Is it Saturday Already?

I have a challenge I want to put out to the cyber Universe and t-shirt designers in particular.

My last name is Bjork.  In many ways I am a dork.  And I have an seemingly incomprehensible and no reason admiration for that hybrid utensil, the spork.  I also have a love for Taco Bell's Baja Blast Soda.  Taco Bell is still one of the few places I know I can go and be reminded of my love for sporks.  In case you have no idea what a spork is, click here to see its wikipedia page.

I love @bryanbrinkman's designs and admire them immensely because he has a talent either I don't or am unwilling to practice to see if I can excel with it more, illustration.  I am good with coming up with a design that I can create within my skill of the tools available via Paint Shop Pro and relying on words.  @bryanbrinkman can illustrate and is confident enough to let the design speak for itself without words.

Don't get me wrong and this is one of this posts point, my seeming limitations don't have to keep me from prospering with my own design astetic.  Nor should you allow it to limit you.  Picasso, Van Gogh and Warhol all had different styles, yet prospered dare I say because of their uniqueness.

My other point, I could well envision myself having some sort of pop art spork-inspired design empire some day.  In the meantime, I had an idea for a t-shirt design that I would name "Sporkberry Fields Forever".  I even have somewhat of an idea how I would have the spork look.  That's about it.  That seems to be as far as I get.

My hope is that I may inspire some t-shirt designers in cyberspace to take my idea and run with it and come up with something awesome we could both promote and prosper from.  Maybe if enough of you submit designs, we could have an entire collection of sporkberry designs.

One of MySoti's most popular designs is Marilyn Sane (see below), which combines two items from pop culture in clever way.  Together we may be able to come up with something similarly ingenous by combining two pop culture icons into one design.


Below is @bryanbrinkman week #8 #DesignAShirtAWeek submission "cat + ice cream = <3".  Now I really understand why I feel the way I do about math. 



Below is my week #8 submission.  Many hearts, one love.  It's one for the girls.



Until next time, live creative and prosper.

Welcome

Inspiration.

September 12, 2009 (technically...since it is on at 12:35 AM) I saw an episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The second one already with that guy who was in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and hosted the VMAs. The first time he was on the show, as a Twitter experiment they picked someone out of the audience and encouraged everyone to follow him on Twitter and see how many followers he'd get.

The second time that guy was on the show, they again mentioned @BryanBrinkman and that everyone should send him a nice tweet...probably to be sure to watch the VMAs.

So I tweeted him. When I viewed his profile page to see how many followers he had and what he'd been tweeting, I saw a tweet for #DesignAShirtAWeek. Well, I design shirts and I wanted in. And then there were two.

What was fun about this is that Bryan uses a website called MySoti, which is blog friendly.

And so while I haven't really decided exactly what direction to take this blog in, my initial inspiration is to invite more people to tweet with the #DesignAShirtAWeek hash tag and then pick one or two or three to share their design for the week and their inspiration for creating the design.

So, again welcome.

I plan on most of my submissions coming from my nb2c or what I consider text-speak for not born 2 conform. To me this is the attitude where originality is embraced and uniqueness reigns. And if this makes me a dork (thus my MySoti moniker, nb2cdorkbjork), so be it. I figure dorks, geeks, nerds and the like actually have it best because we tend to shun the status quo, collective consciousness and think outside the box.

In this first blog, I include my week 1 design, which was my original nb2c design. And I'll be honest, part of why it includes a skull and crossbones is 'cuz that seems to be quite a popular icon with the younger crowd.



My week two entry comes from loving the lips and coming up with something that uses them and incorporates the nb2c attitude.



And even though entry three is a little early (we'll consider every Friday official entry day), this is also one of my favorite designs 'cuz I love the glasses with the tape on the bridge and I love the idea of those who buy it having the "stones" to put it out there and tell it like it is.



It was after a couple of days that I got the idea to create two web pages for each design. One I call BIG, which as you can see above puts the design out there on full display over most of the front of the shirt.

The one I call small. Not everyone likes a design that big. Some are more subtle and like the idea of smaller with placement over the heart. And that is probably another thing that I hope to come out of this are possible tips. So here is the same design as the one above, just placed over the heart.



So, I encourage you to submit your designs via twitter and I trust that if I check out your design and love it, you'll agree to allow me to promote it in this blog.

Happy t-shirt designing and wearing.