Contest for FREE SHIRTS listen to the opening intro to find out how to win! Critics who have lost their credibility, Roger Ebert, Know1ng, Garfield, film school, picks and dicks.

Pick

• Clymer: Antony & The Johnsons – Swan Lights, Scott Pilgrim comic series
• Jere: Pimp C‘s posthumous record, Cut the Rope – Chillingo Ltd
• Oswald: Runaway (feat. Pusha T) – Single – Kanye West, Teenage Dream (Deluxe Edition) – Katy Perry, air mattress, blu ray pack with Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and You Don’t Mess With the Zohan
• Tim: MonoPrice

Dicks

• Clymer: that troll asshole who was harassing Oswald
• Jere: WordPress iPad app
• Oswald: Elgin DMV Lady
• Tim: iPad no caps lock and bike riders in Chicago

Show Music

• Runaway (feat. Pusha T) – Single – Kanye West
• Leviathan – Mastodon

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

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

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

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!

I’ve been going back and forth lately between several twitter clients, and I think I have finally picked a winner for my laptop: Tweetdeck. (I use Tweetie on my iPhone.) The newest feature of Tweetdeck finally put it over the top with multiple logins, but just today I discovered something I wish I had known about a long time ago:

Search Columns

Currently, I have two search column tabs open keeping an eye on what types of t-shirts and shirts people are looking for. Primarily, I have just been using the columns to get an idea who is looking for what and why. It’s been pretty interesting so far, and a lot of the time you find many people asking, “Where should I buy shirts?” or even, “Considering going out to the mall to buy some t-shirts.”

Like anyone else who has an online store, and has slaved away their weekends selling in booths outdoors in music festivals, I know exactly what this anonymous person over the internet looks like. They’re the ones who stop from a distance when they see your product, and are on the fence about coming in for a closer look. All they need is a little push.

Don’t spam, and don’t make your twitter feed a scrolling car salesman–but it’s perfectly reasonable to answer the questions of people who have opened themselves up for a pitch. I guarantee selling your product this way is a great way of generating word of mouth leads, and quality ones at that–at least it’s way better than paying $.50 a click on Google.

Not only will you find people looking for shirts here, but I’ve recommended plenty of print services as well as given out referrals to other t-shirt companies that I like.

Hi I’m Jon Kruse. I run Mediocore Clothing and the blog How to Start a Clothing Company. When Tim and I got together to discuss writing a guest article for each others’ blogs, I was stumped on what to write about. In the end I decided to write about something that has helped me a lot but most people pass over it because they consider it common sense. What is this you ask? It’s called asking people for Help!

I use a three step approach

1. Connect on a personal level with someone.
2. Ask them for help.
3. Give them the tools they need.

When I first started I was very timid and I didn’t want to ask anyone for help. I would make up absurd milestones in my head that I had to reach before I would post on certain forums, websites, or even email friends that own clothing companies about helping me out. Looking back, I wasted too much time trying to do things by myself when there were so many people that wanted to help me and knew so much more than I did. It wasn’t until I let go of my fears of asking people for help that I finally started seeing returns in my business.

I hear from a lot of t-shirt companies that are starting out and looking for advice. I always tell them to have a great relationship with the t-shirt blogs and I have a couple articles about the subject “How to get your cool t-shirt reviewed“, “How I became one of the top online t-shirt companies by being a nice guy“. It really amazes me how many people will come back and say “ohh they wouldn’t post my shirt, it isn’t their style” or something along those lines. You will never know unless you try, and doing nothing is the fastest way to fail. I have had plenty of blogs post my shirts that didn’t really fall into what they normally post just because I have a good rapport with them.

Once I started making a personal connection with blog owners, I did the same thing with my customers. When you join my mailing list I give my background and what I believe in. I tell them about when I got fired from my job and decided to pursue something I really was passionate about–starting a clothing company. A lot of people can connect with my story because they know someone that has lost a job or have lost a job themselves. I always give out a couple of coupons with every order and ask my customers to tell their friends about my shirts. Some people will do this without you asking, but the simple act of asking someone to do something makes it a lot more likely that it will happen.

So let me go over those steps again.

Make a personal connection with someone.

I read a book called “You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself”. There is a ton of good advice in there but one of the stories that made a strong impression on me was about tipping waitresses. It said that when it came down to how much tip you would leave you would tip more to a waitress that made a personal connection with you over a waitress that provided the best service to you but didn’t connect with you. This is the opposite of what most of us were taught, that hard work and dedication will pay off, but really the most important thing is connecting with someone and making them feel like your friend.

How to connect

Myspace, emails, facebook, twitter, these are all great ways to connect with your fans. Johnny Cupcakes really has this nailed down, and even though he has only said one thing to me over the internet, I still would call him a friend. He also does things like a showing of gremlins and a free pizza party and these stories spread through the Internet like wildfire.

