Threadles sale extended

If you can't get enough $10 tshirts (who can, right?), then good news from Threadless - they have extended their holiday sale until the 19th of December - which is practically the 20th if you live on my side of the international date line. Move fast!

Urban Retro

Urban Retro is a great store for tshirts, toys, gelaskins and more. Labels available include HiCalorie, Chunk, SeventySeven, Supreme Being to name just a few, and you can get 20% off everything until December 21st just by using the discount code XMASRUSH. Suh-weeet.

designgive relaunched

After a short abscence, I'm happy to say that our friends and sponsors designgive are back online and have resumed kicking ass. They've got a few new designs from some great artists including Matt Owens, Si Scott and Jenna Ebanks, topped off with great prices and of course the option to contribute a portion of the sale to a charity of your choice (from the list provided). Ahh, it makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over.

Brisbane Tee Party

I hate to say it - but the Brisbane Tee Party is one of the most poorly promoted events ever. It's on today and starts in an hour and ten minutes. I live in Brisbane, work in the city, go to stores, bars, galleries etc, read the free newspapers and streetpress quite a lot, and I write a freakin tshirt blog - and I only found out about this last night!! Poor! They don't even have a website - just a myspace that doesn't even tell you who's going to be there. Slack. They say are going to have Brisbane's best tshirt designers there but I know some who won't be - cause they don't even know the damn thing is on!

Anyway, hopefully it should be a great day, and if for some sad reason you are reading a tshirt blog on a Saturday morning and you live in Brissy, head along and check it out. It's on from 9am to 4.30pm at Ahimsa House, 26 Horan Street, West End. I'm going (I'll be the guy with the skull pop shirt if you wanna say hi) and I'm sure there should be some sweet new labels there just waiting to be discovered.

Kimazo - tshirts and illustrations

Oksana Kemarskaya has a nice little profile site/store called Kimazo. I'm not sure that I completely understand... but I damn well like it. This shirt comes from a series of four and are available in both short and long sleeved varieties. Ooooh, options!

TEE TEST: Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction

I like long names. Maybe this is because I have a particularly long name myself - two middle names both with three syllables. Of all my names I like my surname the least, mainly due to the fact that it only has three letters.

Perhaps slightly pre-determined by my fondness for the gratiutously named, I love Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction (despite me being too lazy to type their name in full again - "aita" from here on out). When aita asked if they could send a shirt for review I took two quick looks at their impressive roster and said "I'll take two thanks."

To my joy the impressive nature of aita did not conclude with a lengthy title and a pretty website. The package I received contained the two shirts wrapped in the sexiest tissue paper I have ever seen (hell, I didn't know tissue paper could even be sexy until now) and a plethora of impressive marketing material that they were kind enough to send. Sure, it may seem inconsequential, but I think that a company that can get their marketing looking tight is well on the way to success.

The shirts continued to impress. The guys logo tee is so freaking soft it feels like underwear. Which is a good thing. In fact it's softer than my underwear... The softness comes via an American Apparel 50/25/25 track shirt - and because it's AA you know it's going to fit well. I'm also quite fond of the logo and the way it subtley humanizes the industrial subject. Deep right?

While the guys shirt is subtle, the girls shirt is straight-up crazy. Screenprinted front and back with catastrophic imagery, in an engraved style that you'd expect to see in a 19th century history book. Typhoons, volcanoes, tidal waves and even aliens destroy everything in sight. Sweet. I'm not sure as to the origins of the shirt itself but it's 100% cotton and comes from Peru. Awesome.

My only concern with these shirts was the slight twist in the seem (check the photo) on the girls shirt. I'm told that this is not common and is due to the shirts being "unique and individually printed," and it actually looks kind of cool when the shirt is being worn - although I'm sure it may bug some people.

Aita's other shirts also feature amazing art work and are totally worth checking out. They've just released some new one's too - be the first in town to grab them. A great range from a nice little label that sticks by it's name and produces some great artwork, hand prints their shirts and pays attention to the small details.

RRP: Mens Logo Tee $28 (USD), Womens Catastrophe Tee $36 (USD)
BUY THEM HERE

The Kiss Of Death - 2K By Gingham

I was just checking out the oddly named yet well put together new blog Fat Seagull and saw this beauty from 2K by Gingham. It's by LA based artist Hersk and it's available here.

