The Action Blast played their first show at The House of Blues in Chicago, and I was there to take a few photos after some happy hour boozing this past Friday. My steady hand prevailed thanks to my bullet-proof Irish drinking genes, and The House of Blues spacious photo pit. Hot mess beloooow!

Another solid show by The Action Blast–hopefully next time they’ll be able to join me in my pre-HOB-show routine of drinking nonstop at Chilis.

I almost quit the idea of starting my own clothing line altogether when I first started out because I literally didn’t know what to design. What could I put on my t-shirts? No one likes a shirt with just a logo on it–unless you’re Nike. I didn’t like semi-offensive parody shirts. I couldn’t use band names. I couldn’t afford any sort of licensing to use comic book superheroes. Essentially I was left with NOTHING.

The insecure designer in me was ready to quit

Not until I finally sat down and started listing things I thought were cool was I finally able to think of things that couldn’t be owned by anyone, that I could use as centerpieces to my work or at the very least hidden accents that would add to the detail. The finished list contained things that were cool for use in a t-shirt, that I would not get in trouble for using. My list ended up looking something like this:

Wolves are cool. Three wolves is better.

Animals

• Wolves (Mostly serious on this one)
• Cats
• Dogs
• Dead animal skulls
• Spiders
• Tarantulas
• Hawks
• Bald Eagles
• Bats
• Werewolves
• Giant Bugs
• Wolverines (Thank you spell check for this suggestion)

Cool Symbols

• Radioactive Symbols
• Stars
• Devil Horns
• Crosses
• Crossbones
• Poison Labels
• The Sun

Affliction has sort of (tm)'d this look.

Affliction-ize (if that’s what you’re into)

• Skulls
• Chainsaws
• Blood spats
• Lasers
• Barbed Wire
• Machinery
• Welding sparks
• Vampires
• Rays or bursts of light
• Broken Glass
• Grunge Textures
• Rust Textures
• Torn Paper
• Scratches
• Music notes

Military & Vehicles

• Atomic Bombs
• Airplanes
• Jets
• Guns
• Tanks

This also would have worked under the animals heading.

Nature

• Fire
• Explosions
• Floral Shapes
• Lightning Bolts
• Smoke

Other notable items

• Fist Pumping (in general this is a cool thing to do)
• High Fiving?
• Any sort of public domain imagery, or things over 75 years old

You get the idea. Are Pomeranians cool? Meh, but hey I’m sure that guy is out there who thinks they are… and I’m pretty sure he drives a bright orange Mazda Miata.

Feel free to add your cool things to the list at the bottom. Even if they’re inappropriate, which probably makes them all the more awesome.

Josh Smith, the designer behind one of my most favorite websites, Hydro 74 informed me that the first, “Back in Black T-Shirt Show” took place a few weeks ago, and some nice footage from the show has surfaced online at Vimeo. If you haven’t seen it yet check it out below, but definitely check out his design portfolio. It’s a constant source of inspiration for me and a lot of other designers out there. You can also find Josh on Twitter.

Back in Black T-Shirt Show from Solid Motive on Vimeo.

The Back In Black T-shirt show was hosted at Palehorse Gallery in St. Pete, FL on Nov 22nd, 2008. This show had an excellent turnout, and showcased the work of talented apparel artists, and illustrators from both sides of the Atlantic. The lineup included:
Dan Mumford
God Machine
HorseBites
Hydro 74
Iron Forge Press
Jeff Hamada
Jimiyo
Los Fokos
Munk One
Pale Horse
Pencil Bomb
Ray Frenden
Rob Schwager
Shanesart
Tech Vector
Tristan Eaton
Julie West
YWFT (Mike Cina)
Zenvironments

If they ever come any closer to Chicago, I’ll definitely try to catch the show. The shirts look amazing!

It’s hard to come home at the end of a normal 8 hour work day only to have to sit back down at your computer and start plugging away at more design work, or more development work like I do every day.

