The Unraveling Tee
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An Interview with Rebecca Shostak
Designer of the Myanmar Cyclone Relief T-shirt.
BRUTE LABS and friends are making a difference.

The Myanmar Cyclone Relief T-shirt:
Only $25 for the best of causes.
Buy one now at BRUTE LABS.

Rumplo First off, awesome shirt, thanks for making it. Can you tell us a bit about the design of this T-shirt and how it is connected with your goal of supporting relief efforts in Myanmar?

Rebecca Shostak My original vision for this shirt was to bring attention to several issues related to Myanmar and also the culture that we live in here in the United States and especially California. Many of us never consider the implications of the items we buy and wear, the people behind them, and the resources used to bring them to us. In making this shirt I wanted to bring attention to the fact that the shirt is comprised of cotton and ink, cotton being one of the major exports of Myanmar, and ink, a powerful materialization of words and thoughts. These two raw materials coming together create the shirt, and in buying and wearing the shirt a person is actually making a difference to the lives of the people in Myanmar. I am hoping that the design will not only allow its wearer to realize they can and will make a positive difference, be it ever so small, in the world around them, but also begin to think consciously about where the other products that they wear and use come from and what kind of impact they have on our environment. If we can be more collectively conscious about where things come from and what the implications of buying and wearing them are, I believe we will be headed in the right direction to solve many of the problems we face together today.

Rumplo Are there any personal connections you share with the people of Myanmar? Can you tell us a quick story about your understanding of the situation there right now, or what is most striking about it?
Rebecca Although I do not know anyone from Myanmar personally, I feel a very strong connection to anyone who wears this shirt and consequently anyone affected by the benefits of the purchase of the shirt. My understanding of the situation in Myanmar is that there is a great crisis among the people due to the fact that it is one of the poorest nations in the world, and this is only magnified by the devastating effects of the cyclone. By designing this shirt and promoting it in collaboration with BRUTE LABS, I am making a direct connection between myself and those in Myanmar although it is very far away.

Rumplo Can you introduce yourself and your collaborators and tell us what drove you to print this shirt?
Rebecca Joshua To and I have been friends for quite a while. We both come from the same design program at UCLA and share a passion for using our design talents to make the world a better place. So when BRUTE LABS asked me to come up with a design for a shirt to help the cyclone victims, there was no question in my mind as to my answer; it has always been a dream of mine to use design as a means of improving the world, and this was a great chance to do so. I am grateful for the opportunity BRUTE LABS has presented to me and deeply hope it will make an impact, be it small or large, on the lives of those who are suffering in Myanmar right as I type this.

Rumplo Thanks a bunch for your time Rebecca, and thanks to Joshua To and BRUTE LABS for putting this project together!

Be sure to pick up the shirt over at BRUTE LABS, and tell your friends. 100% of the procedes from this shirt go to relief efforts in Myanmar. For more information about how the recent cyclone in Myanmar and how has effected people in Myanmar visit the Wikipedia entry.

Type tees of every type.
30 wearable typographic specimens.

Sans Serif

Classic Typefaces

Hand Drawn

Other Typographic Wonders

Clever, well drawn tees from Eric Terry's Georgia house. Linty Fresh does it right.

Rumplo So the word on the street is that you've got about a dozen designers working on some unbelievable T-shirts over there at LintyFresh -- is this true?
LintyFresh That's what I keep hearing too! But actually it's still just me doing all the design work. In fact, the entire operation here at Linty Fresh is a one-man show. See, for me, LF has always been more of a personal project and less of a boutique showcasing a bunch of artists. As time has passed it's really become a reflection of me as an artist, so the style is constantly mutating, although I hope there's an underlying vibe to keep them all together.

But yeah, I'm pretty stubborn with keeping it all in house. From time to time I get emails from other artists interested in contributing designs to my site, but as good as their work often is, I always turn them down. Sometimes it's really tough to do because their stuff is so awesome, but keeping that same focus has really forced me to grow artistically (since I'm not relying on someone else's talent), so it's a good thing in the end. The one exception to this is a collaboration tee that's coming out next month. But for the most part, it's just me. Keeping closely connected with the other parts of the process (fulfilling orders, communicating with customers, and managing the storefront, to name a few), has also always been really important (and enjoyable) to me.

Rumplo How'd you get started making T-shirts?
LintyFresh Back when I was in middle school I was commissioned for the first tee I'd ever done. It was for a construction company that belonged to a family friend. Unsurprisingly, it sucked and he had to get someone else to do it. A few years later I (successfully) did a tee for a band I knew, and later on I found Threadless. You'd think I would've totally quit on tshirt designing altogether though, because even after 20 submissions, I never won! (Although looking back a lot of those were crap too!)

