I thought I would take some time to sit down with Sandy from our Legal department and try to get a crash course on basic European and German law – specifically word marks and trademarks. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. We’ve seen and experienced over the last few years how some quite unbelievable word marks have been registered for the “Nice Classification 25” (textiles) protecting them from being printed on any article of clothing. We thought it would be useful for you to see our perspective on trademarks, brands and word marks and all of the curious legal developments we “discover” every day.

We don’t know every single word mark, and some aren’t even worth mentioning. (A good place to start searching for them is here or here.) We do notice however that word marks lead to discussions and general confusion, especially when we find one on a product and have to deactivate it. We aren’t doing this just for fun nor are we doing it to annoy you.

It is completely incomprehensible for us why some everyday words, names or even numbers are protected. On the other hand there are some trademarks which are “only” everyday words whose protection doesn’t surprise us, like “Hoover”, “Coke” or “Frisbee”. These are established brands which have made it into everyday speech, but it is generally understood and accepted that they can’t be printed on a shirt.
continue reading ‘Mark your Word - Discussion about European Trademark Laws (I)’

At first glance Zoo&Co The Drawing Lounge might come across as a shirt shop for young’uns with its vibrantly colourful designs reminiscent of Saturday morning cartoons. Perhaps it was that very fact that made the shirts “grow” on me, and there is much more to discover and enjoy upon closer look. What really impressed me was their ability to create complex, colourful and detailed designs even with the “limitation” of 3 flex/flock colours. Shadows, outlines and contours in one colour, fillers in another and a third for accents are puzzled together seamlessly. For a relatively young shop, they have a great selection of animals, celebrity caricatures and creatures – all well integrated into a skillfully designed site. Zoo&Co in Interview:
continue reading ‘Colourful Critters, Creatures and Celebrities – Zoo&Co Interview’

… and lives up to his personalised shirt-proclamation (a Spreadshirt product, of course ;-)  ) by hitting all of those ‘Bus Stop’ notes. This is one of those songs you hear on the radio but would never come up with the name or band – that is, unless you are a big fan of The Hollies. Well done Geoff!

Are there any other Spreadshirt-wearing karaoke singers out there?

Many of you have probably uploaded a vector graphic at one point or another in your Spreadshirt life. If this much is true you might have also received a short e-mail in your inbox at one point with the following text:

Hello {FIRSTNAME},
Unfortunately, we cannot accept your uploaded design “{DESIGN_NAME}” (Design ID: {DESIGN_ID}) for the following reason: […]

A description of one of the 11 rejection reasons would follow with a short explanation of how you should rework your design so that we can print it. Sometimes this information didn’t completely clear up the confusion (let alone the frustration). So, we thought we would dig deeper into the reasons for rejection and stick this content into one of our more popular FAQs: “My design for plot printing has been rejected. Why?” This article also fits in well with our video of Micha and Klaus and is also linked in our rejection e-mails.

This new-and-improved FAQ now has a listed overview of the types of rejection for vector designs, sorted according to frequency. Smack-dab at the top is the first commandment “Thou shalt not create lines which are too thin”, a.k.a the 1.5 mm rule, followed by the “Thou shalt not leave curves open” and “Thou shalt not use too many anchor points”.

What’s also new is that we show and explain exactly what would happen if we were to print such a rejected design on a shirt. We’ve added some graphics to illustrate this point, which hopefully makes it clear why we can get pretty strict about the plot printing requirements. Here’s to fewer rejections!

For more information and answers to your vector and pixel graphics questions, check out our aptly named category.

The site HELLO WORLD WE ARE ELECTRO is a small altar for Electro music and its fans. It is a boldly colourful electronic world in itself filled with pacmanian figures, vibrant and vibrating contrasts over an electro-shade background and plenty of writing done with CAPS LOCK.  Some of the styles found in the HWWAE shop might come across as familiar to those perusing through Spreadshirt – specifically the prolific hand of Marketplace designer Romibello, part of the Electro-duo. A mini-interview tells the tale:
continue reading ‘Hello World We Are Electro’

Some of you might have already come across our “New Products” page front and centre in our navigation bar. Time to take another look - it just got updated with new apparel which we’ve released in July, as we have continued to expand our product range with new cuts and cool accessories:

1. American Apparel Men’s Melange T-Shirt
2. Women’s Scoop Neck Racerback
3. American Apparel Canvas Bag
4. American Apparel Men’s Fleece Track Pants
5. Dickies Women’s Splendid Shirt

We’ve also added great new colours to the Women’s Polo (pink, navy), to the Men’s Polo Shirt (peacock blue, dark red, charcoal) and to the Men’s Summer Shirt (peacock blue, graphite).