There’s a few things I’ve done in the past that always seem to help me find the motivation, and/or inspiration to get back to work. Most of the things I do are somewhat non-conventional in terms of what some “finding inspiration” articles tell you such as, “Go see a museum!”, or “go walk around the park!” Those suggestions never seemed to help me, and it always felt like I was wasting precious time. Here’s a few tried and tested ways that have helped me stay focused, motivated, and inspired to do more work after an already long work day:

FFFFound (or FFFound with WordPress)

If you’re going to surf the web, try to limit your surfing to places like FFFFound, or start your own personal bookmarking service with WordPress like I did. It doesn’t take long to go through literally hundreds of all sorts of different pieces of illustration, photography, and graphic design pieces that you surely can find some sort of idea, or at the very least some really weird shit that might spark an idea.

A Collection of Good Quotes

I made a post of my most favorite inspirational quotes that I refer to quite often while I’m in the middle of designing t-shirts. It helps ground you and at times can give you a new theme for a design idea. Clipping them with Evernote, or just pasting them into your Facebook profile is what I like to do.

Graphic Novels

Believe it or not I have found graphic novels to be a great source of inspiration for my design work, as well as some of my writings here on the blog and on twitter. Some of my favorites:

• V for Vendetta
• The Killing Joke
• The Watchmen

The illustrations are fantastic, and sometimes the symbolism, themes, and characters are the most interesting part of the novel more so than even the artwork.

Watch Academy Award Speeches

Besides Memorial Day when Saving Private Ryan is on TV unedited, the only other time I tear up in front of the TV is when I watch the Academy Awards. Maybe it’s because I was a film student and ultimately wanted to be a big time Hollywood Director, or maybe it’s because you actually get to see people achieving their ultimate childhood dreams right in front of your eyes. Besides Intervention, you’ll never see a more honest dose of, “reality television.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=P552i5xx8ww

Put a shitty Action Movie On in the Background

This may sound counter intuitive to helping get yourself motivated, or inspired, but I’ve found that when I put on old action movies that I’ve seen plenty of times, like Underworld, Doomsday, or Death Race, that it’s actually easy for me to ignore them, and focus on what I’m working on. Plus there’s no temptation to actually sit there and watch what ever may be on. Trying to watch something like Heroes or Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles always has me whipping my head around to see what’s going to happen next. Not so good if you are supposed to be working.

This is going to sound weird… but try trance music

You don’t have to listen to any specific kind of trance music, and I’m an expert on the subject by any means… For some reason, though, I am able to blast through design work and programming. Much like the shitty action movie, it focuses your mind on the task at hand, and doesn’t allow you to become distracted by what you’re listening to.

I can’t think of any time I was ever compelled to sing along to trance music like I do when my iTunes shuffles to “Fat Bottom Girls,” by Queen, or “Beat It,” by Michael Jackson. Best part about trance music is that you can find it for free in the Radio section of iTunes. Some of my personal favorite free, streaming stations are Vocal Trance, and House music from DI.fm.

Honorable Mentions: Turn off AIM, Turn off Twitter, drink Red Bull.

Have any of your own little ways to get motivated? How about posting them in the comments!

A friend sent me this funny comic today:

Athiest responses to silly canned fundamentalist statements

Whatever religion you believe in, I think it’s always important to question, and never have a devout belief in anything without evidence. Although atheists at times fall victim to the same things that devout religious fundamentalists do, (Ignorance and being confrontational) this is a pretty funny comic, and interesting take on devout beliefs and canned statements.

"JFK... duh." -inspirational quote from Tim.

Sometimes when I’m reading/web surfing I come across thought-provoking quotes that I can’t take my mind off of. If I can, I try to keep track of them via my Facebook page or cell phone. The reason I do this, besides trying to make myself look deep/cool to chicks who look at my various web profile pages, is because believe it or not ideas for t-shirts, tattoos, mission statements–you  name it, they tend to dry up.

