Japanese Carp Koi

This Japanese Carp hand drawn design is a great example of a hidden gem getting a chance to shine.

New Jersey based artist Erik Lukacs hand drew this design the good ol' fashioned way: with a pencil and some paper.

Instead of letting this great piece of artwork just sit in the sketchpad, he took the initiative to find a way to share his artwork with the world. I think I should probably take a second now to say "Thank You" to Erik for sharing your art with me and whoever else gets a chance to see it.

This Japanese Carp sketch has a lot of great detail that doesn't always get translated correctly with the t-shirt art medium. However, with the direct to garment printing technology at CafePress, you can see the delicate fades and textures Erik used to give his Japanese Carp drawing more depth.

By choosing CafePress as the printer and fulfillment company for his design, Erik has the added benefit of showing up in the highly trafficked CafePress Marketplace. A quick search for carp shows Erik's design among the top selling carp related designs.

As t-shirt designers, we like to make sure that our t-shirtdesigns and artwork remains our intellectual property. It's a bit of a dual edged sword in that by sharing your t-shirt artwork with the world, it exposes it to not-so-honest folk who will try to copy ideas but also you get exposed to a worldwide group of potential customers who may be interested in buying your design.

What to do, what to do? In this case, Erik decided to add a copyright notice on the design, which is fine, however, he also added a web URL under his copyright. For this type of artistic design, it seems like the web address might be a little too much. I'm all for making sure folks know how to buy more of your shirts, but your branding has to be in line with your design.



I think a better way to do this would have been hide or embed the copyright notice in the actual artwork, so it blends in with the design and then just leave out the web address all together. If you're going to have a web address, it should definitely be your own (like yourname.com) instead of a third party service.

Maybe a compromise here would have been to register his full name as a domain name and then add the copyright as © 2006 hisdomainname.com which would give him the copyright notice and let people know where to get more cool designs. An additional benefit to this method would be that he could build up the domain name to serve as a portfolio to link to all of his current and future artwork projects (and where to buy them).

Even with the extra copyright line, I think this shirt is definitely worth buying. Although I'm more a fan of t-shirts with a print on just one side, I think this design works as well when printed on both sides of the shirt.

If you're a fan of Japanese Carp (more commonly known as Koi fish), be sure to check out this great design by Erik Lukacs. I hope to see more designs from him in the future.

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Garuda Hinduism

Custom Industries knows how to market a fashion brand.

For an upscale fashion t-shirt brand like Custom Industries, the Devil Dances in the details, and in my book, CI gets all the details right.

The designs seem to spring from a passion for global elements and travel. After narrowing the focus of their designs to a specific niche (globally inspired t-shirt designs), Custom Industries has successfully created a brand that delivers their message in all the ways they touch their customers.

From their easy to navigate website that carries their international theme on every page, to the careful attention to that is shown by the intentional garment color choices for each piece in their line; you can tell there are years of experience going into each decision made for the brand.

Continuing onto the retail delivery, each t-shirt is delivered with a custom hangtag that shares a short story that ties into the design purchased:


Click here for a closeup of the hangtag and design.

I thought I was a fan of travel until I read the bio of Matt Taylor, the founder of Custom Industries. He's a true world traveler who has been to more places that I have on my long list of places "I'd like to visit". When browsing the various t-shirt designs for sale, you almost get the feeling that you're sitting sidecar on one of his many adventures.

Each design is a snapshot revealing a remote part of the world, or a peek behind the curtains of our unique global community.

At the risk of over hyping the Custom Industries brand, I could literally spend hours (and hundreds of dollars without regret), browsing through their many t-shirt designs. I only wish their were more photos on the website that documented Matt's worldwide travels.

If you are a fan of artistic, fashion styled t-shirts or asian inspired designs, you should definitely check out Custom Industries.

It has inspired me to start planning our next family vacation to somewhere beyond our normal Californian borders. I can only hope that my children will pick up the passion for travel that I developed over the years. Experiencing other cultures, whether it be through globally infused t-shirt designs or through worldwide travel, is something everyone should hope to accomplish.

Now's a great time to check out Custom Industries, as many of their most popular designs are on sale. I plan on nabbing the Jeepney t-shirt (one of my favorites) before the week is out :)

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ideal for anonymity alien

Sometimes you get caught up in the daily shuffle, that you miss the important things.

They aren't always big things, like missing an alien sitting next to you on the subway, but still important things like missing the chance to tell your 3 year old that she did a good job sharing with her sister.

This cool design from LintyFresh reminds me not to get too caught up in the hustle and flow.

When I got this t-shirt in the mail, I had to look at it 2 or 3 times to figure out what it was "off" in the picture.

I pulled out a note in the package from designer Eric Terry that clued me in. Before I share the note, first a little test:

Take a look at this Ideal for Anonymity design closely:

(the thumbnail is a bit hard to see, so you can click on it to view a larger version of the graphic)


Looks like a nice enough t-shirt design right? Now read this great product description (which is missing from the site as of the posting of this review ;)

"Ideal for Anonymity" - This depiction of a group of passengers on a New York subway expresses the nonchalance with which most city-dwellers encounter their surroundings. Nothing's too strange, nothing's worth a second glance: the perfect setting for an alien looking to blend in.

Now take another look at the design and see how the artist's vision and descriptive language actually made the design better:



If I just saw the design without the explaination, it still would have been a "good" design, but I wouldn't really "get it". With the insightful description he sent with it, it made the design a GREAT design (in my opinion).

After reading Eric's comment on how "nothing's too strange, nothing's worth a second glance" , it quickly reminded me of how jaded we can sometimes become.

After 10 years of selling t-shirts online and reviewing t-shirt sites, sometimes I catch myself thinking "yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen it all before". I think I know what to to expect before I even view the next t-shirt link.

Then there are times, like when I see a few unique designs that stand out, or see things presented in a different way or see t-shirtmakers trying something different, it opens my eyes to the beautiful designs that I probably have passed by a million times.

If you ever find yourself getting tired of looking at threadless entries, try spotting the beautiful "aliens" at CafePress, just today I saw this notable creature, almost lost in its surroundings:



So I've learned to keep an open mind. Open to new life experiences, open to small joys, open for smile opportunities, and open to new t-shirt designs.

If you're open to new things, or if you like artistic t-shirt designs, be sure to check out LintyFresh Although, they need to move some t-shirt design images to the homepage so you can see the goods right away, the extra click to their shop section is well worth it. Once Eric adds those powerful descriptions to each of the designs, I think you'll be able to connect to the designs like I did.

And if you're designing a website to sell t-shirts, remember to put product descriptions on your design pages. Sometimes words can help sell a great design!

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