100% Cotton: T-Shirt Graphics

Rating:
Summary: Its average I think.
Review: I am a graphic designer and was looking for inspiration for some apparel designs. But a lot of the stuff in this book is the trendy pop-art rip-offs or deconstructive designs that look like they were drawn on the shirt with a marker. I think I may have been happier just buying a big book of logos. If you get to design shirts with ALOT of creative freedom, then maybe this is the book for you.

The part of the book I like the most is the actual "100% cotton" section where well qualified designers took the 100% cotton theme and designed something for a plain white T-shirt, and explained their thoughts behind it. But this was only about 20 pages in the book.

I think this book is average for a design book. I dont have any other T-shirt design books so I can't say how it compares to others. If you can get it , its not a bad deal.

Rating:
Summary: those reviewers are wrong
Review: i liked this book. i thought it was very cleanly put together, with good examples by classic t designers alongside cool, up and coming people whose work i hadn't seen before. there was a really good selection of shirts and so what if there wasn't any information on how to print them? says it in the title: t-shirt GRAPHICS. that's what it says, and that's what it gave. nice new shirts around a difficult theme and a cool bunch of leftfield collections/exhibitions/shows. it's definitely a graphic designer's book rather than a book for your average consumer, but i'm a graphic designer so that's fine by me.

Rating:
Summary: Pathetic examples of t-shirt graphics
Review: This is not about t-shirt graphics - it's about non-mainstream artists who have happened to put their designs on tees. I get the strong impression that many of the graphics featured have never been printed on a t-shirt. Because the book features mainly abstract designs, it is very hard to relate with on a personal level.

This book does not feature any corporate owned lines, which tend to better exploit the imprinted clothing medium. Because of this you won't see any creative printing techniques or processes.

Many of the labels presented are popular in their originating country only and not worldwide. They should have organized graphics by geographic origin to clarify this, but instead act as if the lines are known worldwide when they are not. Very few, if any, Americans will have heard of these clothing lines, even the ones that are stateside.

The authors of this book obviously know nothing about creating artwork for t-shirts. They know nothing about the trends in the industry nor any of the popular brands of clothing. They don't know that American, Japan, Australia, and the European countries all have different tastes in fashion.

Creating a great t-shirt graphic requires the artist to understand the screen printing process, materials and techniques. The artworks featured were not created by graphic artists familiar with screen printing. They did not exploit the medium by creating complex color separations, half tone patterns, special inks, or other creative processes. Most art featured only has a few solid colors with no blends or details. Most designers appear to have taken the cheap route by not using a lot of colors (since each new color adds to the cost of the shirt).

They also feature far too many designs from each label/artist. They should have offered a bigger sampling from more designers and even corporate lines. Seeing twenty designs from one artist makes me think they were just lazy about finding more samples.

If you want to see professional t-shirt graphics, look at some screen printing trade magazines like Impressions. Try to look at the techniques being used and not the topic of the artwork. If you want to see some good graphic design, buy a different book. This book will not inspire anyone.