After almost three years of boners and unicorns the “After Party” Timmyblog and Mr 51% are changing up the game with our business cycle from that of a hap-hazardly organized shit storm into a well-oiled mechanized shit storm. From here on out, we’ll ease off the socio-politically charged shirt themes into themes more… party-friendly.

We’re giving you (+your mom) the business

• 5 shirts
• 50 prints of each
• 250 total shirts
• 1 mix CD full of great music from around the world, but mostly from Chicago
• Free Shipping
• …and when they’re gone, they are gone.

Shirt prices have gone up a bit–we get it, but we’re not gonna Ticketmaster your ass and upcharge you with convenience fees and shipping fees, nor will we Ed Hardy your ass with a ridiculous price of $75 per douche. Instead, we’re only going to ship it to you for free, and guarantee you that you will be 1/50 people who have this shirt, and a sweet mix tape of bands you’ve never heard of before. (More on that below) For now here’s the five shirt designs we’re starting our pre-sale for the official Assault ONE, Gangland Chicago. Orders ship in approximately 3 weeks time!

Buy any of these shirts at our online store now!

If Indiana Jones, James Dean, and Robert Mitchum were genetically combined into a massive, tommy gun-weilding zombie gangster destroyer, and said gangster destroyer was caught on camera and then that image was depicted in a Caravaggio-esque rendered oil painting onto a t-shirt it would resemble this masterpiece we have here.

In these days, it's kill or be killed.... And unfortunately if you're a zombie gangster like this cat there's no way you can operate a tommy gun. At least that's what we think Max Brooks would have to say. The only thing you know is bwainzzzz!!!!!

This shirt design was inspired by the stark black and whites and striking singular use of red famously exemplified by Frank Miller.

The main centerpiece and backdrop for this shirt is a historical map of the city of Chicago right around the heart of prohibition. Overlayed on top of the map, (along with a repetitive line of g-men) you may recognize several prominent historical buildings from the Chicago skyline. The shirt also includes the classic non-douche flare that our previous uberfans will recognize as splats and secret hidden messages and text!

Al Capone meets powder puff girls... and wins. I guess you could say they were, cap-owned? #treated. This t-shirt was designed by our resident deranged cartoon chick, Candice Ciesla. Find more of her work, (or better yet hire her) at her website, http:/www.candiceciesla.cc

Assault ONE, Mix Tape

We love music at Assault.it. We love it so much, in fact, that we rounded up a bunch of our favorite (mostly) local bands and asked them to contribute tracks that we could distribute to our customers and friends. And that’s how the official Assault Mix Tape was born! We’ve been handing them out at street festivals all summer and passing them along to anybody who will talk to us on Twitter, and the reaction has been nothing short of fantasticomical. (So fantastic, in other words, that it’s downright comical.)

Among the bands you’ll find: Direct Hit!, The Scissors, Geronimo!, Kid, You’ll Move Mountains, Makeshift Prodigy, Stegosaur, The Maybenauts, The Fireship, The Action Blast, Midwest Hype, Man The Change, Trippy Wicked, Vagina Panther – and oh so many more. Surely this is a mix to be reckoned with, only by a fool – you do not want to “step up” to this mix, in 3D or otherwise. It’s a rocket ride to the heart of rock ‘n’ roll, with very few stops along the way. Two bathroom breaks. Maybe a falafel run. But that’s it! Otherwise, you’re strapped in, you’re flying, and things are exploding at the edge of your vision. At certain points it might seem that the ship was built too quickly and cheaply, and a few pieces may fly off. But you will certainly reach your destination, which is rawk enlightenment, and that’s the important part.

Would you like a taste of our rock sauce?

Full Band List

• Direct Hit!
• The Scissors
• The Action Blast
• The Fireship
• A Common Year
• The Young International
• Cavashawn
• The Delivery Boys
• Onasis
• Artifex Pereo
• Makeshift Prodigy
• Vayden
• Trippy Wicked
• Vagina Panther
• Man The Change
• Geronimo!
• Kid, You’ll Move Mountains
• Stegosaur
• Maybenauts
• Midwest Hype

And if you’ve made it this far now you get to read our dude(or douche)-tastic press release!

CHICAGO-BASED CLOTHING COMPANY RELEASES LIMTED EDITION LINE OF “1930s GANGLAND CHICAGO” THEMED ROCKER T-SHIRTS

Chicago, IL – Assault.it, a Chicago based website will release a limited-run t-shirt collection featuring a “1930s era Chicago,” theme as inspired by prohibition era gangland Chicago.  Only fifty of each style shirt will be printed, currently available for presale online, and once they’re gone…they’re gone! You can also choose from a select amount other designs for sale on their online store with prices ranging from $16.99-$22.99.

Assault’s t-shirt store, just one facet of its e-zine site (Assault.it), also gives buyers a complimentary mix tape with each t-shirt purchased.  Inspired by local music in Chicago and across the globe, the designers have found inspiration through these channels and hand-picked original music from the best emerging local artists in their favorite music scenes to include on the Official Assault Mix Tape.

“We love music at Assault.it. We love it so much, in fact, that we rounded up a bunch of our favorite local bands and asked them to contribute tracks that we could distribute to our customers and friends,” says Tim Toomey, founder and web/merchandising designer of Assault.it. Among their favorite bands featured on the Mix Tape include Direct Hit!, The Scissors, Geronimo!, Kid, You’ll Move Mountains, Makeshift Prodigy, Stegosaur, The Maybenauts, and The Fireship, among many others.

This past year Assult.it took to the local music festivals and social media channels to sample the tapes to young Chicagoans with a similar appreciation of music throughout the city.   “The reaction has been nothing short of fantasticomical. (So fantastic, in other words, that it’s downright comical.) Surely this is a mix to be reckoned with, only by a fool – you do not want to ‘step up’ to this mix, in 3D or otherwise. It’s a rocket ride to the heart of rock ‘n’ roll, with very few stops along the way. Two bathroom breaks. Maybe a falafel run. But that’s it! Otherwise, you’re strapped in, you’re flying, and things are exploding at the edge of your vision. At certain points it might seem that the ship was built too quickly and cheaply, and a few pieces may fly off. But you will certainly reach your destination, which is raw enlightenment, and that’s the important part,” says Editor-In-Chief of Assault.it Oswald Hobbes.

Would you like a taste of our rock sauce?

About Assault.it:

Assault.it was started in February of 2008 when Craig Kaplowitz and Tim Toomey decided they had been working for The Man just too damn long and it was time to be their own bosses. The only way they knew how to do it was to take randomly funny semi-offensive slogans and to slap them onto the finest American made t-shirts they could find.

Assault.it was started initially to supplement our online store documenting our day to day activities, but has since surpassed our store to become a full fledged, online resource for bands, designers, and clothing enthusiasts.

Too $hort proteges The Pack, hailing from Berkeley, CA and responsible for the noted semi-hit “Vans,” are prepping for the release of their new album, Wolfpack Party, and they’re kicking the festivities off with some fun shit. We’ve got said shit embedded below: the album’s titular first single and a video showing the aftermath of said soiree. I’m not a big hip-hop guy in general (Jere is our in-house street scholar), but I do know a little something about partying. And it looks like these dudes can party. Is that enough? Should that be enough? Of course. It’s all good in the hood, if by “hood” you mean fucked-up beer bash involving wolves. So check this stuff out, and get ready for Wolfpack Party -- it’s coming out sometime in the near future. Not sure when, though. The press release doesn’t say and I couldn’t find it online. I’m sure we’ll update you with more details when they’re available, because we’re hardcore. For now, feast your eyes on this shit:

WOLFPACK PARTY:

THE MORNING AFTER:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXm99P3HvIU

THE PACK:

• Official Site
• MySpace
• Last.fm

Our clothing line has entered into round two of TeeMadness! We’re in a neck and neck race with another clothing company, and we need your help to advance to the next round! It only takes one second to vote, and two clicks!

All you have to do is click on this link, and then click on the green button next to our name which I have spot shadowed for you. Please help us avoid an EMBARRASSING second round elimination, and we’ll high five everyone and do everyone’s laundry. Mr. 51% has also been so kind to volunteer his singing talents via voicemail to anyone who can prove they voted for us, and told their friends.