New People Like Us

White is so stylish. Again. Is it the new black? Well I for one don't friggen care and am totally satisfied with the old black. But the new tshirts from People Like Us are all white and sure are nice. And if you've got a stylish little white iPod and are sick of being so damn slick (it's hard damn work right?) you can pick one of the sexy little Gelaskin things to make your pod less white and more protected. Kick Ass.

GraffikNoise

GraffikNoise is one year old and well on their way to mastering stylish simplicity, Check them out.

NoiseBot

Less is more right? Well not if you're NoiseBot - an online tshirt store that missed this basic principle, packing their store full with over 200 designs. Thankfully, they have a whole bunch of awesome, mostly funny tshirts that are beautifully illustrated - which are conveniently located above all the standard slogan shirts in their full catalogue. Designs are also available as hoodies and tote-bags, and for a limited time they are offering free shipping within the US for orders over $100 - so you can pay less for more... or something...

Threadless $10 Holiday Sale!!

Heck yeah! All tees at Threadless are on sale for only $10 - and they're on sale until December 16!

There is a massive amount of new shirts to choose from and - if that's not enough - there are 3 reprints this week including Summer Wind by Joachim Baan - which I once saw poorly ripped off on a shop-a-docket ad for a hair salon...

Buy them for your friends or just buy them for yourself. Go, do it.

Smiley Raw

AMP Street have released a couple of new shirts. I like this one. A lot.

Naive New Releases

Naive have expanded their already impressive range with the addition of a few new shirts. Perhaps not quite as tight as their unbelievable earlier stuff, these shirts are still well worthy of a mention - especially Into The Woods which is pictured above.

Dawn of The Dude

Dawn of The Dude tshirt by Cloxboy available from Go Ape.

If you need to ask, you'll never know.

Well ok, maybe you could just watch the movie...

Gorilla Riot

I'm not sure what a Gorilla Riot would be like, but in my head I imagine an awesome meeting of Gorilla-esque masculine rage and uni-student-esque passion as the enraged beasts protest violently over the destruction of their native habitats whilst harrasing business men, burning shops and tossing over hotdog stalls.

But that's just me...

I've been following the progress of the Gorilla Riot site since they announced their first Beta version on t-shirtforums.com quite some time ago. It's great to see a company who has a put as much time and effort into producing a great site as they have with their tshirt range. Testing and constant refinements means that the finished Gorilla Riot site provides an excellent shopping experience - enabling the salivating tshirt enthusiast to easily navigate between the label's 6 different launch collections. Sure, it's awfully annoying that you have to click on each thumbnail before you can see what colours each shirt comes in (no they don't all come in white!) but the site loads quickly, and getting a bigger look at the tasty illustrations (and models) makes it bearable.

With artwork from the likes of Digital Three, Bagger43, Eyekaps, LambShank (Kyle from D3 and IMario), and Matt Morris (aka Cool Vader), this is one riot that even the most ardent pacifist may want to check out.

Monsieur T fall/winter line

In case you haven't checked it out already, the fall/winter line from Monsieur T is well worth checking out. As well as a range of tshirts, their are some sweet hoodies to keep you warm. Artists including Andy Rementer, Bwana Spoons, Martin Ontiveros, Fernando Elvira, Emil Kozak, and the Berkley brothers have contributed their talents.

For The Bloggers

If you're a nerdy blogging type (or even an uber-cool blogging type) you may be interested in this handy little widget I found. BlogRush goes anywhere on your blog and displays links to similar blogs - but the good thing is everytime someone looks at your site, you earn the right to a link on someone elses site. Plus if you refer new users (like I'm obviously trying to do now) you get link credits from their activity too. Basically, you end up with loads of links to your blog all over the place. It's free, so give it a try... if you want.

RE*generation t for youth homelessness

Here's a nice tshirt for a great cause. From the press release:

Diego Mosco, a graphic designer who has spent years creating graphics for underground cult label Supreme has created a limited edition t-shirt for the Re*Generation charity art auction to further promote awareness of the homeless youth crisis. The 100% cotton t-shirt is emblazoned with a bold three-color, pop art-inspired print depicting a spark setting off an explosion - illustrating the way in which small acts of giving can set off greater movements of positive change.

