VGVN

This shirt is from the east hall of the Los Angeles convention center on the 2nd day of E3 2011.
Moke, Jared and I all got one of these shirts. There was no line, just a guy with a scanner at a table full of shirts. He tagged our badges so they could send us emails later, asked our size and then gave us free shirts. I felt kind of bad about it because we were like, "We already subscribe to your newsletter. You guys do great work!". Bad in a, you're not getting new supporters just handing out merchandise to existing ones, way. If they are smart they've put these up on their website so that they can get donations for selling shirts but I didn't check.
I was actually a little excited when I saw they had a returning booth this year. The shirt from last year was very easy to get, and was high quality. I also admired the designs that they did and was hoping for something cool this year. Sadly they took a step down. Rather than a heavy dark blue shirt they went with white and the design isn't as conceptual as last year's. They kept with the same color scheme so at least they designed from the content out to keep the focus on gaming and US politics. I was please to be able to select a medium, since some places what you see is what you get. However, Jared had to settle for an XL rather than a larger one, when you look at it that way, I'm lucky. Beggars can be choosers.
On the dead center is their graphic for this year: a shield with their acronym at the top, "VGVN", a modern controller -probably PlayStation 2- and a grey and white star. The symbolism is obvious but it gets their message across plainly and clearly. The use of color is fundamental but they were able to spice it up somewhat with some gradients and halftone dots. Below the shield is their tag line "Our Games. Our Rights." and the website "http://www.videogamevoters.org". I wasn't lying when I said they do good work. The Video Game Voters Association is an organization of individuals who are not only fighting for the rights of game consumers and developers but they help keep the community informed. They work with issues like censorship, piracy, regulations, laws, ratings, access, etc.
This is a pretty good find, shirts that have to do with social responsibility are hot and one which is about tech issues are nearly impossible to stumble upon -it's right up there with the EFF-. I would expect that anyone who knows about the VGVN could handle themselves well in an current gaming issues discussion, and I would welcome it. Unfortunately, with this shirt being white and all, I'll probably throw it in storage in favor of my one from last year. I really do like the symbol on the chest though so perhaps I'll see if I can upcycle it to a bag or some other accessory.

Today didn't yield any particularly stunning moments with this shirt, it didn't even spark a seemingly mundane one. All that happened was someone was wondering where I got it from since they hadn't seen it before. I chalk these kinds of interactions to fans of the page and this blog as opposed to those interested in the items -too meta for my uses-.  When I started this blog I set aside this final area to talk about anecdotes, my very first entry was cute but I soon realized that I don't remember one for each shirt. I learned that some shirts just are shirts and that sometimes it's not what you wear on the outside, as long as it's worn with confidence.