But even though I never snagged a win, I learned a ton about using a limited color palette, designing with vectors for print, and other techniques that would eventually pay off. Plus some of my submissions there eventually became prints for Linty Fresh. The first of these was "Once Upon A War". To drum up sales I emailed practically everyone I knew and took preorders. It actually sold really well, and it got me thinking about printing more and more and going solo. That was back in February of 2006, and it's just crazy to think that I've done about 15 tees and lately even some belts in that time!

Rumplo If you were to start out all over again what would you do differently?
LintyFresh More research! I have a bad habit of getting into things impulsively without working out all the details, and this was a prime example. In the beginning I made things really difficult for myself and for my printers because I didn't understand the screenprinting process at all. In my head, it was "I'll make some cool vector art and keep the color count low, and they'll do the rest". That system worked ok for awhile, but being naive to the process meant being naive to the possibilities, and in the end that meant I was limiting myself. I also would have shopped around more for a printer. The first 9 tees for Linty Fresh were done with major imprinting companies, and although I give them top marks in quality and consistency and speed, they charged a lot and they weren't willing to experiment with me, which ended up becoming more and more desirable as time went on. The printer I'm using now is not only much cheaper than those big guys, but he's creative and loves pushing the boundaries, so it's a good match for me. Networking, too, has been an essential aspect to this experience that I definitely didn't appreciate in the beginning. Joining forums, asking advice from other guys in the business, and just talking to more people in general would've been a smart thing to start with. Learning from my own mistakes has been effective, but not ideal.

Rumplo Can you tell us a bit about your T-shirt making process? How long does it take you to make a T-shirt, from designing it to shipping it? What are your favorite and least favorite parts of the process?
LintyFresh Most designs take 5-8 hours to do, but that's never done in a single stretch. Usually the first part is the concept, which is mostly done away from the computer - thinking about it while doing something else, making little sketches, or collecting pictures and other scraps. Then I go digital and start the graphic work, which always starts with picking out colors and an overriding style of lines and shapes. Then I start the drawing (still all by mouse, because I'm a caveman like that). The design work usually wraps up after a couple of days and then I'll prepare the file for my printer, separate the colors, get the exact pantones picked out, and send that off to him. Usually it takes him three weeks to get the tees back to me. So the whole process takes a month or so.

I guess my least favorite part is waiting for the shirts to come, because it's out of my control. If you haven't noticed, I'm kind of a micro-manager... ;) The other steps are awesome, though, and all for different and specific reasons. Designing is cool because I get in my own little world and I've got my music going and it's just a very visceral and connected feeling for me. During this period, the concept is still evolving, and often a narrative even forms for it, which goes up on the product page when the tee is released. But even the more mechanical stuff like fulfilling and shipping the orders is really cool to me. I don't think I'll ever quite get over that feeling of getting an order from someone - that acknowledgment that someone digs my stuff enough to drop their cash for it and wait patiently for it to be delivered. That's just so awesome to me!

Rumplo How does your (awesome) blog tie into all of this?
LintyFresh The LF Blog keeps people informed of the latest happenings of Linty Fresh. I've worked hard to dispel any illusions of LF being bigger than it is, and that definitely comes across in the stuff I write about. Even if it's something as small as getting a couple of new shelves to store my expanding inventory, I'll write about it, because that's something that's exciting to me, and it means I'm growing. (To this day I'm still running the entire operation out of a single room in my house!) I also write about upcoming releases, designs in progress, and my thoughts on being an entrepreneur. To me, the blog serves as a second layer of involvement that people can have with me and with Linty Fresh. It allows them to get a glimpse of what's to come, and often I ask for feedback on future releases, so that's been helpful.

Rumplo What's next for you? And what's next for Linty Fresh?
LintyFresh Quitting my day job! For awhile it was the means through which I could afford to print tees, but as Linty Fresh grows, it's become less and less necessary to hang on to. It's a little intimidating to think of not having it there as a safety net, but at this point it's taking up more time than it's worth and LF is showing no signs of slowing down, so I think it's time. The next thing is a show I'm going to on June 7th here in Atlanta called the Indie Craft Experience (http://www.ice-atlanta.com). I'm honored to be among the 100 vendors chosen for the show, and since it's my first, I'm getting pretty anxious about it, but hopefully it'll all go smoothly.

As far as future plans, I've gotten a lot of requests for hoodies so I'll be releasing some of those towards the end of the year, and new belts should continue to trickle out as the months pass. I definitely want to expand into new products too. Although the staple of LF will always be graphic tshirts, it's somewhat of a saturated market right now and I'm itching to find something completely new to explore!

The End Thanks a bunch to Eric for his time and his smarts. Be sure to check out the Linty Fresh store and pick up a few of his wonderful tees.

Geeky pop-culture awesomeness, being real, and running a brilliant shop.
New York based The Chop Shop makes sharp, clever, nerdy tees.

