Today is Blog Action Day, a world-wide annual event where blogs focus on one specific issue to increase discussion about it within the community. This year’s Blog Action Day (with more than 8,000 participants) focuses on climate change, an issue which will affect us all, if it hasn’t started affecting us already.

Every product which is produced has an effect on the environment. T-shirts, and especially the cotton they are made from, are undeniably one of the many, many products contributing to climate change. This can be seen in the short video “Rebel with a Cause”, which I posted back in September. 200 grams of cotton can use up to 5 tons of resources throughout its life. That’s not what you normally think about every day when you put on your shirt. These resources are what we need to start considering when we consume just about anything.

1. Buy Organic Cotton T-Shirts
Our organic apparel assortment has grown to more than 10% of our entire product range. Buying organic means that less resources and chemicals are used in the production of the cotton. Companies like Continental with their EarthPositive products take this even an extra step further providing “wholly ethical” textiles: 100% organic, fair trade, low carbon during production, environmentally friendly materials, low water footprint and low carbon footprint (reduced by 90%).

2. Recycle Shirts
Every product has a life cycle and shirts are no exception. Your favorite shirt will get a hole, the print can fade (but, not flex or flock! ) or you simply don’t wear the shirt anymore. You don’t have to throw it away. Create a shirt blanket, shirtain, shirt seat, frame it or one of these 50 other t-shirt recycling ideas. Donate the shirt. Use it as a rag. Just don’t throw it away – it’s not good for your karma and not good for the environment.

3. Use less chemicals / Wear shirts more than once continue reading ‘5 Ways T-Shirts Can Fight Climate Change: Blog Action Day 2009′

We decided to focus this month’s Trend Report on the shopping days and times which our buyers in Europe and North America most love to click on that buy button. Many of differences between North Americans and Europeans are well known, but some of these findings perhaps support those differences (siestas?) or provide us with insights (buying at work?).

North Americans like to part from their money best in the afternoon, whereas Europeans tend to hold on to their hard-earned cash well into the evening. The one exception in Europe are the Italians, who strongly increase their buying from 3 to 4 p.m. – nothing like a nice shirt purchase after a siesta, I guess. The average European really gets into the buying mood between 8 and 9 p.m.

You’ll find a detailed look at the shopping times on the other side of the big pond after the click.
continue reading ‘Trend Report: T-Shirt Buyers’ Favourite Time to Shop’

I came across this great little graphic novel “Rebel With a Cause” by Kristian Labusga, which is competing for the Politicool Award in this year’s Bitfilm Festival. The film covers the journey a t-shirt takes throughout its life and the “ecological backpack” which a t-shirt ends up accumulating.

It’s just 200 grams of cotton – their story is reflected in their design and each one has its own little story to tell.

That story is much bigger than that initial quote suggests and this film visually takes us through the story of a shirt and the impact it has on our environment. I’ll let the film speak for itself and I invite any comments.

P.S. You can vote on this film and others in the category here.

You may count me among the lucky, my first name that is. In this edition of “Mark your Word” we are going to deal with first names which have also been submitted for word marks. To be clear, we are again dealing only with EU and German law.

You gather a few of your mates together, perhaps you are planning a stag or hen night, and you want to design some shirts for the occasion. You put the order in and what happens: some of them were rejected because those names have been entered as word marks. Poor John or Sandy (both word marks) would be (hypothetically) shirtless for the occasion. I can completely understand people getting up in arms: “That’s MY name. I can do with it what I want and no one can stop me!”

Yes and no.
continue reading ‘Mark your Word II – More on European Trademark Law’

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’

Monday has come. The Monday on which we´d like to see you showing off your favourite shirts in a little blog parade. Above you see mine and I hope some of you will follow with webcam snapshots of yours.

From left to right, I´m deliberately not wearing Spreadshirts but some of my favourite shirts I´ve purchased externally in the last couple of days: a shirt from Nike, one from Beastin´ and one from Long.

I guess I don´t have to lose too many word about Nike besides that they really know how to play the T-shirt game. When it comes to the shirt above, I especially like how they combined a Flex print with a screen print. The Long shirt from London caught my eyes because of its extraordinarily long cut and the very very simple print. And the Beastin` shirt I got because I love black shirts and I loved how this one was presented in a 7 square meter popup store in Munich, Germany, which is only open for seven hours every seventh day of the week.

Alright, your time now: show us your favourite tees!

We said it once, and we´ll say it again: June 21st is International T-Shirt Day. In order to build up the celebration mood in advance, our good old friend Adam created the “Countdown to T-Shirt Day“. The idea is to have one T-shirt blog, T-shirt shop or T-shirt platform a day hosting a T-shirt related contest, sweepstake or promotion.

This is a plea to any T-shirt sites or blogs that want to

• host a daily contest
• offer a daily prize
• organize a activity/sale/coupon/promotion for tshirt day itself

to get in touch with Adam using the Tee Junction contact form.

We at Spreadshirt will kick off the countdown tomorrow with our “show off your favourite shirt blog safari”. You´re more than welcome to join.

Our CEO Jana Eggers recently met up with designer Daniel Casarella from Barking Irons in his New York studio. He revealed what designers should keep in mind when creating a good t-shirt design. He essentially points to three things which are important for a successful design:

1. Balance – how and where the parts of the design are placed on the shirt
2. Typography – the choice of font and its proper use to effectively communicate your message
3. Research – a good design should always be able to tell a story and stories are much easier to tell when you really know about the history behind it.

P.S. The Barking Irons apparel in our Exclusive Collection is still in stock and Summer is certain to bring along some new stuff.

Being back in Germany, I just had a quick FlickR search for the official Barcamp London 6 tag “bcl6″. See a little selection of my favourites above. Pictures credits go to Thomas Euler, Rugby Mad Girl, gorgeoux, alistair_uk, j4mie & Rain Rabbit.

According to High Snobiety, one of the most important figures in contemporary American t-commerce, Aaron Judah Bondaroff  - a.k.a. A-Ron, a.k.a. the Downtown Don - will publish an autobiography on September 6th.

I love to see the founder of aNYthing - “the only brand that matters” sharing his stories. Already two years ago, the New York Times had a great article on him making his lifestyle a business which should be in the bookmarks of every t-shirt fanatic: you can still read “The Brand Underground” online and check Aaron´s current project “Off Bowery” afterwards in order to kill the days left until the book comes out.