In the last two weeks, the bastards at Pitchfork have debuted the official new video for Ted Leo & the Pharmacists‘ “The Mighty Sparrow” (from Leo’s much-beloved-in-Assault-HQ recent disc The Brutalist Bricks), while the awesome people at the AV Club caught the dude covering the timeless Tears For Fears classic “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” for their new feature AV Undercover. We lowly trolls here at Assault HQ don’t have the kind of connections necessary to bring you exclusive new Ted Leo content, but I did find this cool video of him on YouTube, performing “The Mighty Sparrow” solo (w/ electric guitar) at some club somewhere. It’s a five minute video with two and a half minutes of goofy stage banter, but it provides a brief look at what, exactly, what makes Ted Leo so fucking cool. He’s funny, he’s gracious, and he writes insanely catchy punk rock songs that sound like Elvis Costello decided to only make records that sound like Trust for the rest of his career.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=noyUY78hlJA

Ted Leo:

• MySpace
• Official Site
• Twitter

Our clothing line has entered into round two of TeeMadness! We’re in a neck and neck race with another clothing company, and we need your help to advance to the next round! It only takes one second to vote, and two clicks!

All you have to do is click on this link, and then click on the green button next to our name which I have spot shadowed for you. Please help us avoid an EMBARRASSING second round elimination, and we’ll high five everyone and do everyone’s laundry. Mr. 51% has also been so kind to volunteer his singing talents via voicemail to anyone who can prove they voted for us, and told their friends.

So we like molotov cocktails, and fire

After a night of mildly drunken tom-foolery not so long ago, we decided it would be interesting to aimlessly throw around some  molotov cocktails in an uninhabited neighborhood under the supervision of professionals–fun for the whole family.

During our crusade, we discovered two things: 1) how exciting  it is to pretend you’re an anarchic gangster, and 2)  it would be awesome to be Indiana Jones. But, with those two dreams hopelessly removed from the reality of our day to day struggles as t-shirt shop owners, we thought it’d be fun to set some of our inventory on fire in true pyro fashion. So we bring to you a rescue mission of sorts: while we don’t want to set our prized shirts on fire  – they were made in America, after all – we just can’t help ourselves.

If you think you’d like to rescue one of these shirts from being put down like a stray dog having a real bad day at the animal shelter, then you should head over to our store and buy one  (or two, or three) before we go all twelve-year-old-with-a-magnifying-glass on this shit. Please, rescue one of our fledgling t-shirt orphans in true liberal style. Have at it thou mangled boil-brained pigeon-egg!

Go to the store to get shirts for $15.99 that we’re never selling again

Between his time as a possible contender for single man of the year, and posing for various Chicago magazines, Shawn Hilgart is doing what a lot of our visitors to Assault.it are doing–listening to music, designing websites for bands and clothing lines, and laying down code for Chicago idea house, We Cant Stop Thinking.

In the past, he’s done work for Friends Or Enemies, Fall Out Boy, Clandestine Industries, Empires, The Academy Is…, Q101, Plain White T’s, Boys Like Girls, Warner Brothers, and Patagonia. We Cant Stop Thinking recently launched The Music Trust, a collective of high profile DJs and artists.

Assault.it: How’d you get started in actionscript and php?

Shawn Hilgart: I got started with actionscript after being a designer at a small shop in the suburbs of Chicago, and being required to use it for projects. I got into php when I got thrown into a fire learning it when I started developing the friendsorenemies.com online community.

What are your major responsibilities at We Cant Stop Thinking?

There are so many – where do I even start? I guess day to day I am programming about 5-6 hours of the day, and the rest of the day is managing clients, making sure everyone gets paid on time, trying to improve our process, project managing. You name the job, I’m probably doing it.

Is WCST ahead of the times a bit when it comes to interactive design? (My last job used to basically just plop PSDs of designs in front of us and say build it with absolutely no specs or functionality documents of any kind – have you ever had that happen?)

I would like to think we have a pretty good process here. I think the scope of the projects you do really affects the process. When we first started it was trial by fire – my partner Nick would design something, I would slice and code it up. Now we have different phases. We research the competition, do information architecture, wireframes, and then design. Once you get a psd, you also get nice IA docs to back up that design. Having IA really helps. It allows you to see all the paths a user can take spelled out in a clear form. Another benefit of this process is the whole team gets all this time to think about how to make the project better for the user through each phase. Of course we’re not perfect, and some projects just need to get done. Then I get a PSD just put into my drop box and the real fun begins.

When it comes to breaking down something you’ve seen to try and recreate it yourself in actionscript, what’s the process?  (I know this is old, but this site is one I always use as a benchmark for design and you replicated it: http://www.iamalwayshungry.com/VERS7/)

First off, that site is amazing, I remember first seeing it and being taken back by how smooth it ran. Over the last 2 years I’ve developed a collection of home grown classes that I have been using to put together my flash sites. So when it comes to breaking down a site I first think about what chunks of code I have laying around that are similar. So in this case I think of different navigations I have done, and if I have any drag-and-drop or image tiling libraries. If I don’t have something around,I will start to craft a specific library for that task. I try and code everything in reusable classes if possible. Once I have all the parts I just start to combine them into a way that works. I think replicating a site is much easier than creating a new one – you can have the perfect block of code, but when clients start to make changes it can get really scrambled. All of a sudden your vision for that code is destroyed. On another note I have never been much one for swf decompilers, just copy and pasting code. That won’t really teach you the lessons of going through the process in your head.

I saw you’ve done some work with Empires, one of my favorite local bands. Can you describe what other kind of work you’ve done as it relates to the music business?

I really started out developing when E-cards were huge – every band wanted an E-card, and every label wanted to pay for one. So that’s kinda where I started getting some flash skills animating and pulling all these external content feeds. My partner Nick played in bands when he was younger,and we both have friends in bands so it just came naturally to be in that industry. We don’t do so much music stuff anymore. Just here and there, normally to help out a friend.

What’s been the most challenging piece of actionscript/php you’ve put together in terms of complexity?

I built this touchscreen wall out of a projector, IR leds, and some cameras, so this was electrical wiring nad coding. It was fun. I haven’t taken it out in a while but it was complex in terms of logic and execution. The code was all in as3 and it could turn any surface into a touch surface which was pretty rad.

What piece of your work are you most proud of that people may not even know you worked on?

I worked on this piece for Patagonia called “the footprint.” It was this complicated flash piece that mapped out all the places your clothing travelled before it got to your door. It got tons of press and won a couple awards. It was a great team to work with and I ended up laying down close to 95% of the code for the original.

There was a time when I thought flash was the glue between the web and television becoming a completely interactive experience when it came to UI and architecture of websites and mobile devices in general. It seems, though, that since JQuery became so popular, this may never happen. Do you see interactive and motion graphics ultimately overtaking the static html/js/jquery-based world anytime in the future?

I will be careful with my words here as to not start a flash vs. html5 fanboy riot. I don’t think html5 will inch out the demand for flash. I think html5 is coming to do the same tasks that flash pioneered 4 years ago when video on the web really started exploding. We could always play video without flash in html – you may recall the object tag that let you play quicktimes, right? So while the html 5 spec is getting ironed out, the problem I see is, it’s not a browser plugin, but rather part of the browser. So if html 5 can do what flash can do currently, what will flash be up to in 5-10 years before we see html 6? I think Adobe’s ability to push a new plugin version to users lets them move quickly on new tech, and html will once again be stuck catching up.

I’ve heard Steve Jobs called Adobe lazy–is it Adobe or Apple that’s the real culprit behind why we can’t get really any sort of flash on our iPhones? Do you think Flash will ever make it’s way onto the iPhone?

I don’t think flash will make it on to the iPhone or iPad. I think that Adobe and Apple each have their own agendas right now, and I believe that will hurt designer/developer loyalties to Apple. Adobe certainly has its work cut out for them but with cs5 being able to compile to iPhone apps, I think the concern over flash being on the actual device doesn’t concern me as much.

I’ve always said that Macromedia Flash was like Skynet–as soon as someone finds a way to exploit it, we’re all fucked because it seems to be installed on everything. Is there any validity to that?

I am sure there is some validity to those claims, but slightly exaggerated. There are so many variables that go into making a piece of software and one that runs in multiple browsers across multiple operating systems with very little system requirements. Also your plugin can only be as secure as the OS it runs on.

Vampires or zombies?

Zombies. Giving blood doesn’t sound as bad as having my brains eaten.

What’s one place you go for inspiration besides the internet?

I listen to music all the time and walk everywhere. It gives me tons of time to think and come up with ideas.

Are there any websites you visit on a regular basis within the design/development community?

I keep up with my flash news on theflashblog.com. I also read this blog called yewknee.com, it’s great for Friday videos and design/html/ajax stuff. Also a whole mess of gadget and tech blogs.

Are you working on anything major right now that you’d like to share?

I can tell you I have been working on the same project for months now, so it’s big one. It will be one of the most complex builds I have got the chance to lead and is using just about every scripting language out there. But that’s all I can really say!

