Shirt Review #10 – Lovely Idea, Although I Doubt One Would Wear It

I first off have to say that I appreciate the spirit of this shirt greatly. As my own father used to be a trim runner, his aging and growth of girth have provided a glaring contrast. Back when my father used to chide me for my long hair, I used to accuse him of having Shakespeare hair!

But, on to the design…

The sans serif font and the centered message on the front is quite playful and simplistic; a serifed font would seem a bit too formal, and the thin line of the shirt makes it easier and clearer to read. The dropped g in rockin’ additionally adds a playful tone to it.

The back of the shirt is quite an effective punch line. The large Buddha image, with “almost there!” displayed below is effective. Perhaps the “almost there” should be above the image to facilitate reading? If you use a smooth design application, I would suggest playing around with the placement of the text and see which way suits you better.

I’ve not been much of a proponent of prints on the side of sleeves of shirts, but this one makes sense; the Yin-Yang. To make it smoother, I would ask the shirt designing company if only one Yin-Yang could be printed on the sleeve, instead of two on each face… that just seems like what the designer wanted to do, yet in this 2-D manner of representation and design, it might be difficult to achieve.

Regarding economy, this is a great shirt! Recently I’ve been factoring in the number of colors on shirts I find, and this shirt would work wonderfully as a double-sided screen print! (Screen printing is explained well in this article on ooShirts, a custom t-shirt printing website.) However, I don’t think that this shirt would be warranted in high quantities, unless you were a reseller. I would say the best use of this shirt would be giving it to a father or older male with whom you have good enough rapport to make fun, and not expecting him to wear it, like the Scharffen-Berger “Semi-Sweet” shirt I gave my girlfriend back in the day. It has never been worn… oh well.

12:26 pm | | Tags: , , | No Comments »

Shirt Review #9 – What’s Won in Vegas Stays in Vegas

I really approve of these designs; they’re not only true, but they look great. Let me break down the ideology behind this shirt for all you who didn’t get it.

Gamblers are notoriously poor statisticians; they don’t realize that gambling is governed by the laws of chance, but instead believe in the narrative fallacy of “hot streaks.” Thus, if a gambler wins big at a slot machine, he or she thinks that they’re on a “hot streak” and will win subsequent turns of the arm. However, this is completely false; it’s like saying that when flipping a coin, if you got 3 heads in a row, that there’s a higher chance that one would get tails on the fourth flip. Chances work in isolation!

Anyways, the idea is that the gambler would lose all his or her money while pumping his or her winnings into a gambling device, believing they were more statistically likely to win during this mythical “hot streak.” Ideally, all the winnings earned in gambling is thus fed back into the system, and this is why casinos have the money to construct replica pyramids, Eiffel Towers, and all that jazz. Thanks to compulsive gamblers, this is all possible.

I, therefore, think the spirit of this custom designed t-shirt is lovely. However, the design is noteworthy as well… at least the placement is.

The winning is clearly placed in the dead center of the front of the shirt on the front, and the winnings staying in Vegas are in the dead center of the shirt on the back. The sizing of the text and the images are fine, too. I am concerned, however, that the coloring could be done in a more economical manner, as the number of colors involved in this shirt would demand a digital print. As the link states, digital printing is more expensive per shirt than its cousin screen printing, because it is like using a color printer to create the image. However, screen prints for many different colors are quite expensive themselves, so digital printing is the way to go if one has a plethora of different colors necessary for their design.

However, if the creator of this shirt wanted to make a screen print, (and therefore save a lot of money,) only minor changes would be needed, and the spirit and design of the shirt would be left intact.

First, the “what happens in Vegas” and “stays in Vegas” are slightly different colors of blue. If they were standardized to the the same, this would reduce the color count. Additionally, why is the slot machine’s display and the dollar sign on the cash a different shade of green! Standardize again!

This would reduce the colors used to 4… perhaps change the text color to conform with the outline of the dollar sack, or change the outline of the dollar sack to blue to further reduce the number of colors used to 3. I suppose I would say that it would be smartest to compare prices and see how many shirts you’re ordering, and whether changing colors really matters.

However, I can see many applications to this shirt. If you were part of a statistics department at a university, I could see you wearing this shirt. If you worked with chance at all, I could see you wearing this shirt. Additionally, I could see you wearing this shirt if you were a math-y kid who wanted to shock some people, after seeing the barrage of Vegas commercials on TV. So I would assume that the volume ordered would be large, a screen print would be in order, and my color editing would be warranted.

In closing, though, nice shirt! Not only is the message good, and the design good, but the colors gave me something to talk about.

12:24 am | | Tags: , , , , | No Comments »

Who’s this Doctor D guy? Part I

Hi everyone,

I hope it has not come to be traumatic to see someone other than admin writing reviews of tee shirts on this site. Don’t worry about a thing; I may not be editor #1 on this site, but I am indeed a force to be reckoned with.

When it comes to apparel and design, I’m quite the pro. I’ve rocked the black tee shirt and blue jeans for many a day, and also enjoy rocking the Hawaiian shirt every once in a while (okay, maybe more than every once in a while, due to it being summer now.) I’m also an award-winning cartoonist and have taken drawing and composition classes so if you are wondering what sort of license I have to criticize designs, there you go.

When it comes to the sorts of designs I like, well, there is one group that always makes designs that are home runs. That happens to be the now defunct deathcore band Animosity. I mean, look at THIS. There is no band out there that doesn’t have better album artwork, and their t-shirts. Par excellence! I would divert you to their store but it has been picked bare since they’re stopping production of those t-shirts. But sirs and madams, Animosity is the design. I don’t care if I’m going into a fancier restaurant, I will wear my Animosity t-shirt.

Additionally, in the music realm of things, I am known to purchase a t-shirt when I attend a concert. This is a lovely way to get a t-shirt that says what you want it to say, because, well, you pick it, and you generally like the band whose concert you have just seen. A t-shirt from a band, or a t-shirt from an artist, is great to have because they generally hire professional graphics designers and they look great.

However, the idea of shirt-critic.com is not to tell you to go buy bands’ t-shirts. I mean, it’s fair, considering their music is stolen left and right, but band t-shirts are expensive, and sometimes t-shirts don’t have what you want to have on them. That’s where you enter the realm of custom t-shirt design, and this is where we help you out; by showing you designs people like you have made, and how they can be improved.

However, if you want to get thumbs up from me, you need to know my tastes. Perhaps this will help you uncover my biases, or perhaps you’ll agree with me in my reviews. Keep posted to see about what really gets me going about a t-shirt.

10:46 pm | | No Comments »