By keeping a page of inspirational and thought provoking quotes, I find that you have a constant source of inspiration whether it be t-shirt design ideas, personal motivation to enjoy life, or in our case, remember why we decided to start a company in the first place. There have been multiple occasions where quotes have helped remind us to keep working when we’re feeling lazy, “live as if you’ll die today”, or even to inspire us to design a politically themed t-shirt for our line of apparel called, Assault.

Some of our favorites

I’ve taken a collection of these quotes from my profile, and I encourage you to start doing the same thing to help your creative design process.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable”
-JFK

“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”
-James Dean

“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”
-Thomas Jefferson

Principiis obsta” and “Finem respice”

Resist the beginnings. Consider the end.

“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
-JFK

“Quis custodiet custodes ipsos”
who watches the watchers

“Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

“Advertising sucks. That’s the cold, hard truth. It’s engineered to make you feel like you’re incomplete, that you have an unfulfilled need, that you’re not good enough.”

“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
-Oscar Wilde

“First get your facts; then you can distort them at your leisure.”
-Mark Twain

Keeping track of your quotes – Evernote

A great tool to help you keep all of your ideas that I’ve become a huge fan of lately is Evernote. (And no, they do not pay me to endorse and pimp their products.) You’ll be happy to know that not only Evernote free, but it runs on just about every platform. (Except for OS X 10.4 Tiger, DOH!) Their software makes it real easy to save notes, pictures, and ideas from your phone, desktop, or browser.

Have any quotes that I missed? Post em in the comments, the best one gets a free shirt! (as in beer)

Rise Against is a constant source of inspiration for many of our t-shirt designs and ideals. Their videos are equally as powerful and moving as most of their music and the new, “Audience of One” video is no exception. They posted it on MySpace Video today–check it out:

Rise Against – Audience of One

Do you know why we sometimes find ourselves excitedly buying things we don’t really need?  I came across this outline from a book by Dan Ariely called, “Predictably Irrational” that had some incredibly insightful information about people and why we at times seem to act completely irrational. It covers giving away  things for free, putting high price points on products to create demand, and even the benefit of arousal!

The Truth About Relativity

• When Williams-Sonoma introduced bread machines, sales were slow. When they added a “deluxe” version that was 50% more expensive, they started flying off the shelves; the first bread machine now appeared to be a bargain
• When contemplating the purchase of a $25 pen, the majority of subjects would drive to another store 15 minutes away to save $7
• When contemplating the purchase of a $455 suit, the majority of subjects would not drive to another store 15 minutes away to save $7

The Fallacy of Supply and Demand

A good portion of what you may have learned in your high school economics class may not necessarily be true. By piggy backing on other brands and setting a unique price point and targeting a higher class of consumer you may find that you can put yourself in the same class as the greats:

Savador Assael, the Pearl King, single-handedly created the market for black pearls, which were unknown in the industry before 1973. His first attempt to market the pearls was an utter failure; he didn’t sell a single pearl. So he went to his friend Harry Winston, and had Winston put them in the window of his 5th Avenue store with an outrageous price tag attached. Then he ran full page ads in glossy magazines with black pearls next to diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Soon, black pearls were considered precious.

Supply and demand doesn’t necessarily pertain to products either, we’ve all seen that club that’s got a line out the door every Friday Night. (that’s probably devoid of any chicks on the inside.) The illusion of demand creates demand.