Two years ago we launched with a small t-shirt store, (We only had 12 shirts) and virtually no clue what we were doing. Two years later and we’ve become a full fledged design/music/apparel resource with 30 products sold to every state in the US and 20+ countries.

It’s been great, and we wanted to say thanks by giving 25% off on everything in our store as well as free shipping on everything. No discount codes needed–and please share this with your friends and family, especially if they’ve been wanting to order shirts from us for awhile. (We’re sold out of alot of stuff quite often.)

Here’s to another two years–hopefully by then we’ll have our retail store in Chicago, a thriving video podcast of some sort, and millions of dollars and a stripper pole in our corporate offices.

Thanks to everyone who have helped us over the last two years

• Lex and Terry Morning Radio Network
• Phil and everyone at Woot!
• The Kaplowitz Family
• The Toomey Family
• Adam Hendle, and Beau from IATT.tv and IAmTheTrend.com
• Oswald Hobbes who makes me laugh and inspires me every day
• Tubbs! + future baby
• Dasimator (@quornball)
• Andy from Hide Your Arms
• ShirtsOnSale
• All the bands we sponsor and are friends/fans of (Dear Enemy, A Hero Named Hope, From The Broken, Seven Day Sonnet, The Swellers, Alkaline Trio, Rise Against, Invisible Gods, Trippy Wicked, Puddle of Mudd, The Delivery Boys, Motion City Soundtrack, Paramore, Radiofix, Direct Hit!, Anna Vogelzang, The Action Blast, The Fold and many many others)
• JumboG
• EddieFTW
• Rich Bellamy
• Ron Guerin
• Peter (Slashfilm) and Neil (Film School Rejects)
• The Emptees community
• Jud & the lovely Marietta from ShirtFight
• The guys from Cameesa
• Nick & Jon from Storenvy
• Chris Martin + Merchspin
• Jon Kruse from Shred
• Dane, Scott, Dennis – Photographers and professionally good looking male models extraordinaire
• John Staniforth, Fernando Rodriguez, & Candice Ciesla for their incredible design work
• Martin Atkins
• Chad Lehner + everyone at Total Assault

Help us spread the word!

Paste this code into your site to put our flyer in there (We know it’s large, that’s why we made 3 sizes!)

Large:

<p style=”text-align: center;”><a href=”http://www.assaultshirts.com” target=”_blank”><img title=”February Sale at Assault Shirts” src=”http://www.assault.it/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/february-sale.jpg” alt=”February Sale at Assault Shirts” width=”705″ height=”912″ /></a></p>

Smaller:

<p style=”text-align: left;”><a href=”http://www.assaultshirts.com” target=”_blank”><img title=”February Sale at Assault Shirts” src=”http://www.assault.it/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/february-sale-231×300.jpg” alt=”February Sale at Assault Shirts” width=”231″ height=”300″ /></a></p>

One thing we give with every shirt purchase from our online store is a free guitar pick! If you’ve been lucky enough to meet us in person, you probably got one attached to your business card as well. If you’d like to get a custom guitar pick shape to design your own guitar pick, free free to use our template:

Download the Guitar Pick Custom Photoshop Shape

Before I launch into my whole schpiel here and start foaming at the mouth, let me say one thing: I don’t hate zombies. As a younger man, I hated many things, but now that I’ve grown up and mellowed out, I try to save emotions of that intensity for truly deserving targets (like Sarah Palin). But I do have a zombie problem: I don’t “get” the appeal. Zombies are slow, dim-witted creatures whose only reason for continued existence is their hunger for brains. I decided to address this topic at length here for two reasons: 1) People love zombies; over the past decade, more books, movies, and songs have been devoted to zombies than any other monster. Their popularity has already gone through the proverbial roof, exited the Earth’s stratosphere, and lifted God’s skirt in Heaven. Zombies are huge. 2) I’m a world famous internet blogger, and people want to know what I think about absolutely everything.

Now: in the interest of fairness, I’ve invited our friends at two separate zombie t-shirt companies to represent a pro-zombie stance. I suckered them into doing this by asking if they would answer “a few general questions about zombie culture” and then springing hyper-specific zombie vs. vampire hypotheticals on them. This is called “getting a scoop.” The fine fellows in question are Django from ShopZombie and Jason from Zombie Liquorice, and I strongly urge you to check out their sites and spend some cash – we may not see eye-to-eye about the undead, but they both have some very fine merchandise that will make your wiener tingle in a most pleasant fashion. But before we hear from them, I’mma let myself finish explaining why I don’t like zombies.

First, there’s the “slow and stupid” factor. Zombies are dumb, lumbering beasts; the average zombie moves slower than Jason Vorhees on ‘Ludes. I’ve been a dedicated pack-a-day smoker for just under a decade; when we ran the mile in high school, I never finished in less than fifteen minutes. But even I, Oswald Fucking Hobbes, could out-run a zombie. I could probably also overpower one in a fight, despite whatever enhanced strength he might possess, because I’m a nimble ninja where it counts: in my mind. I would confuse the shit out of a zombie. Also: zombies are undead. That means they’ve already been killed once, most likely by a zombie. So: if you’re dumb enough to be killed by a zombie (which we’ve already established would make you pretty fucking dumb), and you then become a zombie (which kills another couple thousand brain cells), are you really gonna argue that you stand a chance against a super-genius such as myself? I don’t think so, cabron. But my biggest problem with zombies is their utter lack of personality. If I find myself in a fight to the death, I want to face a combatant with some spark, somebody that can trade witty one-liners with me and get personally invested in the outcome of the battle. We’ve already established I can out-run and out-think a zombie; the only thing that might convince me to stay and fight would be a compelling, charismatic persona, which is something that zombies simply cannot offer.

Those are the reasons I don’t fear zombies. Take those reasons and multiply them by a thousand and you’ll understand why I won’t spend two hours watching a movie about zombies. I don’t need entertainment to try and make boring things interesting;  I want entertainment featuring subject matter that’s already entertaining. I’m too busy being world-famous to watch movies about boring crap that wouldn’t scare me in real life. This may seem like a stupid argument to you, but your face seems stupid to me. So let’s call it a draw and hear from some real zombie experts, who will provide us with information that is interesting but, unfortunately, factually incorrect. I’ll point out the inconsistencies in italics when need be.

What is it about zombies that people find so appealing?

"I Love Brains" tee from Shop Zombie

Django: Pirates, zombies, bacon, Pet Rocks… All of these things have tugged the collective coattail of consumers at some point. It’s always a mystery to me how these things rise in popularity. I think that a pile of good, exciting zombie movies (28 Days Later, Dawn of the Dead remake, etc) catapulted zombies into the modern public’s eye.

Jason: I cannot speak for everyone, but what makes zombies so appealing to me is they are very anti-hero.  They will never be featured in a shitty teenage love drama and will never be romanticized.  They are incorruptible and never disappoint.  If you love horror or gore, you must love zombies. (Well, that’s not true, and I can disprove it easily: I love horror AND gore, and zombies do absolutely nothing for me.)

Zombies seem incredibly easy to defeat. Am I wrong about this? If so, why?

Django: Somehow, it seems that only the stupidest people survive the initial zombie attacks. The hardest part about defeating zombies is that they have sheer numbers, and if they can get close to you, you’re suddenly in a VERY dangerous situation. (I believe I already refuted this pretty satisfactorily above. But, in regards to numbers, so what? The zombies aren’t able to organize themselves in any way, so they’d just be stumbling around like a bunch of drunken hobos.)

Jason: Zombies can seem incredibly easy to defeat.  This is their strength.  What they lack in defensive awareness they more than make up for in aggressive numbers.  Not to mention the fact that their numbers keep replenishing after every fresh kill, bite or even scratch. (So you’re telling me that zombies’ obvious stupidity and clumsiness comprise some kind of secret strength? That’s blatant nonsense. See above for my thoughts about zombies’ strength in numbers…or lack thereof.)

Honestly, in a zombie vs. vampire fight (fair), who would win? What if the fight wasn’t governed by traditional codes of honor?

Django: Well, if the vampire was dumb enough to bite the zombie, it would turn INTO a zombie, right? So I dunno. Does that count as a win for the zombie? (No. Vampires aren’t dumb – this isn’t some Team Edward shit, I’m talkin’ Bram Stoker style. Dracula wouldn’t bite a zombie, he’d use his super strength to snap that motherfucker in half.)

