Archive for January, 2009
T-Shirt Designer Spotlight – Wotto (0)
Published on January 21st, 2009. By The Taddict, under Designer Spotlight.
What better designer to have in the spotlight after Jimiyo than to have another master of t-shirt design, Wotto. Craig Watkins is his birth name and designing is game. See what makes Wotto run this shizz.
What is your favorite part of design?
It has to be doodling ideas and trying to pour the mess out of my head onto a page. It’s great when a design comes out on paper close to how I visualized it. It doesn’t happen often but that’s what makes it so golden. I think the drawing stage is very important, there are way too many ‘illustrators’ out their just tracing stuff and not actually drawing.
How would you describe your style?
Dark. I like to draw characters that have a narrative, a life of their own. I like to create little stories and lives for my creatures. I know it sounds weird.
What inspires your work?
What doesn’t? Pretty much everything I look at. Artist wise I get inspired by painters like Joe Sorrel and street art has always played a part in my art work.
What are five websites that you can’t live without?
Teefury
Dekay Clothing
Design By Humans
Threadless
Emptees
What trends do you see developing in the future of t-shirt design?
I hope to see less 80′s inspired tees and I hope character design will remain popular. I donno about future trends, I try to steer away from mainstream design.
URL: Wotto
Portfolio: Wotto Tees
2 For 1 Wednesday (0)
Published on January 21st, 2009. By The Taddict, under T-Shirt News.
The Taddict has two interviews coming up today for your viewing pleasure. We have none other than the main man, Wotto, and Blake from You Design It. Just feeling a little ambitious today….that’s all!
Lowdtown Friends & Freaks (1)
Published on January 20th, 2009. By The Taddict, under T-Shirt Lines.
I received an email yesterday from Ray Masaki talking about the official launch of his new clothing line Lowdtown Friends & Freaks. I checked out the site and thought the designs were pretty cool and I really liked the attention to detail on the shirts. The custom tag is screen printed in the shirt, there is an embroidered label on the bottom of the shirts and the prints are fairly technical. By technical, I am referring to the oversized printing and the use of soft inks. The site grades out pretty well in keeping with the overall theme of the shirts and Lowdtown could get some traction.
The only problem I have is the presale option. Are the shirts currently being printed and just not ready? Or worse, are they being presold to fund the printing and check interest? Ray, feel free to weigh in on this in the comments section. If they are currently being printed, when will they be available?
**UPDATE**
Ray responded in the comments stating that the presale is for a limited run of the sewn-on labels at the bottom of the shirts. No pre-purchase, no label.
Designerside’s Gruesome Tee Design List (0)
Published on January 19th, 2009. By The Taddict, under T-Shirt Design.
Another design blog featuring t-shirt designs came across my feed reader this morning. I thought the list was good, but the thing that really stood out in my mind was the fact that it was guest written by Blake at You Design It. It was written on Designerside and the list came exclusively from Emptees, one of our favorite sites. We thought we’d take this as a good opportunity to let you know that we did get in touch with Blake for an upcoming interview.
Now we just need to come up with some questions that we feel like our fellow Taddicts would like to know. Getting right on that as soon as this post is live. 
T-Shirt Shops Across the Pond(s) (0)
Published on January 18th, 2009. By The Taddict, under Cool Sites.
You can probably guess as much that we get e-mails every day about a new t-shirt design, t-shirt line, or t-shirt shop. We also get e-mails from vendors, suppliers, and even companies that have no idea what we do. Since none of our posts are financially motivated, we like to reward those e-mails that are exclusive, targeted, and relevant. We look for pitches that have cool content, and most importantly…if we can tell that you are hustling. The t-shirt game is not one for the timid.
Under the guidelines, we have found two sites that we’d like to reward. It just so happens that both of them are on separate continents other than the United States. The first is Electric Press out of the UK, and I was glad to see that they were carrying some American indie brands like Linty Fresh and Two in the Shirt. The second was Hung by Thread in Australia and I could see that they have a sense of humor. Their e-mail addressed me by name and they made a few jokes about the current economy and the currency markets.
Their websites were clean and full of information for your shopping pleasure. The Taddict approves.
Another T-Shirt Post On A Design Blog (1)
Published on January 16th, 2009. By The Taddict, under T-Shirt News.
Keep them coming! I came across another great list of t-shirt design resources posted on a very popular new design blog called Dead Wings Designs. It’s pure awesomeness that the t-shirt community is getting so closely connected to the design world. In times like these, we all need to come together and help each other out. When you check out the link, get to know Dead Wings Designs because they are the brother site to Arbent. This pairing indicates nothing but high quality will be coming from Angie and crew.
Word Apparel Photo Shoot (0)
Published on January 15th, 2009. By The Taddict, under Word Apparel.
Last night we took the pictures for Word Apparel, and it couldn’t have gone better. Levi came by The Taddicts photo studio and brought two of his friends – Kelsey and Mark. I’m convinced after looking at all the photographs that Kelsey isn’t capable of taking a bad picture. Now comes the fun part…we have to process all the images and prepare them to go on the online store for Word Apparel.
For those of our more recent viewers, we took these images for Word Apparel in an effort to help them be more successful. One of our resolutions for 2009 as The Taddict is to get more involved with clothing lines and provide as much assistance as possible. In other words, we want to get our hands dirty.
Take your last look at their current images on their online store, because they won’t be there for much longer.
I also thought I would leave you with a sneak peek at two of the blooper shots from the photo shoot. That’s Kelsey just clowning around a little bit.
MyInkBlog X You Design It (0)
Published on January 14th, 2009. By The Taddict, under T-Shirt Design.
Apparently, I am a little late to the party on this one. Late Monday night MyInkBlog ran an article called 23 Great Apparel Related Design Articles that featured our big list of t-shirt blog feeds. Pop Culture Tees and Coty Gonzales both picked up on it as well. The article itself is a pretty good list of resources for designers interested in t-shirt designing.
On another note…this is about the 10th article I have seen from Blake at You Design It. If you are reading this Blake, we would like to interview you for Taddict. Please contact us if you are interested!
T Addict X Word Apparel – New Pics (0)
Published on January 13th, 2009. By The Taddict, under Word Apparel.
This is just a little teaser for the first thing we are going to do with Levi and Word Apparel. He is bringing his wears to our photo studio tomorrow nite so we can get some better pics on his store. We can’t wait to show you the before/after and the reasoning behind this first step. Much more to come….
Flying Coffin X Manik Skateboards (0)
Published on January 12th, 2009. By The Taddict, under T-Shirt Lines.
I just came across a t-shirt that looks pretty technical because 4-color process is not easy when printing on dark t-shirts. To top that off, they went with a gold outline. That is what I call blog worthy because they are pushing the envelope by not going for the cookie-cutter print.
If you don’t know about Flying Coffin, they have t-shirts, hats and even skateboard decks. This print actually goes along with a series of skateboard deck designs for Manik Skateboards. They have a style all to their own and it fits with the Seattle atmosphere. Good collabo on a limited run.
