As you might have read from Robert’s and my posts, we activated the new fonts at the beginning of the month. The addition of these new fonts has brought more quality, variety and design possibilities to both customers and Shop Partners – and the feedback so far has confirmed this. That’s the good news.

Now on to the bad news. As we mentioned when unveiling the new fonts, for various reasons we will be deactivating 32 of the old fonts tomorrow, September 1st. Here they are (take a deep breath): Signature, Gael A, Times, Verdana, Courier New, Compacta, Dom, City, Sherwood, Storybook, American Typewriter, Chinese Rocks, Letter Gothic, Lithograph, Sonic, Square, Swiss, Kabel, Bremen, Creamepuff, Miniskip, B790-Deco, Greasy Spoon, Trikot College, Trikot Nr.1, Trikot 3D, JP Mincho, JP Gothic, Desyrel, Aktuelle, Gregs Hand, Santas Sleigh Full.

I’ll remind you all once again – no reason to panic: “This doesn’t mean that any of your current designs we will be butchered by the arrival of a new font. Even the ability to edit your current products will still be possible with a font that is deactivated.”

This does mean, however, that today is your last chance to order products with these fonts from the T-Shirt Designer or to create products with them for your shop. Get ‘em while you can! I am personally going to miss Greg’s Hand …, did I just write that? But, really it was one of my favourites. Bello Script is really starting to grow on me and Freestyle Script LT does the trick, too.

P.S. Check out our Font Book for an overview of our font range.

This was proven by our latest Design Battle in the Spreadshirt Forum. Within the group of finalists there were 82 votes for vampire designs and 54 for Viking designs. This would also explain the results of the 14 finalists – in order of their total votes:

The surprisingly simple winning design came from one of our Norwegian partner xconnectx, second place went to our deluxe designer romibello and third place was grabbed by Vorsicht-Tellerrand. Big thanks go out to all of those who participated in the battle and subsequently improved our Marketplace with some great new designs. We also broke some records with this Design Battle: 98 submissions from 36 designers! Keep your eyes peeled for the next battle!

We can be very thankful that summer is still clinging on to its last warmth. With that in mind we’ve decided to start our clearance sale anyways! That means that we have savings of up to 56% (yes, you read that correctly) on more than a dozen products. The sale will run until 21st September.

You can check out the reduced items by clicking on “SALE” at the top of our navigation, nestled between “Accessories” and “New products”. You’ll then find yourself on our sale page with all 16 of our reduced products organised into Men, Women, Kids, Sport and Accessories categories.

P.S. For those Shop Partners amongst you: our End of Season sale means that these very products will automatically be reduced in your shops. The sale of course doesn’t change any of your commission earnings if you’ve set one up for these products. You can find even more detailed information in the forum. I would certainly recommend advertising this sale in your shop, too!

It’s been burned, washed, stoned, dipped in acid, discarded and rediscovered, even shot.

I am probably not the only one out there who has trouble keeping up with their Google Reader. So when Tobias asked me if I had recently checked American Apparel’s “Daily Update” blog, I scrolled down to come across a link to NY Mag’s Fall fashion piece by Hugo Lindgren entitled T-Shirt by Darwin.

The article deals with the well-known and oft-mentioned James Dean-sian beginnings of the t-shirt, but focuses much on the recent developments of the tee, much of them coupled with new techniques and technology. Many have perhaps heard of stone-washing, garmet-dying, faux-fading, but the article goes into detail about some innovative and very interesting techniques: continue reading ‘Evolution of the T-Shirt’

The 10 best ice cream shirts on the Marketplace! Madrid 37°, Rome 34°, Paris and Berlin 32°, London … well, 25° isn’t that bad – certainly warm enough for an ice cream cone (or two)! And ever since writing about the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, I couldn’t get the thought of caramelised bacon covered ice cream out of my mind. If only Manhattan weren’t so far away - how about a day trip?

We may not have an ice cream van making its rounds (at least, I haven’t heard him yet), we surely have some ice cream shirts! By ice cream shirts, I don’t mean ice cream stained shirts, nor do I mean ice cream shaped like shirts. Namely, I mean these:

On Monday, laFraise revealed the 12 designs which made it into the second round of the €15,000 Contest. From the 4,000 submissions, 800 were approved for the contest – but to then choose 12 from the 800 was certainly not the easiest of tasks. These 12 were chosen based on their score, the amount of pre-orders, the community’s comments, the design’s overall quality and laFraise’s personal taste. And now these 12 are up for another round of votes.

The winner of the contest will become the proud recipient of one of the biggest prizes ever awarded in t-shirt design contest history. Here is your chance to take part in this historical event and perhaps help your favourite win big-time. Time’s a-ticking - voting ends on Monday!

These finalists and other selected submissions will also be on display in the West Berlin Gallery from 11th to 27th September – printed on canvas - a great tribute to the often overlooked artistic value found in t-shirt design. The winning design will appear on 120×120 cm, the 11 other finalists on 80×80 cm. and 40 additional contest designs on 40×40 cm.

