Over the past week, I was out of the office. I was on tour with my band, and it was a decent time. I’m not the biggest fan of touring, but it can be fun to go out on the road and play cities that you’ve never been before. Anyway, there is always a lot of time to kill before the show starts, so we would usually stop at the local malls for about an hour or so. In a Hot Topic in (I forget what the name of the mall is) Kansas City, a shirt graphic caught my eye.
I spotted a skull that I made from one of the Vector Packs on a shirt for the band Red Jumpsuit Apparatus.
I grabbed a shirt off the shelf and noticed that it also had many other vectors that we birthed here at the office including: hoolidanders, birds, more skulls, halftones, and more. Then, I looked up and saw a shirt for the band Aiden that featured a face from the sexy pack that Bill made.
A few days later, we were in Iowa with loads of time to waste before the show, so we went to another mall. In this Hot Topic, I saw both of the shirts previously mentioned, but on top of the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus shirt there was a Coheed and Cambria tee. This shirt had the EXACT SAME SKULL featured as the Red Jumpsuit design, AND was flanked on both sides by more Go Media skulls.
The background is also made up of crests and halftones from the vector packs. Pretty neat to see that stuff out in the public like that, and I’m not discrediting the designers of the shirts by any means. It’s like the shirt is a pizza, the designer is the chef, and Go Media made the really tasty ingredients.
August 29th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
I remember seeing that Apparatus shirt and thinking the same thing. Awesome that the Packs are starting to see some major exposure, and refreshing to hear you guys speak so approvingly. I know a couple people who use the packs and get upset when they see them on a more prominent band’s shirt, thinking they’re some kind of secret.
August 29th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
I work for Hot Topic and they have all of your vector packs. I get paid $10 an hour and they have a quota for me to crank out various designs that “appeal to my funky friends”…….that is the exact words they used.
A couple days ago, they let me out to “get some air”…..I look forward to doing that again. It would be nice if they stop randomly shocking me.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
Congrats… thats pretty cool. And all those bands rock, so even better.
August 30th, 2007 at 2:52 am
it’s quite strange to see a band like coheed and cambria (one of my favourite band) using your vector packs … i use to think that if i made something for me it has to be unique, i have made stuffs for my band taking inspiration from other works but it’s something that i made … maybe you don’t agree with me but i would never use PRE-MADE stuff to build up something personal even if your works are great
by the way u always do a great job men, i hope someday to work with you even if now i live REALLY far away from you (i’m from Palermo, Italy).
Cheers
August 30th, 2007 at 7:33 am
you guys still never mentioned the printing technique used for these shirts, you only refer to your printing supplier. Is it screen printing from a digital machine that makes the screens automaticly or is it some heat-transfer method? All the printshops I have been to said they couldn’t print multiple colours with very fine details
We euros can’t really use your supplier, the shipping is more expensive then the actual shirt would be.
August 30th, 2007 at 9:21 am
John - it’s screenprinting and I myself don’t know the process all that much. That’s why we pay Jakprints to do it. They do have big machines and good color separators there, so I am not sure how the process gets done - but it gets done! That’s all I can say from my position as the designer.
September 1st, 2007 at 11:55 am
That’s kinda lame I think, that people are using the vector packs to such an extent that their designs are more or less solely made by someone else. The designing part of the job when you have the vector packs, if you use them like that, isn’t really that much work I think. You can basically just pick some stuff blindfolded, randomly paste them onto a nice background and pick a nice swatch to pick colors from and it still looks “cool”. If too many “designers” use the vector packs like that our nische of design will become more and more generic and jaded and those guys who aren’t using the packs will gett less attention than what they deserve.
I have kind of the same view as you guys when it comes to what you should use the vector packs for, they’re a nice last touch to a design, but they’re not supposed to be the main part of it.
Cheers.
Dag, design student, sweden
September 1st, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Dag, you have a very valid point. It’s something we think about every day. But in the end, the true innovators will continue to evolve. Just because someone may be talented at drawing skulls, doesn’t necessarily make them obsolete because your newbie designer can now cut and paste almost the same quality skull into their design. The talented ones will figure out ways to excel no matter what. It’s just the way it is. There will always be innovators and imitators. Has been since the dawn of time.
And you’re right, it doesn’t take any effort or talent (or thought really) to blindly pick design elements and slap them together and make shirt. But the designers who did that are aware of how much effort they put into it. The fact of the matter, the shirt got printed and is being sold regardless of the originality of the design. And the design probably went through a few round of approvals from the merch company, the label, the band, etc. So some people must have liked it.
September 2nd, 2007 at 5:38 am
Thats pretty cool.
September 19th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Co-signed on what Jeff said.
“The talented ones will figure out ways to excel no matter what. It’s just the way it is. There will always be innovators and imitators. Has been since the dawn of time.”
A little creativity and some elbow grease go a long way.