WeAdmire: One day I bought a t shirt from Camden Market. It was decorated with a hand-painted detail of the Bayeux Tapestry. The "get out of my way that shirt has my name on it" urge, did not re-occur again for another 20 years. However, the idea of creating t shirt designs that deliver real self expression has remained with with me ever since.
http://www.weadmire.net/ started designing in September 08. Our brief to designers invites them to put the subject ahead of the aesthetic. This is because in a circumstance of informed and authentic admiration the aesthetic will tend to look after itself. In this regard the brief is well expressed by the quote on our Goethe shirt: "“What is uttered from the heart alone will win the hearts of others to your own."” Among other things this makes the point authenticity is interesting, almost irrespective of topic.
We now have more than 1500 designs on our website across a variety of subjects, ranging from Cycling to Nietzsche and from History to the Full English Breakfast... and of course, Fishing.
Because we produce our shirts on demand we can manage a huge range of subjects, along with the vast amount of detail that go to make up that subject. Considerations of what might sell do not have to form the primary design filter. Just as well because picking winners has a well established history of failure. Quality and authenticity however are always interesting. A good example of this is our Leica FIII by Yukio Miyamoto. The Leica FIII is presently our best seller. But if someone suggested an image like this applied to a t shirt might be a best seller I doubt you would believe it until you saw and handled the shirt. Print on demand allows us to always take the chance.
Printing at high resolution, the process uses gas dispersion inks. They dye the fabric, they do not sit on the surface of the garment. They are colourfast and because they dye the shirt they will not crack, or otherwise deteriorate to any significant extent. The process does not alter the performance of the fabric and does not affect the feel of the garment. Because of this and because we print digitally we can print to scale. Broadly the area of the design is a consistent proportion of the area of the shirts.
An important part of what we do is encouraging people to tell us what they admire. No doubt there are many aspects of Fishing, such as kit, quotes, the fish themselves that are worthy of admiration and it's easy to imagine all of these things decorating a t shirt. At the moment we have a number of fishing designs, although I'm sure that we have done little more than scrap the surface of such a well attended sport and that the possibilities are endless.
UK Fisherman would be delighted to hear from you if you would like to comment on any of our fishing articles. To do so, use the comment box below.Alternatively if you would like to submit a fishing article of your own, please visit the CONTACT page.
