Archive for March, 2008
When you’re deciding to get a company identity, you tend to think about letterheads, business cards and signs over shopfronts, increasingly people recognise the need to have a web-friendly logo too, but very ever pause to think about their brand identity when it comes to staff clothing. Working with a designer, like the multinationals do, can give you the edge when it comes to immediately identifiable company clothing, but if you’re going to go it alone, here are some things to consider:
Does your logo have relevance to your customers’ requirements, not just your own business? It’s not much use choosing a Rolls-Royce as your logo if you’re in the delivery business, even if you did start your company delivering from a Rolls-Royce, your potential customers don’t know that and they don’t care! They want a logo that tells them you’re a delivery company.Does it appeal to you and your staff? Expecting people to wear something that makes them feel degraded or ill-equipped to represent you in the workplace is a bad investment – you’ll lose good staff and you’ll lose your public image. Regardless of how much you love your wife/daughter/brother and how good a degree they got from arts college, if they design a logo that is cute, when your team think of themselves as cool professionals, everybody loses. Does the logo demonstrate:
- A sense of balance – is the relationship between image and any typeface balanced and harmonious?
- A sense of colour – the logo has to work winter and summer, for men and women, and on a range of clothing from T-shirts to winter coats
- Creativity – can it be read, but is it more than just your company name turned into an emblem? Does it say something about your company, your aims and perspective and your distinctiveness? That Rolls Royce, with a large letter bearing your company name strapped to its roof, would be creative and fun
- Sensible typography – this is vital – what’s the point of a logo that nobody can read? Drive along any town centre and you’ll see one or two shops whose names are written in such fancy script you can’t actually be sure what they are called – don’t let that be you!
Logo courtesy of squeakymarmot
March 31st, 2008
The Japanese are usually ahead of the game when it comes to innovation, and now they’ve invented a T-shirt that protects people from knife attacks. Its target market is people working in convenience stores, who are subject, around the world, to a range of threats that most of us simply don’t build into our daily lives. The Osaka-based company, Nihon Uni, has developed a fibre three times the strength of cotton, using ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene which is similar in structure to the fibre used in body armour. The T-shirt is still lightweight and machine washable and the manufacturers point out that the mesh fabric can be punctured by a sharp point, although the force of the blow will be lessened. It costs between £100 – 300 for the short-sleeved version.
Car-Freshner, the owner of that famous tree-shaped air freshener that hangs from every cab-driver’s mirror, is suing an American retailer over a line of T-shirts. The retailer ‘Old Navy’ (which is part of The Gap chain) is selling T-shirts that carry the slogan Keeping it Fresh, accompanied by an image of a tree-shaped car air freshener. Car-Freshner claims the design is identical to their trademarked design, which is used by the company on car air fresheners, apparel and other items. The federal case aims to bar Old Navy from buying, selling or advertising any items with the tree design and an unknown amount is sought in damages. Magic Tree courtesy of banalities
March 27th, 2008
It might be time for most of us to be thinking about reorganising our wardrobes, pulling the bright spring colours from the shelf where they’ve been lurking all winter and getting into short-sleeved T-shirts (even if there’s snow on the ground!) but in Southern California Mountain High Ski resort’s annual spring break celebration this weekend will be offering a different way to get into a T-shirt: The Frozen T-Shirt Contest. On Saturday, at noon, contestants must break a t-shirt out of a block of ice and put it on before their competitors do – perhaps we should be grateful we only have to shiver a bit and turn the central heating up!
The People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) in Boston have launched an educational T-shirt. To educate men of Irish descent about the link between dairy consumption and impotence the shirt, released to coincide with St. Patrick’s Day features a leprechaun and the words Got Sperm? Maybe Not if You Drink Milk.
PETA’s aim is to inform Hibernians that the cholesterol and fat in milk, meat, and other animal products slows the flow of blood to all the body’s vital organs, not just to the heart. ‘On St. Patrick’s Day, real men are reminded that high performance means choosing a pint of beer over a pint of milk,’ said the Boston PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk.
Frozen sun courtesy of jurvetson
March 21st, 2008
T-shirts are great, you can dress them up or down, they are easy to pack and economical to buy and clean, but they can wrinkle and if you’re on the move, there isn’t always an iron handy. So here are some tips on removing wrinkles before wearing you T-shirt:
- Put your T-shirt in the dryer – if there’s no iron available, but there’s a tumble dryer, here’s the swiftest way to make your shirt wrinkle free. Just toss the T-shirt and a slightly damp towel in the dryer for fifteen minutes – the towel comes out dry and the shirt comes out crease-free!