AND: Starting today through Sunday, you can offer your shop’s customers FREE shipping on their orders. We invite you to advertise this promotion in your shops and you can find a banner and some templates in your user area just for that very purpose. (You have to be logged in for this link to work correctly.)

“I shot the Serif, but I did not shoot the deputy.” I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head for the last few weeks, and for a good reason. We’ve taken the time to reflect a little on our fonts. I’ve since occupied myself with font characteristics like serifs, weight, slope, width, optical size, metrics and proportions, in addition to our internal statistics for our current font offerings. Which fonts are successful, which fonts are rarely used or seldom make it onto your shirts? Which fonts are used for which season (big surprise here, HoleHearted at the beginning of February, Halloween in October), as well as which fonts are ineffective regardless of season? The results: 52% of your ideas make it on shirts with only 6 of the 25 fonts we offer. Other fonts only make it onto your products 0.01% of the time.

Long story shirt short – spring summer cleaning for our font assortment:
Starting with about 200 fonts we filtered, discussed, deleted, replaced, plotted, weeded, reordered, re-discussed and finally put together a new set of fonts. Soon you will be able to get a fitting font for your favourite quote from the best Spaghetti Westerns of the last 50 years, just like you will have the right pixel font for your personal tribute to retro gaming. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, but be patient, wait and see – it won’t be much longer before you get your hands on these gems.
continue reading ‘I Shot the Serif - New Fonts at Spreadshirt’

You may have followed it on Twitter. Perhaps you have already seen the news on Tee-Junction or on Hide Your Arms – but you will read it here too: laFraise has launched its new redesigned site with a big bang. Our strawberry-loving colleagues at laFraise have worked hard giving the site a make-over and thought it none better than to mark the event with one of the biggest prizes in t-shirt competition history.

This special contest is the second edition of the 15K contest, but with a big new twist. Instead of awarding 3 designers with €5,000 as they did last year, there will only be one winner to lay claim to the big bag of cash filled with €15,000. This lucky talented designer will have their design printed on 2,000 shirts and go down in t-shirt history.
continue reading ‘laFraise Relaunches with a €15,000 Special Contest’

I thought it was a good time to take another look at our printing techniques – with a little help from our test lab. So today we will tackle the age-old question asked by many of our first-time customers: What are the differences between the printing techniques? Which technique do I use to get the results I want?

As supporters of flex and flock, we certainly stand behind our plot printing because it offers the best durability in the battle of Shirt vs. Machine (not to mention that it looks bang-on). The downside of this technique is that not everything is always doable on a t-shirt with three colours. That’s where digital printing comes into play, and specifically our Digital Direct printing technique.

But, before we take a look at the test lab’s results, here is some information about our experiment:

• We chose flex to represent all plot printing techniques. Nothing against flock, writable flex or special flex, but plot printing’s durability is consistent across the board. We could definitely do a test of just plot printing techniques if you are interested.
• We take our science seriously and as in all controlled experiments one should keep the variables to a minimum. Therefore we used one design for all three printing techniques. Of course, this one-coloured design does not highlight the colourful advantages of digital printing, but here we really wanted to look closely at durability.
• We should also mention that Digital Transfer normally has a slim white border around the design. This border is not visible here as it was possible here to cut the foil close enough to the design, thus eliminating the border.

For an even more detailed overview of our printing techniques, check out this great FAQ article. What hopefully comes across here is the difference between plot, Digital Direct and Digital Transfer, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of each technique: continue reading ‘Printing Techniques Experiment - Test Lab #3′

Those who subscribe to the newsletter are already in the know – but it’s time to really let the cat products out of the bag. Just in time for the wave of summer heat, these new items are casual, let the air flow and show just that little bit more skin. In addition to our new Exclusive Line products, we have added two tops and a skirt for the ladies and a Henley shirt for the gents.

• v-neck on the front and back - Women’s Double V-neck Shirt
• Eye-friendly U-cut - Women’s Scoop Neck T-shirt
• A new sense of asymmetrical balance - Women’s Drape Hem Skirt
• Nonchalant and casual - Men’s AA Henley T-Shirt