Cameesa - The Blog

Congratulations goes out to Jon Turner aka vonmonkey for being the first Cameesa Artist to become 100% Supported by the community. I’m glad it made it through because I really want to wear it. A big thanks also goes out to all the Supporters.

It was popular and caused waves in the community when initially uploaded. This weekend it heated up, quickly reaching the 100% mark.

I like Jon’s background on the piece:

From The Times, July 14th 1892: “Oxford: The academic community remains abuzz with gossip after the disappearance of young Jeremiah Mugglestone, MA (Oxon.), lexicographer, last seen on Saturday morning. Mr. Mugglestone, the youngest fellow of Balliol, whom Jowett described as being possessed of ‘the finest mind in the Empire’, had reportedly been in a disturbed state for several days.
“Colleagues state that he had become obsessed with the notion of ‘beings from another world’, and claimed to have discovered an ‘alien’ code hidden within the text of a pocket edition of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary. A close friend, Dr. Cadmus Bodway, puts Mugglestone’s behaviour down to ‘a suspected case of library fever’; nevertheless there have been no sightings of the scholar, while his distinctive bowler hat and personal copy of the aforementioned dictionary have been found abandoned amid a scorched patch of grass in the South Parks. A mystery indeed”

I wrote a blog post a while back on Si Scott. I love his work and wondered what it would look like on a T-Shirt. Now I know as a Threadless select shirt is available, True Love Will Find You In The End.

vonmonkey about his initial impressions and thoughts about Cameesa.

Check it out here

What amazes me is how well vonmonkey was able to not only grasp the site, but his analysis of the underlying effects of using crowd funding. I couldn’t have written it better myself.

Cheers Jon! We look forward to seeing “Take Me to Your Reader” make it into print. At the current pace of Support, it should be there in no time!

There’s some nice artwork on Tank Theory’s site. They’ve established the Tank Theory Artist Society where they invite premier artists and designers to produce work for their t-shirt line. They’ve also added an artists section that showcases the work of artists who’ve created Tank Theory tees. The one thing I do find odd is that they decided to categorize their t-shirts as: “Artist Society T-Shirts” and “Standard T-Shirts”. After looking at the Artist Society T-Shirts do I really want to see Standard T-Shirts? Anyhow, I think they may want to drop the word Standard. There’s some great artwork on the site. I was thinking of picking up Swordplay as it’s from one of my favorite artists Mike Orduna aka Fatoe.

Most are familiar with the work of Shepard Fairy that he produces under the name Obey Giant. I found this Obey shirt on Karma Loop:

Is it Shepard’s Illustration? Or is it the gold print? All I know is I have to buy this Tee. For those who don’t know Shepard here’s some background. An interview on the Henry Rollins show:

Came across Coltesse on the T-shirt Island Blog. Founded in 2006 in Paris, France, Coltesse assembles it’s collection on a seasonal basis with a group of selected international artists. One piece that caught my eye was one from the French Toronto based artist Ndeur. Design in the bottom right. There is some dimensionality to the piece that makes it interesting. Ndeur became well known for his pattern designs, notably on shoes.

When sitting down and brainstorming a t-shirt design you can find inspiration from many places. One notable place I look to is street art due to its rawness and edge. I know many times when looking for the next t-shirt idea I do look at the work of Banksy, Faile and Shepard Fairy and other street artists to get the ball rolling. While searching for some inspiration and street art I came across the blog “Wooster Collective” that is dedicated to celebrating street art. There are lots of interesting works to get ideas from. (Image: Gunflower, in the streets of Paris, via Wooster Collective).

I am mesmerized by the work of Si Scott. I love the organic yet controlled forms that permeate each and every one of his compositions. Scott possesses a unique visual style that is clearly recognizable. One thing that also surprises me about Scott’s work is the ability to successfully integrate type in his commercial pieces. In the era of Adobe Illustrator and vector art it is refreshing to see that his intricate pieces are hand drawn. I am compelled to buy a print. The exchange rate hurts a little though. I would love to wear some of the artwork. How well do you think it would print on shirts?

I received Kevin Lyons’ new book “Pussy and Papers Poetry Power and Pistols” the other day from Amazon. It is a retrospective containing five hundred of his t-shirt designs. For those who don’t know Kevin Lyons is, he is a notable figure in the T-shirt design community whose freelance clients include Nike Basketball, Adidas, Jordan Brand, Stussy and Beams-T in Japan. A keen typographer, Lyon’s shirts display unique type treatments that convey concepts with impact. The hip-hop influence is clearly present in all of his work. I also find it extremely interesting when Lyons references modern art movements within the context of contemporary hip-hop culture. An example is displayed below for a shirt done for Commonwealth Stacks, a shout out to MC Shan with visual references from the Dutch De Stijl art movement.

Cameesa is in the process of evaluating shirt printers, so Andy and I got a chance to meet with the wonderful staff of Sharprint, a t-shirt printer on the West side of Chicago.

The staff of Sharprint are extremely professional, personable, and humorous (humor is always a plus in my books). Upon arrival we met Lana, the Omega Team account manager, and received a tour of their gigantic facility, which produced over 6 Million Prints last year. With Cameesa’s help, they can definitely boost the number.

After our tour, we had the pleasure of meeting Sharprint’s artist, Tara Zanzig, who showed us the wide array of Sharprint’s printing capabilities, ranging from embroidery and embossing to foil and mixed media. Tara’s expertise were evident as she talked about Sharprint’s printing methods.  Thanks Tara, this will provide a large amount of flexibility for the artwork our Cameesa’s community will produce.

Next, we returned into the factory to get a real taste of the glory, a hands-on tutorial of shirt printing. Simon Perez, a wizard on the manual press who has been with Sharprint since 1993, gave us this lesson. Simon was very welcoming and even laughed with me as I messed up my first print.

I got a chance to print my first shirt….well….my second shirt…..I messed the first print by cutting off Harry Caray’s face half way down the shirt, Oops!

Before we knew it, our tour was coming to an end, on our way out, George Kilian, the owner of Sharpint, came over and introduced himself to us. As he inquired about Cameesa I thought to myself : “Kamil, you are looking at a guy that started a company in his garage with a vision, and today he provides over 100 jobs in West Chicago…..man that is admirable.” Back to reality, now we are in our garage trying to raise our little baby, Cameesa.

This tour made me realize two things : 1) I love meeting cool people, 2) I missed Andy (Welcome back to Chicago!)

I am actually wearing my Harry Caray t-shirt as I type this Post, it’s Sunday and I need to do the laundry.