Alex Away in Japan

Alex is currently in Japan and is traveling around to Europe and the U.S. as well. Andy is still in Sydney sending out orders and getting the new tees done up.

New product is arriving very soon.

Also we've had an error with receiving our email however this has since been resolved. If you haven't received a reply from us please send it through again and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.

BEAUTIFUL/DECAY Artist Series

Label BEAUTIFUL/DECAY have released four very cool tees as part of their Artist Series. I personally think these designs are some of the best I've seen available online.

My favourite:



From: addicteed

Swami Safari featured on "Thirsty Mercs" video clip

Our first tee was featured on the main character in the Thirsty Merc's video for "20 Good Reasons" shown below. Too bad you can barely see it - better than nothing, though.

Ideas on Selling T-Shirts Online

T-Shirt Island has a great, detailed post detailing how different online t-shirt businesses are going about things. They are broken down into:

1. Let customers decide what they want: Allowing the customer to determine all the aspects of a t-shirt; the print, fabric colour, cut etc.
2. Transform loyal customers to business partners: Partnering with your customers to sell their creations.
3. These guys create their own market!: Via focusing on community and having that community as the core of the market. Threadless is the pioneering example here.
4. Products campaign goes social web, for free: Individuals such as artists have the flexibility and reach to produce, promote and sell their designs - aided heavily via social networking websites like MySpace and Stylehive.
5. Selling for good cause: Placing a focus on charity and social responsibility.

I'd like to add two new ideas for new models and ways of going about things:

Open Source Community-Created World: Everything is contributed by the community. Not just artwork for t-shirts, but narrative (incorporating plot points & character development that can individually be reused) or photographs or music. In return the community is allowed to freely use, incorporate and distribute this intellectual property - for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.

In effect you have a community created and controlled "world" filled with a cohesive intellectual property that can be utilised freely by one member or a group of them.

Pre-requisite Production Model: With this model you offer several styles but only produce them if a predetermined number of people commit to purchasing one. For a t-shirt style you might require 50 people to commit to it, whereas for a luxury jacket you may only need 5 or 10 people paying a higher price. This means that you can produce exact numbers with no wastage and reduced liability.

To entice people you could require they only put a 50% deposit down to secure their place, with the balance required once the prerequisite number of orders has been reached.

The other great advantage to this model is that you can make a garment as exclusive or as mass market as you want, depending on how many people must commit to an order before production.


We're very interested in using the above mentioned models in the future and think that a lot of emerging t-shirt labels will do well to use them, too.

Swami in China

Our next tee is based on Chinese mythology and features the half-serpent half-human creator gods Nuva & Fuxi. The artwork is as follows:


The background colour is a mock up of the tee colour which is a dark emerald green. This is a central placement print.

Things are pretty full on with Australia Fashion Week currently on but we've got another update coming about our first accessory design that's dropping soon.

#2 - Egypt Design Brief

Concept

For the second month I figured Ancient Egypt would be an interesting angle to go down and I think you’ll have a lot of fun with this one too. Now I know we were going to collaborate more so that we chose a mythology we were both interested in but because we need this second print pretty quickly (i.e. late September) I figured that I’d have to be pretty direct in making a quick and clear choice. I know a lot about ancient Egypt and went to the country in mid-2004.

The idea is to incorporate either one of the gods or one of the creatures into a print. This would work very nicely with your style because of the many layers and facets that make up some of their divine or mythical characters.

Elements

Ok there is a LOT for us to play with. Couple of ideas for the theme for this print could be:

1. Ra acts as a tour guide for the Swami and shows him around the land of the living and the land of the dead via his Solar Barge

2. The Swami spends a few nights in the Underworld as the guest of Osiris; God of the Underworld.

3. The Swami participates in a mock soul judging or views an actual judging (the deceased had their souls judged against the weight of a feather, if their sin was heavier than the feather then their souls were devoured by Ammit)

4. Some sort of warning sign or “to do list” that features feeding Anubis and taking him for a walk.

5. Something to do with depicting the soul (the Egyptians believed it was comprised of 7 parts)

I think the focus of the print should be heavily weighted towards the chosen divinity or creature we go with and have other elements significantly smaller in scale so that they support and push the scene or story behind the print forward without taking away from it by competing with the core illustration.

Gods:

1. Ra - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra

2. Osiris - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris

3. Isis - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis

4. Set - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_%28mythology%29

5. Horus - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horus

6. Sekhmet - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sekhmet

7. Baast - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bast_%28goddess%29

8. Nepthys - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepthys

9. Sobek - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobek

10. Anubis - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anubis

Creatures:

1. Ammit - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammit

2. Set – He was depicted part human and part mythological beast.

3. Apophis – A giant snake - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophis

Cool Stuff:

1. The Egyptian Soul - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_soul

Attributes

Once again it’s up to you as to the number of colours you use so long as it’s not too many (max of 4). You may be happy going with a single colour print but I think we can get a lot out of using multiple colours.

