The first thing to say to CEER!US is no. No, no, no, no and no. Am I getting through to you?

There is no such thing as a V-neck unisex top. V-necks are for laydeez. Think about it. If you have ladybumps, you want to give the world a hint about them. But if you are a bloke, even if you have boobs that would make Janet Jackson cover up in shame, you do not want to suggest that they exist – right? So no, CEER!US people, there is no way on earth that a guy landing on your apparel page is going to think ‘yeah, V-neck T-shirt, cool’ and buy one. They are going to laugh like a drain and move on – as well they should.

Having given CEER!US a good thumping, they do have nifty line in compromise clothing. You know what I mean. Stuff you can wear to your gf’s family do without feeling you’ve sold out and without her dad throwing a wobbly when he sees what you’ve got on your manlies.

The sweat-top here is a good example. If you were a lecturer at Freshers week, this would give the right vibe - potentially interesting but not pervy or hopeless. For a ‘meet the folks’ barbecue, you’d get pass marks wearing this, and if you happened to bump into your mates, it wouldn’t cost you respect. Understated but still cool.

Good sweats. But definitely not, repeat not, repeat not – a V-neck.

Posted by Mikey who would never wear a V-neck

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Brand New Intention has one of those high falutin’ well-meaning, copy-writer-filled home pages. It could turn you off immediately (especially if phrases like high quality products make your head explode – I mean, who would advertise selling shoddy schleck, even if they were?). To whit as they say in legal circles, ‘We bring you a collection of diverse creative projects and high quality products from artists and designers like ourselves. Not only are we all about creativity and innovation, but Brand New Intention prides itself on the ability to blend thought-provoking art with well-thought design and production. From time to time, we will release fresh new works by artists in several areas of design and art.’

Okay, get past that and you’re into style nirvana, and you can forgive the terrible words. This is a blindingly good T-shirt. Nice styling, strong colours, well photographed (even if it does look like somebody is pulling the model’s head up by his hair, possibly to cut his throat in a Sweeney Todd homage), and excellent design - looks great from a distance and just improves the closer you get to the intricate detailing.

But beyond the tee, there’s the potential freebie and that’s where Brand New Intention shows that while it might be crap at words, it’s excellent at marketing. Each T-shirt you buy (and there’s another good one in black with an aces and 8s design) gives you an entry to win one of these little beauties.

I mean, what are you supposed to do? There’s no way out, is there? Given the choice between winning and not winning, well … you know you can’t resist. You KNOW you can’t resist. You KNOW you CAN’T resist.

Fiendishly clever bucky lastards, aren’t they?

Posted by kay, who thinks the mini-munnys are kawai …

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The weather has gone wet and when the summer is wet, drinking tees come into their own. Pub T-shirts: they’ve gotta have a good drinking message and not show too many spills and splashes, am I right? You know I am.

Here’s a winner for ya - Use Small Words - and I like them already because using small words saves the planet and doesn’t trouble my brain.

They say they design tees based on quotes by famous authors, thinkers, poets politicians… Poe, Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Freud… I was with them until Twain, but who cares, I’ll take their word for it – joke!

A good drinking T-shirt right:

• features a known drinker, like Oscar Wilde – check
• has an excellent design – check
• won’t show the aforementioned mouth-missing accidents when you’ve been quaffing for a few hours – check
• And … wait for it, because this is the killer … comes with a free beer glass! Yeeeeaaaahh – check!

Order one of these beauties and they send it with a free glass with the same message Work is the curse of the drinking classes printed on it.

Works for me.

Posted by mikey who knows his Salamander from his Mighty Oak

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I’ll tell you what I hate,
what I really really hate …

When somebody suggests a tee for Teejunkie to feature and I track down the designer and ask for some images so that we can see if giving him some free publicity is what we want to do and he says he’ll send images, BUT NEVER DOES!

Which is why today’s uber-powerful T-shirt is not brought to you by Tom (who might be reading this and should be ashamed of himself) from Hereford, but by somebody else entirely.