"Twilight" by Zombie Liquorice

Jason: We actually did a shirt based on this age-old battle.  The Zombie will always win, mainly because he is not thinking about high school girls or when the sun is about to rise.  More often than not, the zombie is only interested in one thing: brains.  That, coupled with his inability to feel any pain and the fact that he is undead, really ensures victory.  Not to mention that there is probably a horde of zombies just around the corner waiting to mop up whatever is left.  For this very reason there could never be a fair zombie vs. vampire fight – no code of honor could ever be enforced. The ref would promptly be eaten as well unfortunately. (Jason brings up some interesting points, but fails to play by the rules of the hypothetical and thus voids his own answers. One zombie, one vampire. If a zombie needs an entire horde of his undead buddies to come and get his back, he’s not fit to even get in the ring.)

If zombies eat so much brain, why don’t they ever get smarter? Brain seems like the textbook definition of “brain food.”

Django: Same reason that eating carrots doesn’t turn you into a carrot. (That would be a valid point if I had asked why zombies don’t turn into brains. Nice try. I eat carrots because they taste good and they improve my vision. I assume that zombies have a similar reason for feasting exclusively on human brains, and I doubt it’s the taste.)

Jason: Let me explain it this way: “I eat really lean, muscular meat, but I am still fat… What gives?”  You see what I did there – clever, eh? (Yeah, about as clever as a zombie attempting algebra. If you just ate lean, muscular meat – if that was literally the ONLY thing in your diet – you probably wouldn’t be fat. And since zombies eat nothing but brains, they shouldn’t be so stupid. Who’s clever now, Jason?)

Vampires were the ultimate monsters for ages, mostly due to the wealth of artistically legitimate movies and books devoted to them. Is it possible that zombies’ cultural cachet will recede in the future if somebody like Stephanie Meyers writes a teen romance novel featuring a really sensitive zombie who refuses to eat brains, thus sparking a trend of emasculated zombies in popular culture? Would this make you angry?

Django: If someone tried this shit right now, there would be gigantic backlash against them. It would be a massive fail. It would be hard to pull this off. Vampires really have no down side. They can’t go out in the sunlight, sure, but they don’t age, they’re strong, they’re sexy. Zombies are rotting. They eat brains. They are dumb as hell. You’d have to bastardize zombies pretty good before they appealed to young girls. (“Zombies are rotting. They eat brains. They are dumb as hell.” This is the guy DEFENDING zombies, ladies and gentlemen. I must say, though, I agree on all counts. This makes me wonder if I don’t like zombies because I am, in fact, a young girl.)

Official Assault Zombie T-Shirt

Jason: Would this make me angry? Not so much anger, but more white hot loathing.  However, I know this will never happen, as I have already said that what makes zombies so cool is that they must all act a certain way to be classified as zombies.  If someone ever tried to break this mold or screw around with how zombies operate, the amount of book burnings that would take place would put another, bigger hole in the ozone. And no one wants that, right?  Zombies are here to stay; now lets just learn to love it. (I’m sure people felt the same way about vampires before Anne Rice and that crazy Mormon were so successful at making them seem sensitive. Not only do I refuse to love your precious zombies, I’m now actively rooting for someone to ruin their appeal by pussifying every even mildly cool thing about them.)

So, there you have it. This study effectively concludes that zombies are lame, vampires are better, and I am (obviously) best. I’d like to thank Jason and Django again for participating in my little study, and if you don’t go buy some product from them (here and here) you’re gonna have a zombie Oswald Hobbes at your door demanding fresh skullmeat. So get out your credit card, and check out our very own store here at Assault where we feature a pretty rad zombie shirt. And if anybody wants to collaborate on a film script about sensitive zombies, email me at oswald@assaultinc.com. I’ve got a lot of good ideas.

Recently, the geniuses over at Storenvy relaunched their online storefront system with a totally revamped ruby on rails environment that can be completely customized from head to toe.

Not only can you hack the shit out of the CSS, but you can also dive into the actual Shopify code that drives the simple, tag-based template structure of Storenvy. I’ve only had the pleasure of working on one other system similar to this one in my days as a web developer, but Storenvy has pushed the envelope even further by making the online editor be color coded based on the code syntax. I know, nerd babble, but for those of you who have worked in shitty plain text fields like you have to on WordPress and other systems–it can be a real bitch.

As a proof of concept I’ve gone through and hacked together a real slick looking customized store that looks almost identical to our actual online t-shirt store. (and in some ways it’s a bit better) How long did it take me to put Assault‘s official online store together? 6 days of 10 hours+ coding each day. How long did it take me to make my custom Storenvy store? 6 hours. That includes learning the actual Shopify syntax.

Download Assault’s Storenvy theme files to see how we made this possible.

View the Assault Storenvy Customized Store to see what the final store looks like

Read on to go through the process with us step by step as we unset the default Storenvy theme, and create one with custom CSS that looks remarkably like our actual site. (or any site)

Features

There are a number of things the css and files I’ve included will do for you.

Unsets Storenvy Default Theme
Rather than use the soft gradients and arial fonts, my website uses mostly serif fonts for the large blocks of text, and arial black for all the headlines.

Mail Chimp Subscribe Form Styling
If you use Mail Chimp for your newsletter, I’ve included CSS that will style the sign up form that Mail Chimp supplies to you. Be sure to strip out the Javascript cause Storenvy won’t let you have them anyways. (To my knowledge.)

Fully commented CSS
For those of you not very familiar with CSS I’ve added comments where I was changing the CSS and tried to best explain what was going on.

Set Base Font

* {  font: 14px georgia, 'times new roman', times, sans-serif;}
p {  font: 14px georgia, 'times new roman', times, sans-serif;}

On our store, we use mostly serif fonts for the body text, rather than the Storenvy default theme which uses Helvetica. This will apply serif to all items, and also to paragraph elements (<p>) If users do not have the Georgia font, it will use Times New Roman. If users do not have times new roman it will attempt to display times, and then a default sans-serif.

Change Background Image

body {
  color: #666666;                   /*: Body Font :*/
  /*  background: #0a0b0b url(PATH/TO/YOUR/BACKGROUND/IMAGE.JPG) top center no-repeat; */
}

This is where I overwrite the background color and background image. The “top center” declaration after the url path to my background image tells it to stay centered, at the top of the page. I use the full url of the image I uploaded to Storenvy as my background. I also set the base font color to #666666 which is a dark gray.

Container + Nav resets

#nav, #container {
  background-color: #F1F1F1 !important;        /*: overwrite darker gray outline with nothing :*/
  border: none !important;       /*: overwrite darker gray outline with nothing :*/
  position: relative;
}

This piece of code removes the outline around the nav and container, as well as sets the background color to a light gray. It also sets the positioning to relative, which will help me position items with precision that are within it.

Edits to header

#header {
  text-align:center;	/*: Header Alignment :*/
  height: 110px;
}        

#header h1 a {            /*hide the giant store name link text*/
  color: #666666;	/*: Store Name :*/
  display: none;
}
#storeName { /*create a hidden link that google will still spider for your storename*/
  display: block;
  height: 120px;
  width: 325px;
}

#storeName span { /*hide the link text to everyone but google*/
  display: none;
}

In the layout.html file you’ll see that I added some custom classes to hide the store name to the browser window, but still allowing the text to be read by a Googlebot which has CSS disabled. This code above is what makes this possible.

Unsetting button styles

#buttons {
  position: relative;
  text-align: right;	/* Buttons Alignment */
  padding: 10px 0px 0px 0px;
}

#buttons a {
  display: inline;
  background: none;
  border: none;
  font: normal 20px 'arial black', arial, helvetica, verdana;
  color: #fff;
  text-transform: uppercase;
}

#buttons a:hover {
  color: #7d8f9c;
  text-decoration: none;
}

The main top level buttons on the default Storenvy theme have gradients in the background and borders and all sorts of other fun things that don’t look like what I wanted. The above code resets the button link text to a bold arial that you see at the top of our navigation items. It also makes the letters all caps.

Reset and style headings

h2#title {
  background-color: transparent;	/* reset h2 background color to same color as #nav, #container */
  color: #000000;                   /*: Page Title :*/
  font: normal 32px 'arial black', arial, helvetica, verdana;
  text-transform: uppercase;
  letter-spacing: -1px;
  padding: 0px !important;
  margin: -28px 0px 0px 0px !important;
  border: none !important;
  line-height: .7em;
  width: 500px !important;
  height: 46px !Important;
}

h5 {
  color: #000000;                   /*: Page Title :*/
  font: normal 22px 'arial black', arial, helvetica, verdana;
  display: block;
  border-bottom: 1px solid #000000;
  line-height: .8em !important;
  padding-bottom: 4px !important;
}

The headlines that appear on the homepage within the container, and on the sidebar and product pages need to be restyled to look like our normal headlines which are arial black. We also move them to position them properly above the product listing, without a background color.