Ask them for Help

• When was the last time you helped someone for no reason at all?
• When was the last time you helped someone when they asked you?
• Just asking for help will increase the chances of them helping you tremendously.

Give them the tools they need

You have to make it as easy as possible for someone to help you or else they won’t do it. So many times I hear a band or artist asking for votes for a contest, but if I get to the website and I have to fill out a long form I usually just give up. This is how it is for most people, so give them the tools that will make it easy for them to do what you’re asking.

• When you want to have a blog post a new shirt, give them already hosted pictures to use, a bio of your company, and information about the shirt. The less work they have to do, the better.
• When you want a customer to tell their friends about your company, give them coupons to hand out. Get them on a mailing list with emails they can easily forward.
• Just doing these simple things will increase the chances of someone helping you.

Now get out there and ask for help!

View a high resolution.

Along with getting a new tattoo this week that was inspired by my favorite band of all time, I decided it was time to design and sell a shirt that was inspired by the same band, Rise Against.

I’ve been listening to Rise Against since about 2003-2004 when I was in college, and since then they’ve only gotten better and better.

Themes ranging from political activism, animal rights activism, and to just have a cause and purpose in general are a major influence in many of the designs and ideas that go into Assault, as well as the songs that make up the new Rise Against album so we thought it’d be fitting to incorporate some of their lyrics as well as some famous quotes and thoughts from some of our favorite books and people.

The main quote on this shirt comes from the book Anarchic Harmony by William J. Murray:

We classify ourselves above other animals because of our so-called intelligence. Why? If we instead chose to classify species according to effectiveness on the planet, mankind would be at the bottom of the totem pole. If we classify according to beauty, or grace, or sheer numbers, mankind wouldn’t make the top third of any category. The fact is that our intelligence, as we now use it, makes us a cancer to the bottom of the ladder of life-forms.

The other main quote in this shirt is from John F. Kennedy:

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.

If you get a chance, listen to some of Rise Against’s new album, Appeal to Reason, as well as their other favorite album of mine, Siren Song of the Counter Culture.

Oh yea, go buy the Peaceful Revolution T-Shirt at the site for our WOOT side deal of the day for $16.99 plus free shipping, or you can wait a week and pay $23.99 when it’s back up to it’s normal price.

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.

Hails and Horns July/August 2008

The heavy metal magazine Hails & Horns did an interview with Mr. 51% and Tim in their July/August issue of their magazine and you can get it now at your local Borders or Barnes and Noble. (Unless of course you tried to get it in Chicago off North Avenue, in which case I have already purchased all of the copies to send to friends and family of Assault)

I’ve taken the liberty of scanning the two full pages that we got in for all to see, but if you want to see the magazine in the flesh you’ll have to buy your own!

If you’d like to see the Hails & Horns website you’re going to have to wait because it’s under construction. For now, you can see their Myspace page.

Brandon Porter wearing the Skull Wing Assault T-Shirt

Kendra and Kate wearing the Assault Official T-Shirt and the Green Assault Shirt.

Shirts Pictured in this article

• Skull Wing Assault
• Assault Official T-Shirt
• Green Assault

I recently spent the $50 dollars required to earn me the title of coolest person EVAR by purchasing myself a pair of adult sized Heely shoes from Zappos.com. For the longest time I’ve wondered what the hell those little kids were scooting around on when they were in my local mall and when I finally found out what they were I was devastated to learn that they were only kid sized shoes.

While parusing the net the other day I was delighted to find that they do in fact make Heely’s in Adult sizes! Best part: they’re only $50 bucks! After conferring with the great people at Zappos I was able to get my shoes overnighted, and as of right now I’m sitting here at the office anxiously awaiting their arrival. I’ll keep everyone posted as to my progress as well as to share any pictures of the major spillage that will most definitely ensue.

In other news, we still have yet to receive ANY pictures of ANYONE wearing our new Phoenix Rising T-Shirts that we mailed out several weeks ago! For those of you who promised pictures… well, WHERE ARE THEY!? We have all these free guitar picks and coupon codes that are just sitting here waiting to be given away!

The Skull Propaganda T-Shirt was done using a combination of my normal photoshop techniques completely in Photoshop. The skull that provides the main focal point for the shirt was done by tracing a skull I found on the internet with the pen tool. I then converted the path to a custom shape so I could use the shape again if I wanted, and I deleted the jawbone because for some reason it makes it look a bit more rugged.

As always feel free to comment on the shirt as well as the underlying message on the shirt. The image links to a high resolution version of the design in case you want to see all the intricate details.

We’ve decided to make this shirt available to both men as well as women. The Men’s shirts print on the American Apparel 2001 Fine Jersey T-Shirt and the Women’s shirts print on the 6321 Sheer Jersey Cap T-Shirt. As always we encourage you to submit pictures of yourselves wearing our shirts and we’ll send you discounts and free stuff!