The Cost of Zero Cost

When we first started Assault, we charged for shipping. After realizing that that was a huge part of what kept people from buying our product we decided it would be good to try giving our visitors free shipping to simplify the process. We were amazed to see that getting hit with a shipping cost was a huge stopping point for most consumers and we’ve never looked back. Ariely noticed similar things with some of the tests that he tried on students:

• Ariely, Shampanier, and Mazar conducted an experiment using Lindt truffles and Hershey’s Kisses.
  • When a truffle was $0.15 and a Kiss was $0.01, 73% of subjects chose the truffle and 27% the Kiss
  • When a truffle was $0.14 and a Kiss was free, 69% chose the kiss and 31% the truffle
  • According to standard economic theory, the price reduction shouldn’t lead to any behavior change (relative price and expected pleasure should be equal between the two experiments)
• The same experiments were conducted with Kisses going for $0.02, $0.01, and free…and free again made a huge difference.
• Ariely’s theory is that for normal transactions, we consider both upside and downside. But when something is free, we forget about the downside.
  • “Free” makes us perceive what is being offered as immensely more valuable than it really is
    • Humans are loss-averse; when considering a normal purchase, loss-aversion comes into play
    • But when an item is free, there is no visible possibility of loss
• Ariely conducted a variation, where people were offered a choice between items.
  • He gave kids (and students) 3 Kisses and offered to trade 1 Kiss for a small Snickers, and 2 Kisses for a large Snickers.
  • The subjects overwhelmingly chose the large Snickers (which is rational, given the weights of the candies)
  • When he instead offered to trade 1 Kiss for a large Snickers, or let the person take a small Snickers for free, the subjects overwhelming went for the free offer.
  • The zero price effect applies even when money is not involved.
• In the real world, this effect was demonstrated by Amazon’s free shipping.
  • After Super Saver shipping was introduced, Amazon saw sales increases everywhere except for France
  • It turned out that the French division offered 1 franc ($0.20) pricing instead of free pricing.
  • When this was changed to free, France saw the same sales increases as elsewhere

The Influence of Arousal

Another astonishing piece of information was the interviews of people when they were “sober” and after in which they had “aroused” themselves. People’s minds  function entirely differently when under the influence of… well ya know. (We didn’t have to tell you that sex sells. That’s why our site is absent of pictures of Craig and myself on product pages…)

Ariely and Loewenstein conducted an experiment on Berkeley undergrads (Ariely tried to do this at MIT, but couldn’t get the necessary permissions).  They asked them a series of questions.  Then they had the undergraduates stimulate themselves to a state of sexual arousal, and asked them to answer the same set of questions.

• Some of the results from their experiment:
  • Can you imagine having sex with a 60-year-old woman
    • Sober: 7%
    • Aroused: 23%
  • Could you enjoy having sex with someone you hated?
    • Sober: 53%
    • Aroused: 77%
  • Is just kissing frustrating?
    • Sober: 41%
    • Aroused: 69%
  • Would you slip a woman a drug to increase the chance she’d have sex with you?
    • Sober: 5%
    • Aroused: 26%
  • Would you use a condom even if you were afraid that a woman might change her mind while you went to get it?
    • Sober: 86%
    • Aroused: 60%

A few other interesting pieces of information

In 210 BC, Xiang Yu led an army against the Ch’in Dynasty.  While his troops slept, he burned his ships and smashed all the cooking pots.  He explained to his troops that they had to either fight their way to victory or die.  His troops won 9 consecutive battles.  Eliminating options improved the focus of his troops. We feel compelled to preserve options, even at great expense, even when it doesn’t make sense.

Companies that try to market based on social norms (“like a good neighbor…”) but fail to follow through (e.g. imposing nuisance fees) end up in a worse position. Consumers take personal offense when a relationship framed as a social exchange turns out to be a market one.

If you think you need to play rough, don’t waste money making your company the fuzzy feel-good choice. State what you give and what you expect in return–it’s just business.

A salary alone will not motivate people to risk their lives. Police officers, firefighters, soldiers–they don’t die for their weekly pay. It’s the social norms–pride in their profession and a sense of duty–that will motivate them to give up their lives and health.

Money, as it turns out, is very often the most expensive way to motivate people. Social norms are not only cheaper, but often more effective as well.

