If you buy anything at Design By Humans, save a few bucks with their coupon code: DBH22. That should get you a nice 15% discount on any order.
Made of Steel by a_mar_illo is an amazing illustration by one of my favorite artists, and easily the best shirt this week. I love the colors, the way it mixes elements of femininity and the masculinity of metal work... even the era it evokes (twenties and thirties style, sigh). It's almost perfection. So why isn't it already in my shopping cart? Because the print is too damn huge. I know this is kind of a DBH style thing, but the fact is I just don't want more than one or two shirts with an all-over print.
Crustacean! by josh is a revolutionary claw. I love crustaceans madly, they're my favorite thing to draw, and even I'm a tough sell on this shirt, though. It feels like an in-joke no one has bothered to explain, or maybe like leftover aft from the game Just Cause.
Sing a new song by fabiosimple is tough to explain. It's a headless dude, a lady, and a bird. And some splotches of color and patterns. And the text, Sing a New Song. Truthfully, I'm not even sure what it's getting at. A lot of the elements seem added for purely aesthetic reasons, but... they're not attractive to me, or really interesting. Even the colors are weird, oddly drab for a design with pink and yellow.
Sketchy Audience by tomburns is nearly identical to a shirt also sold at PaperRoot, as they are both based on the same stock photograph. The Burns version has the advantage of incorporating a sketched look, but they really do look really similar and to me the world barely needed one shirt like this. It's just not a tremendously interesting look to me, disappointing from someone who I know has achieved some much better work in the past.
Calaberaskool by figueras is interesting mainly because of the technique used- the design is printed on the interior of the shirt, allowing the design to bleed through to the front. To me, this transformed the skull illustration (previously not really something I had any interest in) into a more subtle and experimental looking design. I'm considering a purchase on it just because I've never seen a shirt using this technique in person and I'm curious about it.
Overall, kind of a disappointing week. I feel like DBH may be a bit boxed in by their enjoyment of large prints- it seems like a lot of recent prints have used that method, and even more Shirt of the Week winners have relied on it. To me, that enjoyment is a bit out of step with the market- the feedback I've been getting consistently about DBH is that the skulls, trees, and big prints are too common. Personally, I'm mainly interested in the inks and techniques, not the size.
Sunday, March 9
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3 comments:
Viva la Crustacean is a play on the old phrase Viva la Revolution! Crustacean/Revolution -- they kind of rhyme. Not really, but close enough.
That's also why it has that communist propaganda look which makes it entirely awesome. I am biased, though, because I love that look. One of my favorites in that style is Babylon Rocker from the affair: http://www.the-affair.com/
I'm aware of the phrase Viva la Revolution, but no matter how many ways I say Crustacean, they just really don't sound anything alike. Maybe it's a regional thing?
In general I'm a propaganda fan, though- I just blogged about Babylon Rocker recently for Tshirt Island. But overall, I felt this crustacean one wasn't well-done or well-conceived enough for a print.
I think DBH's concept of bigger always equal better ruined "Made of Steel". Amarillo's original design was both stronger and more subtle with more of the background city showing and more of a balance in color and shape. A big disappointment because I would have otherwise bought it.
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