P.S. The design above is my favourite of the 12 - but, I could also imagine wearing this one. What are your favourites?

As many of you may have noticed, we here at Spreadshirt have put a big emphasis on fashion. Most notably was the introduction of the Exclusive Line last year, bringing personalised fashion to a whole new level. We are also constantly expanding our large apparel assortment with new cuts and colours.

My personal favourite from this month’s additions is the Trustafarian Hoodie from the US brand Howe – authentic and elegant yet still retaining a laissez-faire approach to fashion. I like the name too – a mix of trust fund and Rastafarian – wearing it allows you to assume a lifestyle (without actually being a spoiled rich hippie). I had a chance to try one on and, despite the warm summer heat, didn’t want to take it off – it’s that comfortable to wear. I wish I were wearing it now.

Another highlight is the addition of dark navy to the Women’s ¾ Sleeve Top from American Apparel. As it is already available in red, black, white and lavender, this top can be combined with hair, skin tones, skirts, trousers and shoes of all kinds. Well-displayed by our model, this compromise between long and short sleeves is light, simple and classically chic.

We’ve also expanded the colours for the Women’s Long Sleeve V-Neck, the Kid’s Classic T-Shirt and the Kid’s Hoodie. The Kid’s Contrast Shirt is also now available in large for the big’ns. Taking a look at the other custom apparel platforms out there, you simply can’t get the selection and colour offerings found in Spreadshirt’s assortment anywhere else. And we’re proud of that fact.

The onset of summer brings out a lot of sights, smells, tastes and sounds – all three of which are well satisfied by an oncoming ice cream van. The NY Daily News wrote a special piece on the New York ice cream sellers and their vans, one of which happens to be a Spreadshirt partner.

The British climate can make this business quite unpredictable, but certainly come heatwave there are kids and adults alike moving in droves towards the sounds of a cool treat. I’ve certainly seen and tasted from uncountable ice cream vans in my lifetime, but none quite as unique as this one.

One of the hippest vans of the year, and the lead-in for the Daily News article, is the “Big Gay Ice Cream Truck” from Doug Quint, who tends to cover Union Square or East Village. Doug is pretty new to the ice cream van business, just getting his license this year. He runs the van together with his boyfriend and decided to get into the tough market after being jealous of a friend who had started her own route a year ago.

When he is not out on the streets of Manhattan selling his unique ice cream and toppings (cayenne pepper, extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, Nutella and caramelised bacon, to name a few), he is a bassoonist working towards his Doctorate of Musical Arts at the CUNY Grad Center.

Doug explains with a laugh in the Daily News article:

Then, as now, the whole point is to make people happy. Whether they want to be or not, that is. There are a few people who I’ve yelled at for not smiling.

Asked by NPR what exactly makes it the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck (he certainly gets the question a lot):

Every day, at least a couple of times. And every time, I say, ‘I make it gay.’

I had never imagined a ice cream van driver to be very tech-savvy, but hey it is 2009. If you happen to be traveling to New York this summer and want to find out when and where Doug is selling, it’s best to check out his Twitter account. More background information about the project can be found on the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck blog and, of course, his EU shirt shop biggayicecreamtruck.spreadshirt.net provides you with the uniquely branded merchandise.

P.S. To hear the man himself, check out NPR’s radio interview with him at the top of their article.

Some are perhaps too much in love with their shirt’s design to remove their shirts in the warm summer sun. Some may underestimate the power of the sun’s rays on their unprotected skin. Regardless, the result is a well-known form of embarrassment (and in some instances pride – see below). I myself have been a victim of the clear line of contrasting red on white many a time and with the slight lift of a shirt sleeve received a hearty laugh or a shaking head of disapproval. I have since learned that 15 minutes of unprotected sun can be good source of vitamin D for your body, but the other 11 hours and 45 minutes of sun exposure should be well-protected … and t-shirts only cover so much skin. A quick look through flickr provides you with a painful memory of Farmer’s Tans Burns of past and present: continue reading ‘The 10 Most Painfully Beautiful Farmer’s Tans’

“Spread-X” is an internal training series which we run here at Spreadshirt where our employees spread their specialised knowledge to their fellow colleagues.

These events occur about once a month where the theme covered and participation is completely voluntary. Our fellow Spreaders in offices in Berlin, Paris, Boston and Greensburg can join in on the Spread-Xs via video conference.

Tomorrow at 4 p.m. BST (5 p.m. CET) we will be having a Spread-X about the topic “Social Media” led by fellow blogger Tobias Huber who will be talking about how you can use Social Media to strengthen your brand.

We would therefore like to invite you to join in on this event and watch Tobias’ presentation as we stream it live on Twitcam. The link for the stream (where you can also comment via Twitter) will show up on www.twitter.com/spreadshirt shortly before the presentation starts. (That is, if it all works like we’ve imagined it to :-))

The presentation will cover the following topics:

• What is Social Media (about)?
• How does Social Media impact communication?
• Why is Spreadshirt using Social Media?
• How is Spreadshirt using Social Media?
• What do you have to do with it?
• What else do you want to know?

See you tomorrow!