Some of this information is invaluable to you when you’re planning the little things on your site or company that you may have never thought of. Free shipping, pictures of pretty girls wearing your product, offering coupons everywhere you can, picking your price point–all of these irrational behaviors have alot to do with the way humans have been wired weather it’s social pressure, or some sort of marketing pressure. I highly recommend reading the book outline of Dan Ariely’s book, checking out his official website, or go look at the Predictably Irrational website.

Feel free to arouse yourselves and go buy some of our shirts.

A pretty cool summary as to how Mode Chicago came up with the concept for the Obama 08 Campaign

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rADuB2Vzbc

I read about this today on Tom Muller’s blog. He was talking about looking for work a few years ago, and that the agency who did this video was one of the places he had been looking for work at:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfwD05XA2YQ

It’s not very often that you get to find websites that are brand new to the market and that are actually trying a totally different approach to business. Recently, we somehow managed to get in contact with the great people at Cameesa, a new, possibly better than Threadless style social website that gets the crowd involved in getting their favorite shirts printed by providing the actual support for the prints.

Signing up and getting a profile setup is quick and painless. After logging in you can cruise through the designs and choose to “support” certain shirt designs that you like by pledging a dollar amount towards that shirt. Best part is for those of you who don ‘t do t-shirt design is that if the shirt you support gets picked then you get one sent to you AND you get a portion of the profit!

Are you a starving t-shirt designer like us? Then submit some of your work and reap the benefits if your shirt is picked for printing!

I’ve become a real fan of sites like this, as well as sites like Rumplo, and Please Dress Me, but more so I’m a fan of the business model. Being able to have the community rally around the designs they like best is like a guaranteed product that will sell. Throw in the fact that people are willing to wear just about anything on a t-shirt and you’ve got yourself a surefire way to make money. The real genius in what Cameesa is doing though is that the community is also funding the designs and sharing the profits. For the little guys like Assault, every penny counts. This seems like a great way to expedite the up front cost of printing shirts. (even if people have pledged to buy them) We know better than anyone that sometimes people just don’t buy the things even when they like them.

I think a site like Cameesa opens the doors to designers who may have tastes more like myself. Same goes for the great work that comes out of Design By Humans. As of recent Threadless seems to print more and more of the same style of shirt rather than branching out and allowing for a more diverse audience to get involved. Is Cameesa the answer to what we’ve been looking for in an apparel design community website that isn’t Threadless? I think it’s got a great shot.

I came across this very well done spoof video of the Dove Evolution video that became so viral some time ago. It’s a humorous jab at the Dove video and carries a very interesting message that, “no one wants to look at ugly people”.

I don’t know about you, but they basically seem to have compressed my run-of-the-mill Saturday night into a 30 second video, and the end result is not pretty, and was it me or did the slob’s head get bigger? Or was it just that his hair got somewhat shorter?

These guys have definitely won me over, be sure to subscribe to their newsletter on their main page for more updates, I did.

Check out the Slob Evolution Video in High Resolution Here

I found this gem of a site today and I thought I’d share it with the world here via the AssaultBLOG:

Rock n Role

The site/clothing line is run by Ali Maclean and here’s a little tidbit from their about

The former “Gig Guide” girl on Indie 103.1 showed off new pieces from her Rock’n’Role label last Saturday at the recently reopened downtown art-and-party space Hangar 1018, parading strugglin’ but stellar stage stars from local bands, including the Prix, Circus Minor and the Oohlas down the runway with reconstructed wearables bearing the “Rock Victim” logo among others, all embellished with debauched excess-ories like laminate necklaces and flasks.

Definitely worth a looksee.

Just got a chance to see the Lakai Fully Flared skate video intro on youtube. It’s about 5 minutes long clip with a badass soundtrack coupled with some awesome pyrotechnic explosions courtesy of Spike Jonze. The video was directed by Ty Evans and features M83 -- “Lower Your Eyelids to Die With the Sun”. It’s a great song that I’m putting on my iTunes as we speak. Check out the vid below.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHX8jezNBTk