$85 Google Designer Shirt

It’s not all that long ago that I posted about a Google t-shirt but here we are again. This t-shirt is a special designer t-shirt that I wouldn’t be caught wearing. It’s just too much. And I’m not talking about the money either but that is also too much.

Here is a little more information about the tee:

This 100% cotton, hand silk-screened tee shirt takes its inspiration from the Google map point and search results graphics. Gary has reinterpreted the map point — a point of destination — as a global symbol for where we are and where we’re going by enlarging the map point, making it look “worn” away, and placing it over a backdrop of search results for the word ‘Peace.’ The distressed, vintage-looking tee shirts were hand silk-screened by Devil’s Rainbow in Providence, Rhode Island. Men’s’ tee comes in sizes Small, Medium and Large. Purchase of these items supports the designers and the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund.

Battle of the Robot Rock T-Shirts

Jinx just released a new t-shirt featuring a robot rocking out and it immediately reminded me of the Chop Shop t-shirt that has been making the rounds of the t-shirt blogs recently. A quick google and I found out that there are quite a few robot rock t-shirts. I have picked out four of them. Which is your favorite?

Celebrities Love La Coka Nostra

Coming home from a baseball game yesterday in which the Yokohama Baystars kicked the Yakult Swallows behinds badly I noticed this pretty cool t-shirt. As you can see I just got a glimpse of it but luckily I was able to find it on teh internets. I hadn’t heard of La Coka Nostra but I am not into the hip-hop scene so much. It seems though that they have been a bit of a MySpace sensation and they will have an album released this year. I have included one of their videos at the end of this post but be warned: strong language is used.

More importantly though, the t-shirt designer is a graffiti artist called SLICK and they are printed on the DISSIZIT label. They have a great selection of t-shirts and you don’t have to be in to hip-hop to appreciate them. They are the ultimate urban cool and you will definitely stand out from the crowd wearing them. I imagine a good deal of people will find DISSIZIT t-shirts offensive though. Especially the Christian themed ones.

Actually the Paris Hilton and the Kate Moss t-shirts are from 2007 and they may be pretty hard to get your hands on at this stage although I have found a store in Japan that seems to have some of the Kate Moss t-shirts left in an XL. Costs ¥5,500 (about $60) though. I much prefer Kate Moss to Paris Hilton but I prefer the Paris Hilton t-shirt.

In this Japanese store you can see some of the 2008 releases from DISSIZIT and this time the La Coka Nostra features the delectable Angelina Jolie. I don’t think this tee is designed by SLICK though.

The three t-shirts have a definite theme though, with all the girls being famous bad girls. Tell us which is your favorite with the poll below.

Poll: Threadless to Sell Prints

It wasn’t all that long ago that Busted Tees decided to sell some of their designs on posters and it now seems that Threadless is following suit with the introduction this week of Threadless Prints. So I thought I would take a poll again and see what you think of this development.

It is good news for the t-shirt designers whose designs get chosen as they will pocket an extra $500. The prints themselves will cost $35 which I think is pretty steep for a poster. I think I’d rather have the two t-shirts that I could get for the same price. On the other hand, if you are into posters these are limited editions and I’m sure the quality is pretty high.

I have a feeling that the the reasons for these moves by T-Shirt companies may be connected to the success of PODs which sell all types of things. I wonder how long it will be before they start selling other items like mugs and clocks.

Below is the info from Threadless:

Starting today, we will be releasing three new THREADLESS PRINTS every Monday. Hand-numbered and in super limited initial runs of 250, these 18″ x 24″ sweet pieces of art are screen-printed locally onto high quality paper from French Paper Company. We’ve taken great care in their development and creation, and of course in their sturdy shipping vessels (as seen on Tee-V), so they’ll arrive safe, pristine, and ready for framing. Priced at $35 apiece.

Designers! Have your printed tee design chosen to be a THREADLESS PRINT and pocket an extra $500! Be sure to stay tuned for more fun PRINTS developments over the next few weeks.

