TEEES

- a guide to short sleeves

Printed Teees

Some guys spend a helluva lot of time in the gym working up a firm toned torso and arched biceps. Some go regularly to the local tanning saloon, spending hours on end under the artificial sun. These misguided sorry sods think this is the correct way to earn respect from those they consider to be their peers, and they also think it makes them more interesting to the other gender. This is of course not the case at all. We know that a cool printed t-shirt is the only right, and that nobody really wants to see a half-naked guy anyway.

t-shirts

We are here to guide you through your options. There are many ways to categorize the printed tee, and there are many varieties out there.

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The most obvious of the printed tees are band shirts. Band shirts don’t only look cool, they also serve as a means to place you within your desired social group. Amongst the most popular ones are the Ramones and the Motörhead print. Theses have recently been adopted by mainstream fashion, and are applicable in any layer of society, against the will of the true believers. A band shirt should really be either too small or too big. Never get a band shirt that fits like a glove. I myself mainly go for the small sizes. Another thing about band tees is that you can really never wash it too much, and we welcome holes and stains in these garments with the greatest enthusiasm.

If you like indie bands, ringers are an important factor. A good color scheme for this kind of band tees is washed out pastels. Preferably happy, naive colors like light blue, yellow, pink, teal, etc. and even mixes of the above. A good indie shirt should not be too big, as opposed to a metal shirt.

A tricky segment of the t-shirt world is the slogan tee, the tricky part being the coolness of the slogan. You will probably notice that a lot of slogans that may seem cool in the store, will fade rapidly after a couple of wears. I really don’t have any tricks in this department, so be cautious when selecting a slogan tee. A couple of the classics in this genre are "I’m with stupid", and the ever-uncool "My friend went to …. and all I got was this t-shirt". Irony is a good pointer on slogan tees.

One of the most popular printed t-shirts these days is the logo tee. Preferably hosting a vintage company or product logo or trademark, these t-shirts can often be really cool. Some of the most popular ones are vintage computer trademarks from the eighties like Atari, Commodore, Apple, IBM and Amstrad. The Moog analogue sythesiezer retro logo tee, was probably one of the coolest printed tees at the end of the last century. It is also acceptable to wear the logo of the odd household product. Ringnes, the company behind the Norwegian made orange soda, Solo, actually went ahead and re-printed some old design and gave the tees away to the charity 2nd hand store. They became a great hit in Oslo.

If you are out shopping for t-shirt, the Internet is the best market. Lately there have surfaced a great deal of sites that sell their own custom designs to affordable prices. The original art tee must be one of the most rapidly expanding genres today, and there is a lot to chose from.
There has also recently surfaced a few services where you are able to make your own designs, and even sell them online in a print-on-demand fashion.