There are only 500 of these shirts in existence and a lot of those would have gone at the RE*generation event held in New York City this week - so if you want to get your hands on one and support youth homelessness quickly head over to the RE*generation store.

Threadless goes specialised

Threadless, the reigning juggernaut of tshirt design competition sites, has just announced that they will now be offering a whole range of specialised printing techniques for wannabe tshirt designers to utilise. Are Threadless feeling the pinch of Design By Humans? Or is this a pre-emptive strike, kind of like McDonalds offering salads for sale before everyone sued them for making them fat? Well, maybe nothing like that at all... But, just like the fast food industry (as it's multitude of puke-inspiring documentaries stands testament to) the online tshirt battle sure is about to get interesting.

Hopefully the new plethora of design possibilities may drag Threadless away from their predictable winning selections as artists explode in a fit of creativity. Only time will tell.

Trick or Treat

Buy this. Happy Halloween.

The Humans Keep Designing

Design By Humans continues to release some of the freshest shirts on the net, with some seriously talented artists reveling in DBH's ability to use specialised print processes - and pay them fat wads of cash.

Plus, apparently for the next 20-something hours you can get 25% off using the promo code silversnow

What about the profits??

Ten Bills are having a sale with tshirts from an insane $5 and hoodies from $10. Crazy right. But it only goes until Sunday. I think these guys might have missed a few classes at business school...

Jordan Atkinson

Jordan Atkinson makes me want to be an artist. His bold, musically influenced style is something to behold, and indeed many would agree with me judging by his impressive client list. If you can't shell out the required coin for a print why not opt for the useable - and affordable - alternative, a tshirt? These beauties are screenprinted on American Apparel Tshirts and pay homage to pop sensations from the past and present. Too freakin' awesome.

TEE TEST: Custom Industries

Custom Industries is an interesting label, choosing to stay away from popular trends but instead creating a line that is influenced by artwork from many traditional cultures. The brand's aesthetic "reflects the quest for adventure and discovery of the obscure." And as someone who has been around the world a few times visiting over 45 countries on the way, Custom Industries founder Matt Taylor should be the right person to do the job.

The range from CI includes jackets, hoodies thermals and tank tops for guys and girls, as well as your everyday tshirt. Each is decorated by art from many different countries including China, Indonesia, Egypt and India, to name just a few.

Matt flicked me one of his new Dragon shirts to check out, and I'm happy to say that it gets a big, cheesey DBT thumbs up. The shirt is well made and the grey colour has just the slightest hint of lavender to it - not enough to decrease your masculinity, but just enough to be different. Also the exposed stitching - which I'm not usually a fan of - is really good quality and definitely suits this style, adding to the rugged global traveler feel. The quality of the screenprinting is great, with two tones of red adding depth to the illustration of the bad-ass dragon. (Am I allowed to say bad ass about a dragon?) To pop a cherry on top the material is nice and soft and the fit of this shirt is particularly good.

So if you want to express your love of the orient, wear a mean looking dragon, or pretend to look well travelled to impress a certain someone, then Custom Industries is the place to fulfill your culturally-influenced attire needs.

RRP: $30 (USD)
BUY IT HERE

Want your shirt reviewed? Get free publicity and a link in our tshirt stores section. Email deathbytshirt@gmail.com

New Threadless

Contrary to my little rant last week, I actually think Threadless have released some pretty cool shirts this week. Top of the list for me though is a reprint, Star Men in Moon's Milk (top) by the irrepresibly creative Christopher Buchholz. Star Men is one of my favourite Threadless shirts of all time, and I didn't buy it first time round so I'm stoked it's been re-released.

New shirts include Hello Dave by Robert Gould, Where The Watermelons Grow by Brian Walline and New World Order by Tony Aguero.

Of course there are more to view on the website. Check em out here and use the coupon code rubberdanpants at the checkout to get $3 off.

Supermandolini

There's a couple of sweet shirts on offer from new a new online store called Supermandolini. The site itself is pretty good too, with detailed views of all their products (which also include prints, posters and accessories) and 360º movies of models wearing the shirts.