Overnight Changes at Zazzle and Cafepress

This post is more for POD shopkeepers than customers. Little did I know when I went to bed last night that my world (the POD part of it anyway) would be changed. I have stores at both Cafepress and Zazzle so these changes are very interesting for me.

First I will talk about the changes at Zazzle (good news first). Zazzle posted on their blog about the Gallery Updates but they should have called them Gallery Upgrades (for the most part) in my opinion.

Firstly Zazzle has increased the size of the product images which is great. I feel that over at Cafepress the product views are too small and it is hard to see the design, so bigger is better. On the other hand the Zazzle product views were a pretty good size anyway and if I hadn’t been told I might not have noticed that they were bigger (15% bigger). What I don’t like though is the white border that now appears on rollovers. I think the white border would be OK if the inner image background color filled the whole square.

Secondly, the side bar has been made slimmer to accommodate the larger images. I actually think this doesn’t look so good. At least on my store. I also think it may have been unnecessary as there is some wasted space around the whole page and also the images could have been moved a little closer together without looking bad. If you have long section titles this means that they will run onto two lines and can sometimes be a little confusing. They have recommended keeping your section titles to less that 20 characters to prevent this occurrence but we shouldn’t really have to do that. Section titles are not just titles they are SEO tools.
Another cool upgrade is the ability to have a 100px high header which is great. The 200px header was excessive and pushed the all important products down the page, which is why in my store I put product and design images in my header. Pity they are not clickable though. Now that would be a real improvement. Also we now have the ability to put the sidebar on the left or on the right. That’s pretty cool. But which is better? I’ll let you decide.

Another thing that has been mentioned in their post is the ability to make your store private which might be useful for some people. The ability to make a section private would be useful for many people though. And finally the the “Manage Your Gallery” top bar has been removed (thankfully) and the functions have been moved into the shopkeepers control panel. This will only be noticeable to shopkeepers, not shoppers.

Something that wasn’t mentioned in their blog post is the fact that the links to view all products have been removed from the page. You can still see all products by clicking on the “Products” link on the side but I think that the original links (above and below shop front images) were more likely to be clicked, which makes it more likely that someone will buy something from your store. (*edit I was told that this was a glitch and it is already back on-line).

As this post took longer than I had expected I will talk about the dramatic changes that happened over at Cafepress last night in the next post. If I missed anything or if you have any opinions or feedback please post a comment. Don’t forget to take part in the Sidebar Poll.

Poll: Busted Tees Posters

I received an email from Busted Tees today informing me that they are expanding into a new business. I really don’t know how I feel about this. The posters look good. At the moment I think most of them are extensions of existing t-shirt designs. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they were requested by customers but I do feel that they detract from the t-shirts a little. Also, if they insist on selling posters, I don’t think they should sell them side by side with the t-shirts on the front page. It is a little confusing. In the future are they going to sell mugs, caps and perhaps clocks. Maybe this is Busted Tees fighting back against the PODs such as Zazzle and Cafepress.

Poll: Which is your favorite Guitar Hero T-Shirt?

Of course there are many Guitar Hero inspired t-shirts but here are three of my favorite and they are from three different t-shirt stores. Which is your favorite?

Poll: Which T-Shirt PODs do you use?

I discovered that there are a lot of POD services out there selling t-shirts and providing designers with a way of selling t-shirts too. I think I have created a fairly comprehensive list but no doubt I have left a few out. I did notice that some POD services seem to have gone out of business or have been taken over by other companies such as Zazzle or Spreadshirt. There are also several PODs selling prints but I have stuck to the t-shirt PODs as this is a t-shirt blog.

If I have left out any important (or not so important) t-shirt POD please drop me a line or leave a comment. If you have any feedback about particular PODs that would be great too.

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Zazzle Home Page Poll

Well, it seems that Zazzle may be changing the style of their homepage and I was wondering how people feel about it so I created this poll. Feel free to leave a comment as well.

New Zazzle.com Home Page

Old Zazzle.com Home Page