Custom Spacing Classes

.blog_link {
padding-right: 10px;
}

.faqs {
margin-right: 55px;
}

.home {
margin-right: 20px;
}

The above 3 classes adjust the spacing on my top level navigation items so that they are properly centered within the black background.

Set Content background color and fonts

#content {
  position: relative;
  background-color: #F1F1F1;        /*: Middle Section Background :*/
  font: 14px georgia, 'times new roman', times, sans-serif;
}

This is to set the background color to the same as the container and position: relative makes it so I can absolutely position nav items within the content div. It also sets the font to the Georgia font or a subsequent sans-serif font just in case for some reason items were set otherwise. (It never hurts to keep doing this to keep from having a random font face that you didn’t want somewhere–especially when you’re working with a pre-built theme)

Change Product Description Links

div.description a:link, div.description a:visited {
  color: #30AFEA;                   /*: Product Description Links :*/
}

The above code will change your links in your product descriptions on the product pages. Mine are a blue color.

Main Left Column Styles

#main {
  background: transparent;
  margin: 0px !important;
  font: 14px georgia, 'times new roman', times, sans-serif;
}

The above sets the background color to nothing, and the margin to 0px as well as resets the font sizes. You may notice that I switched my sidebar from being in the left column, to being on the right side more like I did on the Assault Online Store. You can see what code I moved around by referring to the layout.html file in the zip file you downloaded at the top of the page.

Reset Product Description’s CSS

#product_description_container {
  background: none !important;
  border: none !important;
  padding: 6px !important;
  margin: 0px !important;
  font: 14px georgia, 'times new roman', times, sans-serif;
  color: #000000;
}

#product_description h6 {
  font-weight: bold;
  color: #000000;
  letter-spacing: 0px;
}

#product_description_container p {
  color: #000000 !Important;
  letter-spacing: 0px;
  font: normal 14px georgia, 'times new romain', times, sans-serif !Important;
}

p#price {
  background: none !important;
  border: none !important;
  font: bold 28px georgia, 'times new roman', times, sans-serif;
  color: #000000 !important;
  text-shadow: none !important;
  line-height: .8em;
  margin: 0px !important;
  padding: 0px 0px 10px 0px !important;
}

I reset and slightly adjusted the spacing on my product descriptions. Primarily, I wanted to get rid fo the background image and border. When you see the !important flag after a CSS property that tells your browser to explicitly overwrite whatever was set previously in CSS. You’ll see this throughout my stylesheet as I want to overwrite any previously set CSS.

Reposition “breadcrumbs”

.breadcrumbs {
  position: relative;
  left: 550px;
  top: 0px;
}

Because I set my positioning on my previous container elements (main, container) I can position the breadcrumbs within those div elements absolutely. The breadcrumbs div will now display 550 pixels from the left, and at the topmost pixel. (0px)

Reset Sidebar and Reposition

#sidebar {
  background: transparent;
  border: none !important;
  margin-top: 0px !important;
  padding-right: 0px !important;
  margin-right: 0px !important;
  padding-top: 0px !important;
  width: 200px !important;
  overflow: hidden;
  margin-left: 60px !Important;
}

#sidebar fieldset {
  background: none !important;
  border: none !important;
  margin: 0px !Important;
  padding: 0px !Important;
}

This resets and restyles the sidebar to be 200 pixels wide, and hides anything that flows outside of those 200px. (hence the overflow: hidden properly) It also sets the margin left to 60 pixels to give it some space to the left where the #main column is.

Reset and Style for Places and BulletLists

.bulletList {
  margin: 0px;
  padding: 0px;
}

.bulletList li {
  margin: 0px 0px 0px 5px;
  padding-left: 5px;
}

.bulletList li label {
  margin-left: 10px !important;
  font: normal 11px arial, helvetica, verdana;
  color: #000000;
}

ul#places {
  list-style: disc;
  margin: 10px 0px 0px 0px;
}

ul#places li {
  list-style: disc;
  display: list-item;
  width: 100%;
  margin: 0px 0px 8px 15px !Important;
  padding: 0px 0px 0px 5px !important;
  font: normal 16px georgia, 'times new roman', times, sans-serif;
}

ul#places li a {
  background: none !important;
  border: none !important;
  text-align: left;
  color: #000000;
  margin: 0px !important;
  padding: 0px !important;
}

The places links by default are gradient buttons in the left column, and I decided I wanted them to be plain looking text links like we have on our site and blog. The above code removes the backgrounds and borders and sets the fonts to what I have throughout the site and it also adds some spacing to the list items. (<li>)

Mail Chimp Email Form Stylings

/*************** Mail Chimp Email Signup ********************/
/************************************************************/
/************************************************************/
/************************************************************/
#mc_embed_signup {
  margin-bottom: 20px !important;
}

.indicate-required {
  margin: 4px 0px !important;
  font: normal 10px arial, helvetica, verdana;
  font-style: normal !important;
  padding-right: 40px !Important;
}
.btn { /* newsletter signup button */
	padding:2px 8px;
	-moz-border-radius:7px;
	-webkit-border-radius:7px;
	border-radius:7px;
	background-color:#3b566b;
	color:#e6e6e6 !important;
	font:bold 11px arial, helvetica, verdana;
	text-decoration:none !Important
}

.btn:hover {
	background-color:#000;
	color:#e6e6e6
}

If you aren’t using Mail Chimp for your newsletter you should. It’s completely customizable, and free for up to 500 subscribers and 3000 emails a month. I switched to it two months ago and it cut my html email development time in half, and increased my sales, subscriber count, and allowed me to track sales numbers with Google Analytics. The above code will style the default CSS/HTML that is supplied to you from Mail Chimp when you use their form builder with no CSS.

Reusable Classes

/***************      Reusable Classes   ********************/
/************************************************************/
/************************************************************/
/************************************************************/
.alignright {
  float: right;
}

.alignleft {
  float: left;
}

With every website I create I have a section of classes at the bottom of my stylesheet that I constantly reuse. In this instance, only a alignleft and alignright to float images and/or text to the left or right. In the future I’m sure I’ll add more to this, but this was all I needed for now.

Additional Tips

Storenvy is constantly updating their feature set, and they recently made it possible to add your Twitter updates–which is also completely customzeable with CSS. To add your Twitter updates to your store put this in your stores theme:

{% twitter_update_list assault %}

Google Analytics + E-Commerce Tracking

Want to track everything on your store from head to toe? Storenvy now supports Google Analytics plus e-commerce tracking. All you have to do is enter your unique tracking ID into the “Settings” area of your admin.

Show the newest products first on the homepage

{% for product in products.current %}

If you want your newest products to show up at the top of your home page you have to change the above line of code to:

{% for product in products.current  reversed %}

Storenvy’s Customization Guide

Storenvy does have a customization guide, although it is under construction. I still found it quite helpful with a few of the things I describe in this post. Check out the Storenvy Customization Guide here.

The Retro Galaxy t-shirt makes up our quasi fall/winter line of t-shirts, and is primarily made up of images captured by Nasa’s very own Hubble Telescope. Ever since I heard the story from a co-worker that earth had nearly been annihilated several times in my lifetime I knew I wanted to design some sort of crazy space-inspired shirt, but never found a good source of inspiration.

Click to view a high resolution image of the shirt design

That all changed when I started looking around at images actually taken of space from the Hubble Telescope. Throw in some adobe phtoshop custom brushes, and some brush dynamics and I very quickly had something that was ready to be printed.

The only problem I had with the shirt was that I was unable to place it onto an actual t-shirt because of how haphazardly the brushes were laid out on the design. After browsing through the thousands of custom shapes I had, I found something I liked. I added some of our classic hidden logos and text throughout the stars and nerve impulse images, and the design was done.

• Buy the Retro Galaxy T-Shirt at Assault
• <3 it at Emptees

(Currently priced at $22.99 but you can get 10% off with the discount code HANDHSAKE)

Layer Breakdown

This shirt was designed around the same time that Proposition 8 made headlines in the state of California. Proposition 8 was side note to an election ballot that was primarily used to strip away the previously granted rights of gay couples to legally marry. The new wording of the ammendment essentially stated that, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

What most people don’t know about Proposition 8 is that it marked the first time in American history that the rights of a group of people was taken away after being granted by law. Who do we have to thank for this black mark on the history of our country? None other than the Roman Catholic Church, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormons.

These two groups were heavy proponents of Proposition 8, even donating hefty sums of money to the overall campaign in favor of passing the amendment. Does that sound fair? A tax-free organization that is allowed to contribute around 50% of the total budget to lobby against a cause it opposes? A tax-free organization that doesn’t even reside in the state where the election ballot ammendment vote is taking place?

