Posts filed under 'monogram'
The American Politics Journal, which is a rather tongue-in-cheek publication anyway, has taken issue with the uniforms Ralph Lauren designed for US Olympic team members to wear during the opening ceremony. Or rather, they loved the uniforms, loathed the great big white polo pony plastered on the men’s jackets. As the journal puts it ‘Of course, this is typically American: create something combining taste and quality, and then reduce it to rubble it by advertising where you bought it – and how much you paid’.
Well maybe. But then, Ralph Lauren paid a pretty penny to become the licensed producer of Olympic replica wear – why shouldn’t the company get its brand in the camera’s eye? Possibly because the Olympics are claimed to be an advertising free zone, but come along, we all know that the sponsorship opportunities are heavily fought over – Ralph Lauren was just a bit more up front about its role and intentions than some of the other designers and is getting more publicity as a result – and isn’t that the point of promotional clothing?
August 19th, 2008
Karen Davidson, great-granddaughter of Harley-Davidson co-founder William A. Davidson is creative director of general merchandise for Harley-Davidson and supervises design for the company’s two decade old MotorClothes division. Since 1947, when the first Harley leather jackets appeared, the biker ‘uniform’ of black leather jacket, jeans and T-shirt has been a classic, but now things are changing – the traditional ‘leather’ has been joined by leather treated to be water resistant, and even by cottons and synthetic materials.
As bikers have aged, they have also wanted more from their clothing, like shirts that work on the bike and in the office too. And the customer mix has changed: men purchase about 60% of the clothing and women buy 40%. This has meant creating brighter colours and new styles along the classic lines. Pink leather jackets were introduced a couple years ago and fitted Harley T-shirts are a big seller. Now the line is expanding again to include grommets and appliqués to personalise both T-shirts and jackets.
Harley-Davidson T-shirt courtesy of jorgemejia
August 1st, 2008
T-shirt logos from China
China has been forced to go through a lot of changes in recent months: first the New Year winter storms which disrupted the most important Chinese festival and prevented workers all over the country getting together with their families; then the bad press over Tibet; problems with the Olympic torch; a terrible train crash and finally a truly disastrous earthquake. And interestingly, many urban Chinese have, for the first time adopted, or perhaps adapted, a Western behaviour to show their solidarity with their beleaguered country.
The first ‘I Love China’ T-shirts turned up in shops around the time that the Olympic Torch became a media issue. Now people across the country are investing in shirts to show their love for China. It’s a massive departure for a nation that used to dress only in Mao uniforms, and the new T-shirts - known as wenhuashan - allow the wearer to demonstrate their own personality and ideas. Most have a fairly traditional appearance: being white, with red patterns. Some have a heart and a map of China, or China and the Beijing Olympic logo, or a heart with the Chinese National Flag.
But what makes these T-shirts special and unusual to Chinese eyes is that one line features all the Chinese surnames with a red heart, to show that all the people in China support the country. There are actually only a hundred surnames, so they do just about fit on a T-shirt and the wearer can choose the shirt that has his or her family name highlighted – an element of individuality that seems to be both novel and highly appealing to the Chinese nation.
May 27th, 2008
No, not those rather tacky things that seem to be particularly popular with American newlyweds, the ones that say ‘just married’ and a date (as if strangers could find a way to care, and as if family and friends didn’t already know!) but T-shirts for the invitees and participants.
Wedding favours are a hassle for everyone, and perhaps the simplest way to deal with the issue is to find a sympathetic T-shirt printer and get them to help you organise a printing for everyone. The participants: bridesmaids, ushers, and ring-bearers etc if you have them, can have a personalised top that bears their name and their role in the wedding. If your parents are good sports, give them Mother of the Bride etc T-shirts too, but be sure they’ll appreciate the joke – it can fall flat at the reception if they were expecting something a little more upmarket. The guests can have a generic T-shirt and some popular choices are:
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Friend of Bride/Groom
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Team Bride/Groom
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Wedding Party!
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Wedding Crasher (like the film, but not everybody gets it, so be sure you tell any bar staff etc that the T-shirts come from you, or you may find guests who pull their favours on immediately getting ejected from the establishment!)
And a big hit last year was the happy couple’s initials turned into a monogram, it was seen at Surrey wedding parties as if it was obligatory.
Just Married courtesy of lesruba
May 9th, 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
Hand Embroidery
Originally embroidery was undertaken by hand and, in many cultures, it was work undertaken by women. Some of the most famous Western embroidery is religious, and can be found in the clothing and church decorations used in traditional religions. In India, sequins and beads are added to the design. Such work has always been expensive and reserved for the richest and most powerful members of society – Henry VIII had bed hangings, cushions for the royal barge and ‘hose’ (stockings) all embroidered with his favourite symbols and his monogram – and he used the same symbols with different monograms for stained glass windows in his palaces – the first monarch to ‘brand’ himself! He gave many of his craftsmen a headache though; each time he married a new wife, the poor men who made the windows had to take out the monogram and replace it with the initials of the most recent bride!
Direct embroidery
Direct embroidery is performed onto the fabric with the help of computerised machinery which gives a professional long-lasting appearance to the design and is equally suitable for text or logos. To give a perfect result, the logo has to be redrawn manually into a format that the embroidery machine can ‘read’ – this process is called digitisation. It allows for any kind of logo, but especially plain text in simple fonts to be converted to crisp, elegant designs that are easily legible on clothing and match the colours of your brand logo. Direct embroidery is hard-wearing and can be washed regularly without losing its shape or hues.
Embroidered white coats courtesy of cesarastudillo