Rumplo I get the feeling from your about page that Chop Shop started out as a design company that turned an eye toward T-shirts—Is this a fair way of putting it? If so, how does your experience as a design company influence the shirts you make?
ChopShop No, we are a design company also called The Chopping Block which has designed the sites for major companies like Turner Classic Movies, Rachael Ray and Bravo to name a few. Additionally we have also been the providers of web presence for major entertainment icons such as the bands Phish, They Might be Giants (1997-2007) and Trey Anastasio’s solo efforts and others.
The Products side of the Chopping Block was always going to be called Chop Shop all the way back in 1997 when we started. It took us ten years to find a way to get a whole site, identity and enough products to justify a site to get chopshopstore.com up and running. You know how all those pesky clients and their work get in the way. ;)

Rumplo T-shirts have taken on a pretty significant role in pop-culture, and you guys pay homage to a number of pop-culture icons in your shirts. What do you make of that?
ChopShop Really, it is all about being nerds. We see these people walking around with tape around their glasses and programmers on wheels and its funny to us… but we really dig these people. Many of them just don’t care what other people think of them and it is really sort of an empowering thing, right? Our two illustrations of guys dressed up as characters from Tron are really inspired by that Maynard fella we all saw back in 1998 (i am guessing). You have to have some real gusto to dress up in some skin tight outfit that glows in the dark and publish it online for all the world to see. Surely he had no idea that half the world would see it, but there is a good chance most of your surrounding community of friends and relations will. Many of these people have become oddball celebrities in their own right. Some folks might think it is more like infamy, but we don’t.

But apart from that, much of what makes these people tick are sci-fi movies, television shows, video games and as with most generations… we love to collect the memories and nostalgic items that make up our past. We are big nerds too and as much as we think we are outside that arena, the truth is that we talk about action script code outside of work, we watch the new Battlestar Galactica series and still talk about Star Wars as if the movie came out last week instead of 1977. There was nothing more entertaining than working on the weRobot and AlienWe designs and in some cases re-discovering some characters that still reside in our collected memories. Some of these are embarrassingly awful to admit having liked even as kids, but in many cases that is exactly what we love about them too. At any rate they are all embraced from the awful to the genius.

Rumplo Considering that pop-culture status what, if anything, do you think will change about the T-shirt industry in the next few years?
ChopShop Hopefully people will always want to have their likes and additions emblazoned on their tee shirts. Its really been happening since Elvis which was the first real concert tee ever. Then consider the 70’s and early 80’s with all those heavy metal black tees you saw everywhere. Its been around for some time now its only opened up to a wider audience. At one time not too long ago the only one-liner you could find on a tee shirt was “I’m with Stupid” and now there are millions of them that can be based on anything from a single scene in a movie to a 6 minute skit from Saturday Night Live. We have just become more open to being more creative in the making of them and and the general population has become more expressive with wearing of them.
The next big thing though… Pants.

Rumplo (laughter) Your website is amazing. What do people say about it? Do you think it adds to your geek cred and helps sell shirts?
ChopShop I hope so. right now its too slow and we are fixing that. It wasn’t designed to handle thousands of hits in a single hour and we were more focused on the making it cool and interactive than what if tons of people want to actually make purchases all at once. So it is having some growing pains right now but we hope to have that ironed out in a few weeks to be able to handle the instantaneous traffic slams that come with no warning as well as looking really great. First and foremost Chop Shop is a part of a graphic design company, so it will never get ugly. We might have some quick fixes up for the next few months depending on where we are on the new developments, but as well as selling tees… its a portfolio piece.

Rumplo Do you think you'll ever design tees that are dramatically different then the sci-fi / geek orinted tees you're making now?
ChopShop Hard to know. There were some designs that we have nixed because they didn’t fit in with us so well. We like funny, but we also like elegant which is kind of what lead to the “collections” tees like weRobot, The Internets and the new alienWe designs. I think what could be interesting is finding ways to still be funny, geeky and yet elegant about it at the same time.
Another direction that is very likely is not focusing on any one genre of pop-culture, but opening that up more to other arenas. There are things people nerd out about like motorcycles, sports and other things… we just don’t think about them as nerds. But think about how nerdy it really is to figure out the stats on your favorite teams batting average. What dorks.

Rumplo Does Rachael Ray wear your T-shirts?
ChopShop No, not yet. She is a food nerd and as I was saying above. There are other arenas to explore.

Rumplo What kind of T-shirts are you guys working on right now? Care to give us a sneak peek?
ChopShop We are going to try and see how some of the current designs translate to kids sizes and want to get more in women’s styles. There are whole new concepts in the works and I would tell you of them, except then I would have to kill you.
Hey… there’s a tee shirt concept in that line. No?

The End Thanks a million to Chop Shop for their time and for their insightful thinking. Be sure to check out the Chop Shop store in all it's geeky goodness and pick up a few tees.