compete-tee-tion

Cerberus Gate by Sonmi is the best shirt this week- and for me, it just barely missed being the best shirt DBH has ever printed. The one thing keeping it from ultimate greatness is the color shift that happened in printing, which for some reason removed a lot of the white inks that gave it such a great pop when it was in voting. It's still a great shirt and I'll be picking up a copy, though. The elements I loved, the intersection of nature and geometry, are still there and looking great. I'm just disappointed that the print was more subtle than I had hoped for.



COEXISTENCE by Duba is a unique intersection of illustration and type, buoyed by a printing treatment that uses the art in two areas of the shirt and to great effect. The man and bird silhouettes are, truthfully, a bit dull to me, but the color choices and massing of type look pretty interesting and more than liven things up. What I'm intrigued by is the repetition- the same image appears both on the front and back, but with different amounts visible. It's a cool usage, and not something that would have occurred to me to do.

Sky Flyier by Hyperhyphen takes its inspiration from comic books, with the action text that such things entail. At first I was a bit thrown by the protagonist (who immediately struck me as an evil version of Keanu Reeves), but after taking a closer look I started to enjoy it more. The palette is really fresh and I like the motion created by all the lines in the background- combined with the distressing, it conveys the feeling of a poster falling apart on a forgotten wall.



The Soup of Letters by Dagnis is the sort of shirt where I don't hate the concept, but the execution doesn't feel ideal to me. The tire track of heavy lettering right down the center is almost a reverse-skunk kind of look, which has me questioning both the positioning and the color choice. At first I was in favor of the red arrow- but then I saw what it was pointing at. Which, as far as I can tell, is some weird non-letter creature. I'm confused by it instead of being intrigued.

Syntax by Sublevel is an interesting study in shape and color, creating an image that combines a tech look with some almost bird-like elements. The off-center print is used nicely, making the artwork almost appear to fly right off the shirt. While I'm less fond of the female version (the print feels way too small to me), I think it's a good-looking design overall.

Design By Humans is an on-going t-shirt design contest that prints new shirts every weekday. Prints are chosen from the shirts submitted by and voted on by DBH members. Shirt of the Day winners receive $500 cash and $250 DBH credit. Shirt of the Week winners get $1000 cash. Shirt of the Month gets $1500 cash and $250 credit. Winners also have an opportunity to earn residuals through the Rockstar Awards Program.

Labels: design by humans