To purchase the Skull Propaganda T-Shirt click here.

Download the skull custom photoshop shapes

Assault has created two t-shirt designs for the Lex & Terry morning radio show based out of Dallas. They’re currently being printed by our friends at Merchspin and they’re some of our best work yet. If you’d like to purchase one of these shirts you will have to do so at the Lex & Terry morning radio network’s website.

I also highly recommend getting a subscription to their website and watching the shenanigans that happen daily on their live video feed. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been busted at work laughing out loud in the middle of a silent office. I’ve been a podcaster for about two years now, and I used to listen to them every morning in college when I went to SCAD.

I’d post pictures of the shirts, but I think you’d be better off waiting for the surprise when they appear on the L&T website!

The two Family Tree shirts are the two variations on the idea from Craig Kaplowitz to have a “family of trees”. They currently only come printed on a style of shirts that is made for girls. (Trust me guys, you won’t be able to squeeze into them) Both of the t-shirts were illustrated by Candice Ciesla and here is what she had to say about them:

In designing these family tree t-shirts, I wanted to focus on the joke coming across in a single panel comic sort of way. It’s obviously an illustration to amplify a play on words, so why not have some fun with it? These designs were created on a tablet pc laptop with minor adjustments. I personally enjoy a sketchier look on comic illustrations and the tablet is extremely useful for that. The colors are limited, but the expressions and character interaction allow for a successful palpable design.

Candice is currently located in Atlanta, and spends her time doing character concept work for short and full length feature films. You can visit her website by going to Candice Ciesla.com and for all you internet pervs out there, you can check out her pictures below:

The Red Assault T-Shirt is by far the best and my personal most favorite graphic t-shirt that I have designed to date. Unlike all the other graphic t-shirts out there, this shirt costs just $19.99 and features an over-sized print on the very trendy American Apparel 50/5o jersey t-shirt. It’s one of the few shirts where you can actually see the name of the FUCKING BRILLIANT company who made the shirt, Assault.

It being that this shirt was created in a half hour (yes, most of the designs take hours, but this one poo-pooed itself out in a few minutes of brilliance) I’ve decided to supply you with the tools to make the magic happen on your own designs. Granted, there isn’t a sweet printing company like Merchspin to make the magic actually, physically print onto your t-shirts, but it’s a good head start.

As always, like it? Hate it? Comment below? I’d love to post a tutorial series on how I design my shirts, as well as give some insight to the process as to how we make this all happen… Anyone interested? Email us, comment, let us know and I’ll make it happen.

Red Assault Shirt custom photoshop shapes

American Apparel is whoring out their product to all you ONS (One Night Stand) kinda people out there, and let me tell yah… seldom will you find a place more open minded to marketing to sluts than Assault!* According to the American Apparel Daily Update for today, American Apparel is proud to have their product emblazened inside a “Ho on the Go” style package with mints, some fragrance, a condom, and many other necessities for a one night stand. (Except for the sneaky getaway!)

The male version of the Ho on the Go kit comes with the American Apparel manties aka tightey whitey undewear. Why is it that every time I mention American Apparel I feel the need to not only link to the Call on Me music video, but I also HAVE to watch it like four times in a row with my speakers on full blast so that everyone in the office can also appreciate the genius of retro clothing and gratuitous female girating to kick ass techno. (Way to Go Eric Prydz) Just thank me for not putting up a screen capture of what American Apparel has in their catalog for the picture of the manties, pure unattractive hipster man-crotch all in yo face.

Personally, not my style but I’m sure you could catch Mr. 51% himself lounging around in some bright Napa blue ones on a weekend reading the Sunday paper. In fact, I think that may make for a great ad campaign in the near future…

* It should be noted that we are not chauvinist/sexist, we’re merely sarcastic and afraid of pretty girls.

Want to be a model for American Apparel? Live in Southern California? Want to do it for a freakin 50% off coupon?

Head over to the American Apparel blog and send in your shit to see if their “model scouts” think you have what it takes. Timmy has sent in pictures of Craig with his rock and roll combover to see if Mr. P-rez has what it takes to be professionally good looking.

The Chainsaw Bunny Killer Rabbit shirt was one of the last shirts we managed to sneak into the first batch of printing. The shirt’s illustration was drawn by Candice Ciesla of CandiceCiesla.com. She also did the inking, and I did the job of slapping it onto a t-shirt template for your viewing pleasure.

That being said I cannot supply you with sweet custom Photoshop Brushes like I did for some of the shirts that I designed, but you can check out some of the original sketches in our FlickR photo stream, or look at the images I’ve posted for you noobs below:

Candice Ciesla’s Official Website. It’s got tons of great stuff as well as high resolution images she has drawn. (She’s good people, and hot! just kidding, she’s ugly as a “Gretchen”)