thoughtcrime blog
Design competition/cooperation to raise funds for Anarchist Bookfairs and similar projects
ThoughtCrime Ink, a volunteer-run, anti-capitalist “apparel-based community maker” which raises funds for mid-size and new Anarchist Bookfairs across Canada, is holding a t-shirt design “competition/cooperation”. We’re selecting up to four winning designs, and giving out 100 dollars (CDN) to their creators, plus one dollar for each shirt sold. All remaining profits from the t-shirts go to support Anarchist Bookfairs and similar grassroots community projects across Canada - we are a volunteer collective and we don’t take a ‘cut’ in any way.
More details can be found here:
http://www.thoughtcrimeink.com/design
We are hoping that you might consider entering the t-shirt design “co-omperatition,” or share this weblog entry with an artist interested in political design, art, craft etc. If you are not a designer but have good ideas, consider teaming up with an artist to produce a kick-ass t-shirt — collective submissions are OK! If you like, feel free to submit prototypes of your design to our “critiques” section and get constructive feedback before entering them. You may also submit as many entries as you like.
Although we in the thoughtcrime ink collective identify as anarchists, not everything we like screams “anarchy!” So, feel free to make the politics of your design as subtle or “in-your-face” as you want. Express any style, feeling or mood in relation to your subject matter. The criticial requirement is that designs you submit must be original (ie. yours - if you just want “public domain” graphics (from the Spunk archive, for example) printed up on a shirt, there are easier ways of going about that.) We are looking to stoke new expressions of visual resistance.
Keep in mind that there are printing limitations for this contest (which are described on the design page linked above). Also, this time around, we’re not doing “slogan-only” shirts, though text is certainly OK to incorporate into your designs. You should also design with “placement” on the shirt in mind, and t-shirt colour. We print on a mix of Justshirts (fair trade) and American Apparel (“sweatshop-free”) stock, so you can print on any of the colours here:
http://store.americanapparel.net/2001.html
We’re hoping to take thoughtcrime ink to the ‘next level’ by making the design cooperation/competition “live.” Logged-in visitors to thoughtcrimeink.com get to score the designs and leave constructive comments for works under consideration. The scoring really helps us determine which shirts should be printed. We’re hoping that everyone who reads this will create an account on thoughtcrimeink.com in the next few weeks and score some designs. We’ll send another callout when the scoring wall is up.
We’re aware that technology is a barrier for many artists, however, so if you’re a brilliant woodcut artist who wants to enter the design cooperation/competition, and you don’t know you way around computers, just let us know at and we’ll do our best to help your design get entered.
Questions? Just email , or visit http://www.thoughtcrimeink.com/design to read more info, download the designer’s kit and get started…
Solidarity,
Rob
for thoughtcrime ink
http://www.thoughtcrimeink.com
http://www.facebook.com/pages/thoughtcrime-ink/21316665733