No matter the person, no one should have their rights limited, and no book should dictate the status quo. Gay and lesbian couples deserve the same rights. The pursuit of happiness should belong to every man woman and child. Repeal prop8.

This shirt was designed by me, (Tim Toomey) and depicts an 8-legged spider stepping on the bill of rights which grants us our basic freedoms.

To purchase the Anti-Proposition of Hate Section 8 T-Shirt click here
(Currently priced at $22.99 but you can get 10% off with the discount code HANDHSAKE)

More images of this shirt

Shirt depicted below on Kyle Smith, lead singer of the band, A Hero Named Hope

With so many different facets of information and steps needed before you can even print your shirts it’s easy to quit before you even get started.

With all the different, well-documented sites out there, I’ve found that there still hasn’t been anyone who managed to get everything just right, and more importantly, just right on a limited budget. The only thing that comes close  is the How to Start a Clothing Line E-Book. If you’d rather not swing the $37 bucks for the e-book we’ve done our best to compress everything you need to know to start your own clothing line here in this blog post. (Disclosure: We get a portion of the sales of the E-Book and recommend it if you need more in depth information.)

Spend only what YOU can afford

We’ve been lucky at Assault to have made all the right moves so far to a point where we have no credit card debt, no binding agreements with any poisonous partners, and no investors to pay back. We’ve started Assault with our own money, and it currently runs itself, independent of outside funding.

One thing to keep in mind during this read is that there are no definite right or wrong ways to forming your own company. In the end, your decisions need to be based on what works best for what you are trying to accomplish. This article is a compilation of what worked (or didn’t) for Assault; as well as some of the complications we ran into.

Before you EVEN start your t-shirt company

1. What makes you different?
2. What makes your t-shirts or clothing buzz-worthy?
3. If you saw your product on a website, would you tell your friends?
4. Would you pay $$$ for your product?
5. What separates you from your competition?
6. Who has been successful with similar products in the past, and what did they do?
7. Who is your ideal customer? Age? Sex? Interests? Where do they hang out? What do they like to eat?

These are all questions that you should have addressed before you drop a penny into your clothing line.

T-Shirt Printing Equipment

Storenvy Printing and Free Online T-Shirt Stores

Don’t buy any. There are plenty of professionals who are GREAT at screen printing and have been doing it for years. (Exhibit A: Nick Roccanti over @ Storenvy) Your product will suffer if you try to learn to print on your own and you’ll be too busy with other day to day activities to learn to print and fill your orders.

Trying to learn to do it on your own will only make your bank account dwindle.

Akumu Ink

An exception to this would be if you only plan on doing one or two color prints. Akumu Ink does just this, and have been extremely successful at it. For Assault, if we were to do this, one color pressing would have been too constricting for the majority of our designs as they’re oversized and multiple colors.

Online Store Systems

For many of you with limited or no web experience, you are going to have to go with some sort of hosted cart solution like Storenvy. One thing I do recommend is going to a service that will suit your needs and only charge you a flat rate per month. (Or no rate per month–as in free beer… like Storenvy.)

You don’t want a cart system taking a cut of your payments no matter what, because your bank is already doing that on your merchant account. (more on that later.)

Domains are CHEAP! Buy one and forward it

One thing I cannot stress enough with a hosted system is to buy a cheap domain name and forward it to your site. It’s just a bit more professional to have a store with yourname.com instead of yourname.etsy.com or yourname.bigcartel.com.

I never understood why people were okay with that–and why they were willing to put a .etsy.com or .bigcartel.com appended to THEIR brand name on a large banner for an event or festival.

Spend the $8.00 bucks or whatever it is and buy a domain name. That should be one of the first things you do after deciding on a company name.

Sole Proprietorship, Partnerships, Incorporation

This gets confusing and again, there are no right or wrong answers. Because we are talking about starting a company, and on a budget no-less, I’m assuming that you’re a small company. With that assumption, I’d suggest not starting out with a corporation. Corporations have their tax benefits and depending on your growth, are definitely something to look into, but they are fairly complicated to setup. The cost to have a professional setup for you runs approximately $500, but considering the complications that could arise if not done properly, is money well spent.

To start, Assault formed as a partnership. (We have more than one founder) What this meant to us was that the Assault company name was personally held by me (Craig) and Tim. This included any liability, gains, losses, etc. So if Assault made money, as far as the Government is concerned, Tim and I made money. Same goes for if we lost money, if there was any litigation, and so on. Obviously, on a larger scale, this could create some major troubles in ones personal life when their company gets sued for say, copyright infringement, and the lawsuit now bleeds over into their personal assets.

One thing to keep in mind is that you can always incorporate later. At that point, you would need to choose which corporate structure fits best for your business. If you would like more information on this, request it in the comments, and I’ll do a separate post on that in-depth topic.

The alternative to a partnership, or incorporating, is a sole-proprietorship, also known as a DBA, or “doing business as” which is the cheapest solution to starting your company if you are the sole driving force behind your brand.

“Doing Business As” or DBA Certificate

The best way to get a “doing business as” certificate is to place an ad in a local publication with the name of your company and where you will be doing business. This ensures that no one else has the same name as you, and that you are officially on record in public as operating your business.

This is only necessary if you (1) are operating as a Sole Proprietorship or Partnership (ie-not incorporated) or (2) if you have formed a corporation and do not plan to operate as your corporation name. In Chicago, we ran an ad at The Chicago Reader for $100 bucks. They’re used to doing running these types of ads, and they mail you a copy of your ad when it’s done running.

Federal Taxes, State Taxes

You need to register your business with the federal, and the state government you intend to do business in so you can start paying money to Uncle Sam just like the rest of us do with our businesses.

Even if you don’t plan on paying any employees or having any payroll, you still must register with federal to get your Federal Employer ID (FEID). What you register on a state level varies by state, but will be for any state employment taxes as well as state sales tax.

Small Business Checking Account

To get this you have to have the proper documentation. The proper documentation consists of your partnership agreement. (Or incorporation documents) your FEID (federal employer ID), and your local (state) business formation paperwork. You can obtain the FEID from the IRS, and your local state tax registration can be done at your respective state’s government website. (Googling County Clerk +IL is how we found out where to do this cause we’re in IL, duh)

Accepting Credit Cards

This is going to be your one of the essential costs associated with your store. We were lucky enough to get this right the first time.

Paypal has one of the best, and easiest to implement online payment systems. It integrates with plenty of stores already including Storenvy, Magento and Big Cartel–plus it’s very competitive with anything that Authorize.net or Checkout2Payment could offer you.

(Opens in iTunes)

It varies per amount, but for $30.00 per month and a small percentage of every transaction–Paypal’s Website Payments Pro is the way to go. It’s the payment system we started with and it’s worked. If you need to have a terminal on site for street-fairs etc, we recommend using iSwipe Pro on the iPhone. (opens in iTunes) It’s only $.99 cents and easy to setup. Thanks to Judd from Shirt Fight for helping us out with that at our first street festival.

SSL certificate for secure online transactions

If you’re hosting your own store like we are at Assault you’re going to need an SSL Certificate to ensure that your server is encrypted when making credit card transactions.

Back in the day there was only one place to do this: Verisign, and it cost a whopping $300 bucks a year! Thankfully, the great people at GoDaddy started selling their own version of the SSL certificates which works the same way and costs a fraction of the amount. I believe we ended up paying only $17 bucks per year after all was said and done.

Launching your store

You’ve got your shirts designed, bank account setup, and your website is successfully processing credit cards legally and safely. Here’s the most important part about launching your store: making sure you get people there, and the only way to do that is with links!

I Am The Trend - Your Guide For All Things Independent

When we got started, we compiled a list of places that you can post links about your store launch, and have actual people come to the store to buy your products. I Am The Trend will review your shirts live via a ustream video podcast if you send them one. They’ll even pimp your stuff all over their website.

We’ve also recently added a User News section to our website which displays prominently on our homepage and sidebar where you can submit links to us for approval. If you’re launching a store–let us know and we’ll pimp you double hard.

Launching and marketing your new store could be a post of it’s own, and is on it’s way, but in the meantime you can refer to these two posts for some additional SEO and Google tips that will help bring in some organic traffic to your online store:

• How to Float to the Top of Google Search Results Pages Without Paying
• SEO – Tips & Strategies you aren’t hearing from high priced consultants

Assault's SS Amnesia put on one of these mockups

While browsing through Emptees a few days ago I came across a talk post about some new mockups. To my surprise, they were quite good–and free!

They were done with American Apparel shirts, in size XS by Tom Neal of Ctrl Alt Defeat Clothing. They’re a great set of mock ups and come with prepared backgrounds. If you need some mock ups to make your store look a bit more professional, these are the ones you want.