Perhaps having the 7 parts of the soul within the body of one of the divinities could be a good way to go in terms of what you depict within said body.

The Finished Design

This is the end result. Note that the blue background is the colour of the fabric.

#1 - Norse Design Brief

1.0 – Concept

ETC. is an Sydney-based fashion label that is looking to go in several directions under the leadership of designer Amon Ziel. One of these explorative projects is Swami Safari; a monthly tee design that explores events and characters from different mythology.

The idea is to work with exceptional artists in 12 month blocks and explore a set number of mythologies in that time. At the end of one 12 month cycle a new artist will be commissioned for the next year who will then be allowed to explore their interpretation of the same mythology or mythological elements.

The in-character story is that a Swami (a Hindu spiritual “master” i.e. a yogi) is on holiday (safari) in an unbreakable meditative trance and is going back in time and experiencing past mythological events and characters himself. The customer thus gets to experience what the Swami experiences in his mind.

2.0 – Illustrative Direction

We really like the direction you’ve taken with your Anatomy and Indonesian residency series of illustrations. The notion of exploring the intricacies of the body and soul via non-uniform parts is very cool and is an intriguing comment on how our bodies are made and operate. We would want to run with the same style or an evolution of that style over the 12 month period.

3.0 – Mythologies

One thing is for sure – there’s a lot of mythology out there! To choose from we have:

3.1 Norse

3.2 Greek

3.3 Roman

3.4 (ancient) Egyptian

3.5 African (many different ones here)

3.6 Haitian

3.7 Galic

3.8 Germanic

3.9 Carthaginian

3.10 Celtic

3.11 Aztec

3.12 Mayan

3.13 Incan

3.14 Chinese

3.15 Hindu

3.16 Japanese

3.17 Islamic

3.18 Judaic

I’m interested in exploring Norse for the first month and after that we can collaborate on the others we want to utilize.

The great thing about Norse mythology is that you have a lot to draw from and it’s very balanced. Everything has a counter balance and it’s a very masculine mythology/religion.

4.0 – Research & Resources

General research you can’t go past Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/) obviously and another great resource is http://www.pantheon.org

Specifically Norse related I recommend you read up on:

1.1 Odin

1.2 Thor

1.3 Yggdrasil

1.4 Jormungand

1.5 Fenrir

1.6 Ragnorok

1.7 Loki

1.8 Asgard

1.9 Midgard

1.10 Hel

1.11 Valhalla

There is PLENTY for us to work with and I’ll be happy to chat about what specific part of Norse mythology you want to explore (Ragnorok; the end of the world, Valhalla the land of the dead, the principle gods like Odin, Thor, Vidar etc. or the principle giants and monsters). At the end of the day this IS a collaborative effort.

5.0 – Terms / Payment / The Fun Stuff

Payment Terms & Permissions: We want to work out a suitable payment for your time on these prints that suits both parties – keeping in mind that we’re interested in using your services over a 12 month period. We also want to give you a few free samples of the product each month.

In return for any agreed upon compensation we would want to reserve the right to terminate this agreement after three months. All prints you produce will be the copyright of Pantheon Industries Pty. Ltd. You would still be able to use and distribute them for non-profit purposes (i.e. promotional and marketing) however.

We would collaborate together once a month on a new print, working together to produce something we’re both happy with. We will pay you the first month prior to beginning work as a sign of good faith and will then pay you the subsequent monthly installments after signing off on the proof.

The print will be applied to a custom tee block and sold online under ETC’s “Swami Safari” project/sub-brand. We will actively promote your involvement in the project through online channels.

Job Requirements: If you accept the job you will be expected to communicate with myself (Alex) and actively work together on choosing a mythology and the themes from that chosen mythology each month. Based on agreed upon direction I’ll ask you to produce a few concept sketches and then once a direction has been decided upon we would ask for a maximum 3 revisions. If more than 3 are required then further payment will be made as agreed upon should this arise.

Clothing: Our clothing is specifically mens street wear and we’ll be branching out into womens in the coming year. This particular project will be done on a custom produced mens tee block using high quality 180gsm combed cotton. The print will be 1 to 3 colours in the illustrative style detailed above. Embroidery is available as well if you wish to incorporate this into your designs.

So there you have it! The focus for us is on brevity, accuracy and information quality. Providing a concise amount of information, ideas and content for the artist to work with while trying to avoid writing an encyclopedia’s worth. As this was our first design brief it was the longest and subsequent ones have shorter still.

We're back!

After a hiatus that sort of screwed up our "one tee a month" concept we've revised our production and updated the website. The second tee from James is available for sale (The Seven Souls of Anubis) and the third and final tee from James is in production now. We've also received a sample for our first accessory which is looking great.

The next artist we're working with is Brandon Francis from L.A. We've worked with him previously and his quirky, cool style will gel well with the Swami project.

I'll be posting the design briefs for the current two tees and start populating the blog with useful and insightful information on a semi-regular basis.