We do not do good causes here – only good T-shirts and if that sounds harsh, tough titties! But sometimes the two come together, as in this awesome design. It’s a screenprint of Melissa Stockwell: 28 years old, Olympian and the first US female amputee of the Iraq War.

She’s done an amazing amount of stuff in the four years since having her amputation: 8 triathlons, 2 NYC Marathons; set 3 US Paralympic swimming records and qualified for Beijing. Makes the rest of us look feeble – and so we should. Coming back from this kind of injury must be shit-hard and deserves a T-shirt at the very least. Which is what she’s been given by TakePride - btw guys, the site name is interesting – I assumed it was going to be a gay tee-shirt for sure – maybe you are reclaiming Pride for the world, but hey, it made me giggle.

But that’s not why we like the tee (even Mikey likes it, and he has a heart of asbestos and concrete). We feature it because it’s coooooool! Great image, and the block print of text that tells her story is a f****** wonderful idea. Instead of the mass-marketing hoo-ha around big sporting brands, this is a blow struck in the direction of the athletes who make those brands stand out - yeah!!

The whole design has a kind of Samurai feel to it which seems entirely appropriate to Melissa’s struggle and the price is a steal at $25 – so props to Melissa and really bad eggs to Tom from Hereford who should go and bang his head against a wall for a while – daft sod.

Posted by Kay who wanted an easier week than she’s getting …

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Without more ado:
Yes No Maybe have a crush on Gideon Conn. If you don’t know who he is, then Google him you lazy sods. But he can design a decent T-shirt.

This one, say Yes No Maybe, is hand-printed by characters of questionable morality and they claim the print position changes slightly from one print to the next – making it a limited edition kind of thing.

Very nice, and having spent time dodging nippers at Tartan Heart I’m in favour of finding the guy who could make this tee a reality and hiring him to deal with people who take their ankle-biters to rock festivals. Other than that and some rain, a good time was had by all and no, I didn’t wear a kilt.

Post by Mikey who is deadly serious about the kiddie kidnap thing

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Missed us? Bet you have! If our inbox and desks are anything to go by, you’ve been teejunkie deprived and you’ve let us feel your pain! Anyhoo, we had a few days off while the decorators were in and now I’m staring at the pristine white office walls (and wondering how long it’s going to take Mikey to do a Banksy on them) and pondering why, exactly, the stain around the wastepaper bin hasn’t disappeared. Mikey insists that it’s only where he spilt his Irn-Bru after a particularly heavy night’s clubbing, but I’m not convinced – Irn-Bru doesn’t make blisters in lino imo. If it does, I’m glad I don’t drink it.

But you don’t care about our refurbished digs, you want to know about tees! I’ve had a sneak preview of Mikey’s next pick, which is more than a bit edgy, so I’m going with something a lot more wholesome (but still controversial) inspired by our excellent (and almost certainly short-lived) new working conditions. Teach the Controversy has a spankingly good design, which looks just lovely on a female teeshirt as you can see …

But even better, when you get a close up of the picture, it’s not just a nice piece of artwork, it’s the kind of T-shirt that inspires a heated debate especially in the old student union bar!

I WOOT, not just because I like tees with little devils on (although I do, I do!) but because I’m all in favour of T-shirt wit and this one has it in spades (that’s a pun on the T-shirt image, geddit?) You can have this tee without the promotional wording underneath, just specify when you order. And there’s more … Jeremy over at Controversy is offering a back to school deal 25% off your entire order if it includes two or more T-shirts, and you enter into your order the coupon code SCHOOL308. My schooldays are so far over that St Trinian’s looks like contempary drama to me, but nobody can tell how old you are in cyberspace …

Post by Kay who wants a new iMac for her ‘new’ office

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My not-very-esteemed colleague is making me do a double shift and then she butts in with T-shirts she thinks I should feature! Herself has a whole bollywood ‘thing’ just because she once went to Mumbai. So to annoy her, I’ve picked out a Brooklyn-based Bollywood design.

You might not get it at first, but it’s a blend of Indian traffic and one of those ink blot jobs they make you look at if you have head-case problems. The reason I like it.