Download Tom Neal’s T-Shirt Mock Up Kit V2

IATT Live #3 9/3/09 from I Am The Trend on Vimeo with appearances by Craig and myself, Jud from Shirt Fight!, and Nick from Storenvy. We had a blast doing the live show and would LOVE to do another one. Special thanks to Ian from Haha Press for coming out and for Iain from Graphic 22 for answering all the screen printing questions.

That’s right. Mr. 51% and “Third World” Timmy will be appearing live on IATV.tv’s uStream tomorrow night at 8pm central standard time talking with Adam and Beau from I Am The Trend about the trials and tribulations of starting your own t-shirt company.

The best part is the show will be taped live, from Storenvy HQ in Chesterton, Indiana! If you’re in the Chicagoland area I highly recommend coming out to see the taping as we’ll have free beer and food provided for us by the great people at Storenvy. So mark your calendars, and in case you need it I have created an ical even to remind you to watch us on uStream.

Tell your friends, tell your family–and if you can’t catch the show it will be recorded and available on IATT.tv.

Almost two months ago, Assault had the honor of being reviewed by Buy-Tees.net.  After reading what came from that review, I felt compelled to dig in on the mind of Paul, co-owner and main contributor at Buy Tees.  I was very impressed with both the writing style and in-depth review of the art itself, rather than just a bland t-shirt review.  If you aren’t familiar with their site, I recommend you BEG Paul to check your stuff out; he has this uncanny ability to actually tell you things about your work that you may not have known.

I had the honor of interviewing him to try and get a little insight into what drives him, enjoy!

First and foremost, what is buy-tees.net?

Hmm… well I suppose the clue is in the name heh. It’s a t-shirt reviews blog first and foremost–although it’s probably not quite like any other you’ve read. I do have a tendency to quote the world and his wife and just about every homespun philosophy imaginable when I get cracking on a review. I am probably what you’d call a ‘natural blogger’ – I’m from a creative background in both the fine arts and literature and so I suppose it made sense to hone my abilities by venturing into blogging. It just so happens that I use the excuse of t-shirt reviews to express my opinions to the world.

What drove you to start it?

There are two answers to this. The first was simply to promote a few of my own t-shirt designs, way back when I’d decided to set up my own independent t-shirt label, I was sick of the enormous profits and poor service that many major print-on-demand sites were offering and so I thought I’d have a bash. Promoting the label was a total nightmare, besides which the overall costs of setting up a label were beyond my reach at the time and so I thought a blog would save on marketing costs and be a good way of drumming up business. The second reason came along within a week or two of blogging. Essentially, I found that a lot of other designers were in the same proverbial boat – vis-a-vis they also hadn’t two pennies to rub together and needed quality sources of promotion and marketing without the extortionate expense of traditional advertising such as Adwords or hiring an SEO expert. So I filled the gap, featuring designers’ work in return for a back link to the blog.

I know buy-tees.net is made up of yourself and another silent partner; is there anyone else that is part of the team?  Do you ever have guest posts and if so, how do you go about selecting the individual?

Short answer no – I have had offers – although for the main part they’re rather self-promotional in the main. I’m not exactly an objective reviewer myself, I am however an artist and so I know when I see something conceptually or visually superior and that always urges me on when it comes to deconstructing the mindset or ethos of a brand/designer. I’m also not ‘in it for the money’ as they say – I make a few dollars from the odd banner now and again but it doesn’t even cover hosting most of the time.

I have always enjoyed the company of artists, whatever medium they may choose to specialize in – it just so happens that I believe t-shirt design has until recently been treated as a rather lowly distant cousin of say illustration or graphic design and thought it’d be rather satisfying both personally and for the arts community at large if someone could give this niche a boost.

My partner helps out with some administration of the site from time to time and we discuss our reactions to designers’ work, we like to bounce ideas off of each other and see if there’s anything more I can add to the review than the usual ‘pic and click’ offerings out there.

How did you go about setting up your site, and what tips/suggestions can you give to others?

In truth I’d say exactly the same thing now as I always have, if you enjoy what you do, if you take pride in your work, if you can offer something truly original in whatever form the world will slowly rub its eyes, stand up and take notice of what you’re doing. There are plenty of options out there for marketing but I’m not the best person to ask, I am not a marketing expert, I simply enjoy being creative and sharing the results.

I designed the blog myself, I suppose I could revamp it but ‘if it ain’t broke why fix it?’ There are plenty of gorgeous looking sites out there with very little to say or offer, no matter what niche they cover, it’s funny how people make a distinction between the online and offline world.

Salespeople annoy me, they are for the most part impatient, desperate to sell their wares and rarely listen to their prospects views and opinions. I’ve actually worked for a few major companies in a marketing capacity (many of whom probably rather I hadn’t) and they all seemed to make the same common mistake, forgetting that the public consists of millions of individuals, each with their own way of seeing and doing things. The only thing I have learned about marketing this last year is that excitement is infectious, if you can share the thrill of what you do then others will want to as well.

What sets buy-tees.net apart from the many other resource sites/blogs out there?

When I first set up Buy Tees almost every t-shirt reviews blog out there knocked out posts with a title, a photo, a price and a link. They may not like to admit it but I’ve seen a lot of those very same blogs turn my way, almost all of them will now,  at some point or other, wax lyrical about a designer or label. I am of the opinion that if you can’t pour your heart and soul into what you do why bother?

I have received so many emails from designers thanking me for helping them reach the next level of success, for saving a brand, even reinventing one that I can’t keep track anymore. I suppose the biggest difference, without wanting to sound arrogant, is me. I am different, I am an artist and I need constant sources of inspiration and so it’s a two-way street, creative people contact me, ask for my opinion or help and I, for the main part, am glad to help. You could call it a calling, or perhaps that’s a little over dramatic, but it certainly adds something special to my life.

You appear to get very personally involved in each of your reviews.  What approach do you take when reviewing a brand or particular shirt?

I can’t say there’s a formula, I’ve always been good at ‘reading people’, I don’t mean I am some kind of psychic, I don’t tell fortunes or read tarot, I just understand basic human motivation, especially when it comes to creative outlets such as t-shirt design. It’s as if I sit down and look at a body of work and imagine I have created the tees in front of me, then I work out why, where the inspiration came from, and how well it has been conceptually resolved.

I do have a habit of making up my own layman’s terms for things and this I’d call ‘logical progression’. You take things, no matter what they are, one step at a time, a creative mind follows a pattern, built up over years of experience, interactions, events, actions. If you for instance had been a backpacker for the last decade I’d expect a lot of cultural reference in anything you did, an openness to new experiences, an understanding of geo-political and historical boundaries, a longing for freedom, a zest for adventure. That would show in any creative outlet you pursued. I suppose I’ve specialized in ‘what makes people tick’ and try to connect with them personally through my opinions of their work.

Being creative is rewarding, connecting with other creative minds is probably as exciting as it gets for me.

I am very impressed with your writing form and style; do you have a background in literature?

Thanks, I have to admit I do get quite a bit of praise for my writing style which even now surprises me. I write the way I talk, which yes, must be exhausting for everyone involved. My mother was an English teacher, she taught me to read and write within the first few months of my life.

I’m the guy at the party at the end of the night, when you’re trying to get everyone to go home, who just won’t shut up.

I did write a screenplay once, it was almost accepted by Fox Searchlight in the mid 90s, they decided against it in the end saying it was too hot to handle, imagine The Matrix with more body parts and you’re half way there. I actually trained in conceptual arts at college, don’t ask, it’s all twaddle, but the tutors did force us to justify everything we created, however absurd the reasoning, and so I got into the habit of deconstructing everything and everyone around me until I felt I was about to burst – hence the outpouring of opinion at the slightest opportunity.

Are you involved in any other sites other than buy-tees?  If so, what?

Yes, I’m an artist, you can visit my site at http://paulbaines.co.uk – there’s also my arts blog at http://paulbaines.co.uk/category/blog where I review other contemporary artists. I’ve recently been approached by a major arts publisher who wants to feature my designs in a student textbook for illustrators which quite surprised me as I’d never considered I was an illustrator – but there you go.

I work on rather a large scale, at the moment I’m offering digital prints up to 44″ x 55″ in size however I’m in the midst of creating my own silk screen print studio and will be hand printing limited edition signed and numbered A1 prints by the end of summer if all goes well. It’s hard to explain my work, you will probably either love it or hate it. I have a few ties with the UK graffiti movement, I’m also hoping to have a few outlets and galleries selling my work by the end of the year.

Where do you see buy-tees heading from here?

