P!

I "designed" this shirt for myself because they don't sell one at retail. They SHOULD sell one, and I'd buy it if they did but until that day I'm forced to settle for less.

To get this t-shirt I went on CafePress, layed out the pictures and had them make and ship it to me. I have a hard time saying that I designed this shirt since all off the elements are just sourced from a TV show and I just slapped them on the shirt in a way that I thought would look cool. In theory, this is a one of a kind shirt because I am the only person who had one made. But, I would imagine a lot of people had this idea and may even have made their own shirts that look just like this. Even still I could just go back on my CafePress account and have them create and ship me another.

Since this shirt was made just for me I think it's perfect. The size is right, the color matches the theme, the ink -I suppose- could be thicker but that's a small detail. In my head I wanted to do the design with inverted colors -a black shirt with white ink-. That never happened because CafePress -at the time- didn't print white on black or any dark colors for that mater, grey was the closest I could get. It turned out nicely though; in hindsight a rich yellow may have been a better choice.

The design is simple enough to explain but the reference is gonna take a sentence or two more. On the front, -the only thing on the front- is a big black circle that has the letter "P" with an exclamation point "!" knocked out of it. On the back it says FLCL twice. Once in Japanese: "フリクリ" and once all spelled out in English with a little tilde in between: "Fooly ~ Cooly". This is all a reference to a Japanese anime called FLCL or Fooly Cooly which was released back in 2000. The show is a crazy mashup of anime and pop culture references, whacked out circumstances, DEEP characters, and an amazing soundtrack. The music was provided by the legendary Japanese band "The Pillows". They have been making music for years and their sound fit this series to a "T". The "P!" on the front of the shirt represents The Pillows and can be found throughout the show -in sticker form- on one of the character's Vespa. 

As you can see by the picture I think this shirt is hot shit and I feel awesome when wearing it. Obviously, the best place to wear this is around anime fans/nerds/otaku/etc. Most average anime fans will get the reference and think that it's awesome because good FLCL shirts are hard to come by, and the series itself is amazing. This one in particular makes an impact since it's "one of a kind" and bold. A shirt that I want someone to see and be like, "FLCL, nice! Where did you get it?" from this I can brag a bit that I "made it" or "had it made". When not around an anime-friendly crowd, this shirt tends to bomb. People will see it and go "P?" or "π?" and then I have to explain the anime and the band and it gets super confusing since the show is so absurd most of the time.

When I was searching around for colleges after/during high school The Art Institute piqued my interest. On one of my first tours of their campus I peeked into an open computer lab, there was only one person in the room. He was in the back, with the lights out, working on a project, he was listening to The Pillows on the built in speaker. I recognized the melody and it was a that moment that I realized what an awesome population this particular school had.