Arguably one of the most influential working t-shirt designers today, Glenn Jones, has launched his own t-shirt company, Glennz Tees. If you’ve spent much time in the t-shirt world, you already know his work. He’s won more Threadless contests than anyone. He combines a richly-colored, insanely detailed illustrative style with […]
According to some highly-regarded scholars of the intersection of music and popular culture (by which I mean, whoever wrote the first entry that came up after my hasty Google search), David Lee Roth once said that the reason most music critics love Elvis Costello is because most music critics look like Elvis Costello. (For those who have never really gotten over the nerd vs. jock tensions in high school — Hi! I’m Mike! — it should be pointed out that Costello later got nominated for an Oscar and commissioned by the Danish Royal Opera, while Roth is now doing this.)
The point is — or should be — the relative acceptability of nerdiness is a somewhat recent phenomenon, and the Internet is helping the bespectacled and pallid among us finally convince the world that knowledge is actually pretty cool. There’s a whole slew of webcomics out there celebrating, and not apologizing for, their creators’ love of periodic tables, quadratic equations, obscure art history, and all other kinds of fancy-pants book-learnin’. Here’s two of them:
I recently highlighted Despair’s BitterSweets relaunch. In their typically super-creative fashion, they have amplified this product and taken it to a completely new level. Fans can now share their own expressions of dejection, dysfunction, and Despair.
make your own custom, candy-heart image with anything you would like to say (in two lines of six characters each);
email that image to friends;
buy a custom, heart-shaped greeting card with your image on the front and your own text on the inside; and
even load your card into a BitterSweets candy tin, into which it fits just perfectly.
In addition, since this product is completely integrated with their store, you can purchase these items in the same order as a t-shirt, mug, and custom calendar.
Time Magazine’s Lev Grossman calls webcomic Achewood (which is, perhaps, the best comic strip in American history) the best graphic novel of the year, noting “(i)t’s not a graphic novel in every, or maybe any, traditional sense, since its primary venue is the Web, but Achewood is so profoundly genius it would be a crime to put it anywhere but on this list, and at the top of it.” (more…)
Tiki Bar TV’s Lala Fastwaster now has a pinup calendar. Artfully rendered by Vancouver visual effects artist and increasingly-popular pinup illustrator Kevin Genzel (thethirdsequence.com) this calendar achieves a lot more than meets the eye. For thousands of Internet Geeks, saying “Lala Pinup Calendar?!” will doubtless be more than enough to capture credit card numbers. But this hits a trifecta, well, ok, maybe a quadfecta.
“Lala Pinup?!” - Understood
Direct Function - By actually providing real utility, it increases the impulse purchase likelihood because “Hey, I need a calendar anyway…”
Shibboleth - Tiki Bar TV now offers another product that lets fans identify themselves as “in the Tiki Bar TV Fan Club”
Brand Deepening - The genuinely authentic rendering of these illustrations itself reinforces the cool retro vibe which spans other Tiki Bar TV elements.
All these elements together just deepen and expand the Tiki Bar TV brand. We’ve already mentioned their truly awesome original Charooba Mug here. Charooba is the Tiki Bar TV mascot made into an actual Tiki Mug. (A coffee table book that ITSELF becomes a coffee table!) This wicked, green glazed creature is a must own for any serious fan of the show and anyone who calls themselves a Tiki Collector. Buy them both and be done with it.
Penny Arcade today pulled the curtain off of their new Print-on-Demand Comics. Now almost every comic they’ve ever made is available as a super high quality 11×17 (or 11×11) poster.
Ordering couldn’t be simpler. The familiar navigator located beneath each comic strip simply has a new button that reads “Buy a Print.” Click it and you’re done. No Ajax, no Logins, the item is automatically added to the Penny Arcade shopping cart. You can return to the navigator to add more strips, shop for other PA merch in their store, or just checkout.
A simple, subtle, nearly frictionless purchase process. You can read more about it in Gabe’s announcement here.
I awoke this morning and realized it’s practically November! This stupid warm October tricked me. We’re about three weeks from the beginning of the Christmas rush and I need more space for the new shirts I’m working on.
Let’s do free shipping in the USA & Canada and $5 shipping per shirt internationally on all DS t-shirts until the stroke of midnight on 11/1. This will also be the last week to get your hands on Pixel Communism and the current edition of the CRUSH ALL HU-MANS! shirts.
Btw, Richard, I think they also might have tricked us all by moving the whole Daylight Savings Time thing back a little bit. Doesn’t the time change usually happen earlier? It seems like night starts falling at 4 or 5 p.m. again by mid-October, not this new November turn. I’m sure Alex Jones has his theories as to what is really going on with this manipulation of our calendar. If you know the latest from Prison Planet, please feel free to share. (more…)
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Undependent™ tracks the emerging class of self-sustaining Internet-based artists. By artist we don’t mean artiste. We mean those content creators whose self-expression originates in and emanates from the Internet itself. The compelling ones attract audiences and in so doing are capable of creating completely self-sustaining businesses with total artistic control. (Read more here)
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