- Shower with a T-shirt – Not actually in the shower, of course, but hung near the steamy mist that rises from your shower as you get clean, the steam helps remove the wrinkles.
- Give it a wash and blow-dry - you can wet the wrinkled areas of your T-shirt and dry it using a hair dryer set on medium: it blows the creases out in no time, especially if you put your hand between the front and back of the T-shirt to allow the air to circulate faster.
All these methods work best when the T-shirt is a cotton blend such as a 50-50 cotton/polyester because it dries faster, but they can be used with any T-shirt up to 100% cotton, although it will take longer to attain the wrinkle-free finish you desire.
Creased T-shirt courtesy of Sometimesdee
March 18th, 2008
A nineteen year old Australian man was arrested while wearing a T-shirt with If you drink, don’t drive because if you hit a bump you might spill your beer emblazoned on the front. His vehicle was discovered by police with significant damage resulting from hitting a guardrail – as a result he was given a Breathalyzer test which revealed he had an alcohol level of more than twice the legal limit!
In America, Donald Miller III is filing a lawsuit against Penn Manor School, as a result of a T-shirt related disciplinary problem. In December he word a T-shirt to the school, which displayed the image of a gun, printed on the front and back. He claims he wore the shirt in support of his uncle, a soldier in the U.S. Army who is fighting in Iraq. On the front pocket, in addition to the picture of the military sidearm, were the words: Volunteer Homeland Security. On the back, superimposed over another image of the weapon, were the words Special issue — Resident — Lifetime License — United States Terrorist Hunting Permit — Permit No. 91101 Gun Owner — No Bag Limit. The fourteen year old Miller says these are patriotic sentiments, but officials at the school asked him to wear his shirt inside out for the rest of the school day. When he objected he was given a two day detention and now his parents are filing a federal lawsuit, saying the violated Miller’s First Amendment rights. The lawsuit claims the school is guilty of following a ‘vague Orwellian policy’ that throttles patriotism and free speech. School officials say the case has little to do with free speech but a great deal to do with glorifying guns.Gun T-shirt courtesy of Sam Pullara
March 15th, 2008
CafePress is a customer generated clothing site – people choose to buy a T-shirt, polo-shirt or hoodie, and overprint it with their own slogan or image. It’s become a barometer of the political temperature in the USA, as its CEO explains, ‘Merchandise sales are in many ways the best poll. People pay to vote—so they really mean it—and these are the people that are promoting their positions, influencing their friends and families. This is the best leading indicator.’
So, for example, one can compare the sales figures for Hilary Clinton supporting ‘A Woman’s Place is in the White House’ baseball jerseys to the purchases of ‘Barack My World’ hoodies. In late January, the Obama related garments outsold the Clinton related ones for the first time, and since then his rise, at least in T-shirt sales, has been exponential – nearly 70% of all the sales across all the candidates related to Barack Obama. Hilary dropped at her lowest to just 16% but seems to be on the come-back – since February her figures have shown a steady rise. On the other side of the equation, John McCain-related garment sales have accounted for less than 5% of total candidate-related sales – which may say something about his popularity in the country as a whole.
In Aberdeen, primary school children donned Save Our Schools T-shirts for a non-uniform day at a closure-threatened Aberdeen school. Causewayend School adopted the T-shirt campaign as parents fought to keep the school open. The Save Our Schools in Aberdeen campaign designed the T-shirts for children and adults to promote the campaign’s website.
Bill Clinton courtesy of sskennel
March 11th, 2008
Back in the days when Kylie Minogue was marrying Jason Donovan on Neighbours, something strange happened to women’s T-shirt wearing habits. The ‘normal’ sized T-shirt all but vanished from the female form and instead women began to wear outsize T-shirts that descended to the top of their thighs. Of course such clothing was baggy and so women tied a knot on the right hand side of their T-shirt if they were right-handed, the left if they were lefties, to make the T-shirt hug their curves. Looking back on old photographs and videos of the time, it’s obvious that an evolution was taking place, and that what women wanted was form-fitting T-shirts while all the fashion industry was offering them was standard straight-bodied ones. Denied what they desired, women simply used their ingenuity to approximate the clothing that looked good on them – and designers and retailers looked on in surprise and some confusion. Two years later, the first ‘women’s’ T-shirts appeared and the knotted T-shirt disappeared almost overnight. What made this evolution possible was a change in T-shirt fabric, using small amounts of elastic material to give standard cotton some stretch and cling, and new manufacturing techniques that moved away from straight lines and began to add comfort detailing like plackets, ribbed necks and garment styling that delivered arm-hugging cap sleeves and narrow waists to women’s T-shirts, at last.Kylie courtesy of mulanTM
