taste, presentation and style).

I didn't consciously have this philosophy in mind when I set off to create Teecycle.org one year ago. I just knew I liked the time-worn character of thrift store T-shirts, and I thought mass market t-shirts were incredibly wasteful.

I started selling one-off used-shirts for $7 apiece and donating a dollar of each to restore urban rivers. Thunderfrogs graciously wrote about it back then.

Now we've finally introduced original designs printed on blank, USED shirts. It's pretty exciting.

I also feel that with these original designs, we're fulfilling both of the key principles of the new economy clothes movement: Social responsibility, and artistic expression.

Bon Appetit!

Kittens in Mittens

Hi there, my name is Lauren and I'm an illustrator and a friend of Andrew's who has very kindly let me post on his wonderful blog. Recently I have started to put my creative talents to some use, making cards and prints of my work to sell online.

The shop is on Etsy, an amazing website made up of little shops full of beautiful hand-crafted pieces. My shop is called Kittens in Mittens and you can check it out here.

Andy: You can also check out more of Lauren's fantastic illustrations on her website and blog.

Top 5 "The Wire" T-Shirts

While The Wire may be old news to our American cousins, it's only just taking off here in the UK, having finally been picked up by one of the terrestrial channels.

HBO's gritty drama takes us on a vicarious trip to Baltimore, Maryland (nicknamed locally Bodymore, Murderland) where we see the motivations and machinations of everyone from the low-bottom dope-fiends like the lovable Bubbles to the idealistic (but soon corrupted) Mayor Carcetti.



One of the show's best characters is Omar Little, a homosexual stick-up artist who robs drug dealers for a living.



How does a man rob drug dealers for eight or nine years, and live to tell about it?

A day at a time, I suppose.

The charismatic Senator Clay Davis is a paragon of corruption, accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and campaign contributions - and getting away with it.



Here's one of my favourite scenes, in which drug dealer D'Angelo Barksdale tries to explain the finer points of chess to Bodie and Wallace in terms they will understand.



I need a re-up in the low rises. Hit me on my burner, yo.

Shirt Fight Announcements for May 15th

Shirt Fight announced their new winner this week, and that wasn't even the biggest news. They also dropped some good news on their fans, announcing they had taken the advice of their design community in these three areas:

1. They have increased their max print size from 15" x 17" to 17.25" x 23.5".


2. They will be using metallic inks and foils.


3. They will be increasing their color output by printing four color process.

For those of you who are curious about the change in print size, they've provided us with a good example:



They are relatively new to the crowd sourcing game and it's good to see that they're paying attention to their community. Keep swinging away Shirt Fight!

This post was guest written by Blake from You Design It where they are t-shirt fanatics and focus on custom t-shirt printing.

Game Over, Man

^ Here's an idea I had for a t-shirt today, knocked up with the help of youdesignit. Note the displaced o, used to denote the crack in Bill Paxton's delivery of the line.


... mostly.

20% Off At 80s Tees

Save 20% at 80sTees!

Use Discount Code:
RadGrad
Hurry! Offer expires May 15, 2009.

^ How cool is the Munch muppet?

Beetnik Aesthetics $10 Sale

"Beetnik recently reached 1,000 followers on twitter (woohooo!) so I thought it would be appropriate to have a $10 sale to celebrate. Everything is just $10, including the skyline belts. I’ve you’ve had your eye on something but didn’t feel like paying full price, now is the time to get it!"

"(Skyline belts are very limited stock, and this sale probably won’t last very long - so don’t hesitate)"

Bang Bang T-Shirts Restock

Save money on classic Bang Bang T-Shirts tees by ordering now; new stock is expected in the next couple of weeks.

Act quick because prices will go back up when the stock arrives, and numbers are limited.

These are the shirts, currently on presale:
My pick of the bunch - the stormtrooper tee, naturally.

Q: What do stormtroopers do when they're not on duty?

A: Same as the rest of us of course, chill out with a beer and chips and watch stormtrooper porn.

Wait, what?

My Liver Hates Me, Though I'm Not Dead Yet.

^^ These.
Hat tip: Micah

50% Off At Goodie Two Sleeves

^ That.

Don't Forget About The DBH Sale!

^ This.

Origins of Swine Flu and Swine Flu T-shirts

This post is reproduced with the kind permission of 101 Tees. Check out more meme and pop culture tee posts on their blog.

Origins of Swine Flu and Swine Flu T-Shirts:

In the world of t-shirts no topic or subject is sacred. For example, literally within the hour of breaking news about the Swine Flu, t-shirts about the event appeared on Cafe Press and Zazzle.

Here are a few of the Swine Flu t-shirts that are available from Cafe Press:

I guess it is just a sign of how fast things move in today's wired world, or maybe it is just a reflection of how low online t-shirt entrepreneurs will go to make a buck or two! Perhaps media is to blame because they have already made a complete ordeal out of the Swine Flu so far! Does bird flu or SARS ring a bell?

Anyway, it will be interesting to see if any of the major online t-shirt companies create or release a Swine Flu t-shirt. I guess we will know soon enough, and of course we will feature the t-shirt here!

Oh yeah, you probably still want to know the origins of the Swine Flu! The picture below speaks for itself...