Quite the Trend

I don't quite expect anything I say to make a difference in a world that has made art into pure commodity, especially as time has made the blog itself more and more sporadic and sparse. I fight to prove there's someone out there that cares, and simply hope that someday, the right people will get it. So I don't really think anything I said last week has changed anything this quickly at Design by Humans. Even so, it's a pretty nice turn of events.

The fact is there's been a run of 6-for-7 solid tees at DBH, starting with last week's rant tee and coming full circle now with yet another great one from Againstbound: "Leader of the Pack." It's great to see a designer like him getting recognition. His style has always been one of the most distinctive out there, and this piece, created to evoke Mr. B7, another underappreciated designer, really takes it to another level. The art definitely takes the best of both designers into one piece, and the purple shirt is just sweet as hell. It's bold in coloration, yet the statement remains attractive and wearable. And the fill and flow of the shirt is perfect.

The fact is that at this point, there are probably millions of shirts out there. I've scored nearly 50K at Threadless alone, and I haven't scratched the surface considering all the older entries and handfuls I've missed, not to mention those at DBH, past woot entries, emptees shirts that have never been entered elsewhere. If even 1/100th of those tees are printworthy, and we look at that minimum that I myself have scored, it's still way more than any single site can print. So it is SO important that we keep promoting and building up these designs that really matter. The ones that make you see something you aren't as familiar with. The ones that create fashion and push envelopes, and the ones that put wearable creativity at the forefront, not familiarity. It's great to see this sort of thing find its way into printing over the course of the last few weeks, and so consistently, but tomorrow is a new day, and who knows what prints then. Let's keep doing our best to make sure it's something truly worth the prize. And here's hoping "Dark Matter" shows up on schedule on Wednesday!