After 8 long years lost in the Sea of Holes, we emerge into The Sea of Hope with Barack Obama at the helm. Join the first family as they battle the Green Meanies of recession and plant a blue flower square on the nose of Rush Limbaugh. Wear your HOPE on your sleeves, literally.
New tee! Available on chopshopstore.com as of today! Get it for Men on a white, powder blue or silver Alstyle tee or for Women on a powder blue Alstyle Jr Sheer Jersey tee. Read More…
Tomorrow night I will be playing a very special gig. I will be performing at the Social Media for Social Change event at the Roger Smith Hotel in New York City. All the money raised for tomorrow night will go to benefit City Harvest, a fantastic organization that feeds over 260,000 New Yorkers every week.
The event is organized by some do-gooder social media elite who want to do more with their social media clout than just tweeting what they had for breakfast. Tomorrow night’s festivities will not only include entertainment from myself and Walt Ribeiro but will also include a raffle, open bar/drink specials and many other goodies throughout the night.
If you are interested in coming to the event, tickets are still available at the SM4SC website. Please consider attending, or if you can’t make it tomorrow night, consider donating to the cause.
Chopshop mania is reportedly sweeping the nation! Three years after it’s online debut, we are proud to announce the arrival of Chop Shop’s flagship store, right here in New York City. The 40,000 square foot location is spread out over three floors, with over 800 tshirt styles and posters on hand. Finally, a store that understands the meaning of “nerdy“!
We have had great success with the designs online, so now we are taking it to the street like Michael McDonald. – John Lax, Senior Director of Domestic Marketing.
There is still so much to do, so we hope to see you there tomorrow! The Chop Shop NYC store is located on Broadway in Soho, directly across the street from the original showroom and The Chopping Block design studio.
Update: It has come to our attention that it’s actually a flagship store for Topshop/Topman, we such fools! Photos from the crazy April 2nd opening here.
Every once in a while the office is thrown into disarray due to a Chop Shop photo session. These sessions usually work out one of two ways. The first one is that Tom (that is me, and for the sake of this document will heretofore be referred to as “Master Blaster”) will get a shipment of shiny new Chop Shop tees in and immediately bust out his iPhone camera to take a picture of the nearest person to him in the shirt. Master Blaster does not like to wait. The second way this usually goes down is that Matthew (who will heretofore be referred to as “Iceman”) will usually demand those images be destroyed and we actually put up the drop paper and have someone that does not work here come in for a proper shoot. Embargo lifted. Read More…
They say the devils’ in the details, and while working with vectors can be fast and freeing, it can also cause a designer to obsess over every last point. A good way to counteract this is to inject some randomness into your design. That’s where the illustrator plugin Scriptographer comes and saves you. Scriptographer is an open source Javascript-based plugin which adds several new tools to your Illustrator tool bar. These in conjunction with the also added Scriptographer panel allow you to employ the user written scripts to create numerous raster effects, vector combinations, and randomizing drawing tools. These tools’ various properties and variables can generally be customized either directly from the panel, or if through the Javascript itself. Read More…
Made by boldandnoble
Today’s Robot Stuff on Etsy features a hand pulled screen print of a robot made up of letters on 100% recycled card stock. Not only does this tickle my inner geek and inner designer but also my inner environmentalist. This print is about 20×27 inches and comes in either cobalt blue or silver. I personally prefer the blue. The price is a little steep at $49 but it IS an art piece and each one is lovingly hand prepared. The print is made across the pond so you will also pay an extra $10 for shipping to the US.
This print is reminiscent of the Helbotica T that we have in the Shop, which also cleverly composes Helvetica letterforms into the shape of a robot. So if you can’t shell out the $49 for the print, why not wear your design/geek pride on your chest for only $23.
FWA Photo – A daily photography showcase highlighting some of the world’s most uplifting, thought-provoking, innovative and inspirational photography. FWA Photo will showcase one photograph every day via the website, via your iPhone (a cool and free iPhone application) and you have the option to save your favourite photos to your ‘LightBoxer’ to enjoy as a screensaver on your desktop (via a slick free AIR application).
To the Planeteers: I found a proper vessel to celebrate the day you convince Captain Planet to cut his mullet. These glass cups were once used bottles flame cut and polished into the gorgeous forms you see above. Among my favorite are the Boylan glasses which make their appeal by way of the screenprinted label which hasn’t changed much since the mid 1950s. Another favorite are the Frucade glasses whose twisted shape distinguishes them from most other plain-shaped soda bottles. Check them out on Etsy before I buy them all!
A while back we released a few pin striping inspired tshirt designs. As I watched the designer study and practice the craft of freehand pin striping (with a brush & exceptionally steady hand), I couldn’t help but wonder if the reflection part of the design could be automated within Illustrator. Emulating the fidelity of a pinstriped line is certainly possible. What we found was that the Transform Effect can copy and reflect along the X or Y axis, and Illustrator Effects can be applied to layers. 10 minutes later we had a working template file. It isn’t as badass as laying stripes by hand, but everybody in the studio is now a faux pin striping pro. (It comes in handy for other designs too).
The power behind Adobe Illustrator’s flexibility as a creation tool lies in the one-two punch of the Appearance Panel and Live Effects. If you are a Designer/Illustrator and you have not yet had somebody properly break down the Appearance Panel – you might be missing out on some time-saving goodness.
File download and overview after the jump. Read More…
See more at 