Ten Bills

Hey, remember when a Paddle Pop cost like 50 cents, gum was 20 cents and you could get 5 gummy bears for a two cent coin? These days a Mars Bar almost costs as much as lunch and you can only afford a Slurpee if you don't have a car. Thank goodness Ten Bills have a great range of tshirts from a variety of artists all available for only - you guessed it - ten bucks. They've got a new range that's just come out, and they're celebrating by giving you a further $10 of any order of $50 of more. With the money you save on clothes you might be able to lash out and grab a pack of nerds!

Threadless - predictable?

Here's the latest bunch of awesome tshirt designs dropped this week by Threadless, who continue to release and sell a massive amount of tshirts at a great price.

However, I have a small gripe - I think Threadless are becoming a bit of a one trick pony. Ok, a two trick pony. The cutesy puns and prettiness are becoming a bit predictable. By no means am I taking away anything from the amazing work of the artists, but the designs that win week after week all seem to be of a similar style and are very "Threadless."

Sure, some may argue that this is a good business plan - Threadless becomes known for their style, and obviously they are getting a lot of traffic and doing extremely well.

Threadless's competition may benefit from the apparent reluctance of Threadless to stray to often from their preferred style. Sites like Design By Humans and A Better Tomorrow, whether conciously or not, are releasing some bolder, sharper designs (admittedly some look similar to the stuff Threadless used to put out).

Don't get me wrong, I still love Threadless and think it's a great community and a great platform for emerging artists. Perhaps it's just becoming a great platform for a certain type of artist...

What do you think? Agree? Think I'm full of shit? Let us know in the comments.

Oh, don't forget you can get $3 of your purchase by clicking here and using the code rubberdanpants at the checkout :)

Green Tees

The environment - it's a big issue at the moment, and, well, let's be honest, if you aren't recycling, reducing, reusing or off-setting something it's about time you pulled your head in and your finger out before you wake up one warm winters day choking on a cloud of smoke with a pile of rubbish outside your window.

Anyway, today is Blog Action Day and this years theme is the environment. If you want to learn a bit more about the environment and how to save it I'd recommend looking at one of the other 15 squillion blogs that are participating, as I don't want to get too preachy, and I'm sure that others have much more wisdom to share.

My advice however is to not underestimate the difference you can make. One of the best ways to contribute to any cause is to raise awareness - if you can get 5 people to change their attitudes, actions or contribute in some way, you've done a great job, and hopefully they in turn will pass it on to 25 people and so on.

Here are some sweet shirts that I've found that look great, tell people you have an enviromental conscience, and can help trigger interest and spark conversation.


Ok, so this particular shirt is out of stock, but Tobi has a great range of eco-friendly labels so you can revel in consumerist conservation.


Ban t-shirts have a range of shirts with environment-themed designs including this anti GMO one, that comes printed on an organic shirt. Delicious.


The perennial classic and perhaps one of the best logos of all time (different versions available in different countries - this one comes from Canada and is made of organic cotton).

Monsieur T sale

Monsieur T are having a sale - go there now to get 30-50% off their spring/summer line. Sweet.

Funkrush

Sometimes I feel like the internet is like a giant maze, a labyrinth that you have to navigate through to in order to find what you are looking for. But unlike your traditional maze, the internerd can have a million different outcomes, and sometimes you're not even sure what you are looking for. Del.icio.us acts like clues to get you through the map, and Google is like a teleporter, but sometimes the results can be unexpected (especially if you're feeling lucky). Sometimes when I'm browsing for new stuff I end up getting nowhere, following link after link to crapsville until i reach a dead end. Alternatively, sometimes I end up finding something truly extraordinary, completely justifying (to me at least) my wasted hours of net travel.

Recently, on one of my geeky adventures, I somehow ended up at Funkrush. This awesome site has an unbelievable range of tshirts from some of the biggest names in contempory illustration (Jon Burgerman, Peskimo, Tado, Olly Moss, Dalek and many more). How I have not come across this outstanding label sooner amazes me, but if you are also unfamiliar with Funkrush click here to warp to their site. Post-haste!