Who knows? I was recently offered a very tidy sum for the blog, a major t-shirt producer wanted to buy it, and keep it as an archive which was very tempting and rather flattering. However I’d had so much feedback asking that I continue I didn’t have the heart to sell up. So what does the future hold? I really couldn’t say, perhaps it’s time for a t-shirt book? In the long term if the art career really takes off I will have to find a worthy successor, if not I will probably continue to review t-shirts until I drop. Either way it will be an exciting ride!

I got an email this week from Shy asking for a tutorial on how we apply our t-shirt designs onto photo real mock ups. I must say as much as I’d like to act like we could do photo shoots every day with pretty girls like the people do over at Design By Humans, we can’t. So I enlist my resourceful mockup PSDs from Emptees, and Photoshop layer modes and by the time I’m done I’ve got something worthy of the Assault Shirts homepage.

There are already plenty of people who have built ready made templates to place shirts on and to adjust colors so I’m not going to go into detail on that process. Instead, I’m going to refer you to the post I did last week about a few quick tips, as well as point you to the Emptees resources page where I got my templates from:

• Tips for prepping t-shirt designs for print
• Emptees Resources & Downloads

I chose to use this prepared blank shirt photoshop mockup by Falseone.org and if you chose the same one I did, your design should look something like this when you are done:

For demonstration’s sake, I’ll be using the most recent design we released, SS Amnesia, because it fits very well on many different colors.

Is your design flattened and not on a transparent background? See Below:

You have several choices if your design is on a flat background:

1. Trace your design in Illustrator:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0yNFH99cWg

2. Use the magic eraser tool and delete your background (This will look like shit)

3. USE LAYER MODES

Depending on the color of design you can easily set the design layer’s mode to either “Screen“, or “Multiply” and it will delete the background (or blend it) so that you see the design placed nicely on the shirt mockup.

This will take some experimentation. Generally, if you have a darker background on your design you want to use “Screen” as your layer mode. Think of it like a screen door in a way. All the black and darker tones becomes see through. If you have dark colors in your design that now look brighter or darker, you may want to use Image>adjustment>levels (or cntrl+L) to adjust your colors to get them as close as you can to your actual design.

If you have a lighter background on your design set your layer mode to either “Multiply” or possibly “Darken”. @angbowen from Fuel Your Creativity has a great article explaining the various layer modes and how they work. I highly recommend reading her article, Photoshop Blend Modes Explained. It will help clear up any confusion about what each layer blend mode does.

Is your design is on a transparent background. Read below:

If you’ve prepped your design with a vector fill layer as your background layer, you should easily be able to hide that layer, and copy the other merged layers by hitting cntrl+shift+c or by flattening your image and hitting cntrl+c.

Change over to the blank mockup t-shirt file, and hit cntrl+v or paste your design on top of it. Scale it down as you see fit and place it on the design. If you had a transparent background on your design you should be good to go for the most part. The only other step is to change the color of the t-shirt to the actual color you want it.

To do this double click on the Gradient Map Layer which will bring up the gradient editor.

Double click on the red colored tab to the right which will bring up your color picker window.

What I do next is head over to the American Apparel Colors resource and grab all the CMYK values for the shirt color I want. The highlighted field in the screen shot above is where you enter the first value, the second value goes in the next field, and so on and so fourth. Here’s the color picker window with the proper CMYK values for the American Apparel red color:

The red code listed on the American Apparel page is 0,100,80,2. See where I entered them above? Nice work.

You can use any color you’d like for the gradient map color, but you probably want to stick to the exact color your shirt supplier gives you. Just sayin’

Feel free to scale/distort the shirt if you feel it needs to be warped a little to fit into the shirt, but I generally leave it as is. Here’s what the design should look like:

Click to see a larger version of this image to see the detail

Need more help still?

Post in the comments, and I’ll gladly answer any questions you have on using free mock ups or getting realistic t-shirt templates. GoMediaZine has also covered this in great detail and even sells templates. I wish I had an entire design team like they do, but unfortunately it’s just me, and Mr. 51% so you’ll have to take what you get!

In the past year I’ve learned quite a few things that I didn’t know about t-shirts, and t-shirt printing that I thought I would share with anyone who’s either already designing their own shirts, or just getting started.

If you’re printing your shirts using a direct to garment type of solution you need not worry about many of these tips such as reducing the colors, but for those of you using screen printing, like we are at Assault Shirts, I think you’ll find most of these tips and resources very helpful.

Reducing image colors in preparation for a screen printing in Photoshop

Throughout many of our t-shirt designs we’ve had to reduce the amount of colors in an image in order to make it fit into the color scheme of our design.

Reducing the amount of colors also makes it cheaper to print, and it gives you a better idea of what your design is going to look like once it’s been screen printed. We used this technique in our 1984 T-Shirt design as well as our One Year As A Lion T-Shirt.  The key to reducing an image’s amount of colors for screen printing is the Posterize image adjustment. To demonstrate, I’ll use this image of Johnny Depp as the iconic Chicago gangster, John Dillinger.

Image > Adjustments > Posterize…

Posterize reduces the amount of colors in your image to the number of levels you specify. Depending on what kind of a look you are going for you can reduce the amount of colors once, or sometimes twice to get the desired look for your image. I’m sure you can even reduce it further, but I generally use 3 or 4 levels.

To posterize your image, first make sure you are on the selected layer you want to posterize. Then, go to Image> Adjustments> Posterize…

After posterizing your image, you can either desaturate it or try varying the amount of levels within the Posterize settings to get the desired effect. Here’s a few other options I managed to come up with:

You can also bring your image into Illustrator, and start to trace the image so it doesn’t look so crispy which you’ll find  may have a better effect than what I’ve outlined above. I personally am all-Photoshop guy so I prefer to keep everything in Photoshop, but Live Trace in Illustrator is another popular method for vectorizing an image.

New Document Presets for Screen Printing T-Shirts

The two document presets for the two sizes of screens that we use are:

18x23 canvas with 300 dpi resolution in CMYK color mode

With the large image sizes it may make sense to start at a resolution of 150dpi if the computer you are working on is a bit older. You can also use a Fill Layer for a background rather than a raster background layer to reduce your document file size. I do this with all my designs so my working file isn’t a 2gb fail whale waiting to happen.

Getting Pantone color codes for exact color matches with your printer

In order to guarantee your designs colors are matching and actually printable you need to send your pantone colors for every color in your design to your printer. Rather than let them do the color work for you, you should send the colors pantone codes.

To do this,  use the eye-dropper tool by selecting it in the tool palette or by hitting the “i” key and then clicking on the color in the design.

After you have the color selected, in your tool palette double click the color, and your color picker will open with the color you just eye dropped. Generally, this color will still be an RGB or CMYK color and isn’t the pantone color code we want. To get the approximate pantone color code, click on the “color libraries” button.

This will open up your color libraries window and the eye dropped color should be selected. The P542 C is what you want to send to the printer along with every other color code associated with your design.

2 minute color separation in Photoshop

Our printers have always done the color separation for us after we send them the high resolution images, but in case you need to do color separation on your own here’s the easiest and quickest way to accomplish that:

• Select the Magic Wand Tool in the tool palette (or hit the “w” key”)
• Uncheck “Contiguous” in the tool options area

• Click a color on your design
  

• Create a new layer and fill it by hitting cntrl + backspace or alt + backspace (depending on what color you want to fill it with the foreground or background)
• Repeat this for each color in your design and you should have each color separated on it’s own layer! (Here’s my design with new colors all separated on their own layers below)

I also found several detailed step by step Youtube videos which outline the above process using similar techniques:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmspWZqbc2Q

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uydc2VmfvQ

T-Shirt placement templates and mock ups

To ensure your printer gets your shirt printed with the correct shirt placement you should place your design on an actual shirt. This should be included with your high resolution shirt files that you send to your printer.

In the past we’ve used a combination of the below sources for t-shirt templates and mockups:

• Photoshop T-Shirt Custom Shape -- Download Use this custom shape as a background and place your shirt design atop it and mask out the outside area.
• Go Media’s Arsenal T-Shirt Templates are a the best way to get a photo realistic idea of what your designs will look like. They’re worth every penny.
• Color Overload’s Men’s T-Shirt Templates Another PSD with an assortment of color t-shirt templates to use for creating mockups from Color Overload
• Assault Shirts Product Page Photoshop Mockups This is our T-Shirt mock-up that we use on our product pages at Assault Shirts. It’s my personal favorite and can be used for shirts of all colors in the American Apparel style.

Related Links & Resources

• T-Shirt Forums Graphics & Design Help
• Designer’s Guide to Apparel Printing from Go Media
• Emptees T-Shirt Resources -- Great assortment of downloads and resources