It’s one of those piccies that you can encourage people of the opposite sex to get right up close to, so they can make out the design. Just the thing for clubbing imo. And the love-shack summer colours don’t do it any harm either. It comes from Chor Bazaar which as I say, is not Bolly-based but calls Brooklyn home. Speaking of which, by the time junior Beckham is old enough to get a passport, I reckon that region of New York will have changed its name so as not to end up with the Paris Hilton effect

Post by Mikey iPod posting cracked at last!

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Do you ever get the feeling you�re being got at? Workmates having a dig because you take a few days off? Join the club mate!

About seven million people sent information about T-shirts they thought would tickle the old teejunkie: they were 99% wrong!

American presidential tees who the foursquare is Adlai Stevenson anyway? Bad idea. Not interested.
Cutesy anime Hello Kitty type tees forget it.
4th of July T-shirts? Come on give me a break!

Wading through the emails is like finding out your mum’s ironed your hoodie � bad news that you have to be polite about.

Did find myself going back to this

It came with one of those announcements that makes you want to kick the writer in the slats: mainly cos it started with ‘We are kicking-off’ and didn’t continue to talk about football, wittering about typography instead.

Then more football For this series the main goal will be getting high quality t-shirts with fresh designs on to your beautiful bodies!! Somebody either needs a better copywriter or a life. Because my bod is not beautiful that’s why I put tees on it in the first place, mate. If it looked good naked, why would I bother?

Anyway the man with the good eye and the bad copywriter can be found here: Hellowman and he actually gave me a laugh at the end by saying, A big plus is that, we made sure that the t-shirts are made from biological cotton and are emission and sweatshop free. Fantastic so there’s no emissions from my T-shirt, right? Obviously Hellowman hasn’t been down Brixton on a Saturday night then.

By Mikey, who has …. ; ) and still can’t get his iPhone to send his copy to the www like it promised it would on the tin.

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What’s the T-shirt equivalent of karaoke? It’s the hundred and one places you can submit a tee design to be voted on by viewers. Still, as Mikey skipped out on his next post, it was up to me to find something to please you. Well, it pleases me, you can go and do as you like (wasn’t that polite?) seeing as I’m doing a double shift.

Vespamike1 emailed teejunkie to say he’d won the Designbyhumans
contest of the week. Yawn, yawn, yawn, I thought. But I went and had a look and it’s really not half bad.

I like it. You don’t see many good full design tees these days, it’s largely centred graphics or an offset logo I’m in favour of something that uses the shape of the T-shirt (and the person inside it)! to contribute to design, and this is a very curvy feminine image, which is going to work well for day wear but can be combined with a long skirt and take you into the evening just fine. Congratulations Vespamike1 (who’s offering a 20% off discount btw, just mention teejunkie when you order) you are a justifiable winner of the week.

Posted by Kay, who knows there’s supposed to be an umlaut over the ‘u’ in Designbyhumans but really can’t be arsed, to tell the truth.

2 Comments »

We go the distance to find the best tees, I tell you. Like this one:

Isn’t that a beauty? I’ve got to tell you, fresh back from festival-land, I was wishing I’d had one of these, and I’ve spent the last few days tracking down the designer and finding out how to get hold of one. The coolness of this T-shirt is doubled: it’s a cool design, and if you spill water down your front when drinking from a bottle or pour it over your head when festival moshing, it looks like a deliberate fashion statement coolness cubed! So cool, in fact, that you could be the polar bear on the glacier mint.

But here’s the coolest thing of all this tee is not on general sale and right here, right now I’m going to tell you how to get one. Oh yes, we go the distance! You have to email missmoustache.design@gmail.com which reaches Marta and Herminia who together make up Miss Moustache Design and they will arrange a price for your T-shirt and delivery.

Now delivery is a big deal here, because it includes packaging, and the packing for this totally limited edition item looks like this:

Now tell me that’s not style in a bag!

Posted by Kay who misses her mouth when drinking more often than she’d like to admit

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