creative commies

inspired by xeni jardin’s flag on boingboing (illustrating matt bradleys copyleft idea) i whipped up this bit of soviet constructivist goodness this morning (click the thumbnail for full artwork). for those of you who missed it, bill gates, of ludicrously rich fame, decided recently it would be a good idea to equate free culture advocates with communists, or to be more specific “new modern-day sort of communists.” how generous of the sort of modern-day robber baron. anyhow, the image is a rework of an old soviet poster which you can see here. Greg DeKoenigsberg (lead web engineer for Red Hat Network) expressed interest in a t-shirt. i’m reluctant to do a cafepress style tee, but if anyone else has interest leave a comment and we’ll go from there. forward the cause comrades!


Nice work!  Any way we can get a vector version of Creative Commies? Like a .ps? I have visions of blowing this up wall-size

posted by Dan  on  01/06  at  05:28 PM



yes there is indeed vector goodness to be had, it was created in illustrator. maybe later on i’ll post a link for it.

posted by jmorrison  on  01/06  at  05:41 PM



Very nice work! I did some CafePress stuff for some designs I had (freinds and family expressed interest), and it works pretty well for low qty situations. Good luck—please post to let us know what you end up doing!

posted by Isaac  on  01/06  at  05:51 PM



Excellent artwork comrade artist. Now report to the Microsoft gulag to receive your punishment!

posted by orangeguru  on  01/06  at  07:11 PM



Very cool, what is the license so I can reduce the size and use it on my web pages?
Astro

posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/06  at  07:51 PM



I would rock the crap out of a shirt with this on it.  Put me down as “very interested”.

If you’ll excuse me, I need to call silkscreening places… ;)

posted by Jason Cosper  on  01/06  at  08:07 PM



well, them’s weighty words coming from the future billionaire king of t-shirt zeitgeist. (preshrunk is great for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet.) i’m down, i just don’t want to have to lift a single finger, not even a pinky if possible, actually all this typing involves a lot of finger lifting now that i think about it… damn you jason cosper!

posted by jmorrison  on  01/06  at  08:18 PM



“yes, i’ll pay twenty dollars for one.”
-pip

posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/06  at  08:40 PM



I’ve got some calls/emails in to some people.

I don’t know how anyone else feels, but Cafepress just won’t cut it for me.  I’m thinking of a nice, proper silkscreen on a khaki American Apparel shirt would be the way to go.  But that could end up costing as much as one would want to sell the shirt for.

posted by Jason Cosper  on  01/06  at  11:47 PM



i’m not thrilled with the idea of cafe press either. if it’s gonna go out there it’s got to be founkey! would also give me reason to open the “store” section of the nonist. as for cost… well, i don’t know. i swore i’d stop giving stuff away but i’m sure something can be figured out, especially considering the particular theme of this graphic. if you really want to do this drop me an email and we’ll iron it out.

posted by jmorrison  on  01/06  at  11:57 PM



I saw this on boingboing and had to come by and say I will definatly buy a shirt with this on it.  it screems shirt.

posted by Captain Rotundo  on  01/07  at  12:07 AM



My Jaime Morrison designed underpants are all getting pretty ratty. So I will gladly add the commie shirt to my collection. 

It does strike me as funny that after x years of duck and cover/mutually assured destruction/McCarthy Hearings/secret wars/public wars/etc. Communism’s last refuge is protecting Beatles mashups and home made Mickey Mouse(R) porn. 

And poor castro has to sit by and mind the store while his people drive around in sweet 50’s chevys.

posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/07  at  01:00 AM



And by the way, I will gladly defend you when the commie who designed the original poster sues your ass for infingement.

posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/07  at  01:07 AM



great design! A shirt would be fantastic…

Making (and soon selling) tee myself, I wonder what tech you will use to print the tee. The design count several distinct colors and would be probably expensive to print with serigraphy. Full color print, ala Cafe Press, is stille possible, but it rarelly has a good quality.

So, if you find a way to do this (relatively) cheap and with good quality, i’d like to know how :-D

Anyway, i’ll probably buy that shirt. Would be great the wear while talkig about CC, P2P and all the stuff :-D

posted by LapinLove404  on  01/07  at  09:59 AM



I’d be waaay into buying this.

posted by Lou  on  01/07  at  12:45 PM



i’d like a shirt, too!

posted by juana  on  01/07  at  03:27 PM



here is a link to a shop on grand street, on the east side. you can get american apparel shirts for 3 bucks a piece.
http://www.friedmansactivewear.com/

posted by jrizzi  on  01/07  at  04:28 PM



Love it. Would you mind if I used it as a backer for my site??????

posted by satyr  on  01/07  at  09:14 PM



Giant Robot is offering a silk-screened version of the copyleft aeroflot logo shirt, and might be open to doing this.  I’d be interested more in a large-format poster.

posted by mishakim  on  01/08  at  05:59 PM



I’m sure if you submitted that to threadless.com it’d get picked up in no time. And that’s some of the best custom silkscreening anywhere.

posted by Eric J  on  01/09  at  04:06 AM



This design would sell to ex-Stasi comrades I met in Berlin.

posted by Bernie Goldbach  on  01/09  at  08:08 PM



Following up mishakim’s comment, I have contacted the guy (Ken) at GiantRobot and specifically asked him to do this.  He said he’d love to carry it, but was afraid you might not be okay with it.  Could you please contact him regarding this?  I would LOVE to get my hands on a shirt bearing this image!!!

He’s at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Seriously, PLEASE GO FOR IT!  This shirt would be a huge amount of fun.

posted by Brandon Franklin  on  01/11  at  12:20 PM



if you could kick these out at a similar (reasonable) rate as kens (giantrobotprinting as ealier mentioned in thc comments) I’d DEFINIATELY be interested, ive already ordered my aeroflot/copyleft tee.

posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/11  at  01:55 PM



eric: i can not submit this to threadless without changing the design. they have a max of 4 colors per design. which leads me to…

matt: it will be nearly impossible to get this design made so cheap. 8 screens leads to an expensive shirt. but…

brandon: i’v dropped ken a line to see what his estimate will be. but no one should get their hopes up. if i need to charge $25 to recoup production costs on this tee then i don’t think it’s worth it.

posted by jmorrison  on  01/11  at  02:29 PM



For the record, I’d happily pay $25USD for a shirt with this design.  I’ve paid more for far crappier shirts.

posted by Brandon Franklin  on  01/11  at  02:33 PM



Yes sorry of course I was overlooking the additional screen origination and ink costs! Forgive my impinging on your artistic vision Would it be possible to reduce the colours by considering the khaki as one, i’m thinking the shades may require tweaking anyway to keep the costs down as 8 spot colours will not be economical as it would require a white base on a khaki tee too… maybe it will run as a 4colour (cmyk) print although upclose that wont be pretty… what about trying your hand at a black and white version?

I dont mean to cause offence so please dont feel im trying to get you to compromise your integrity or anything! :) i think a b&w would be a nice challenge too, i think it would translate well, you could split the men (for instance) with white keyline, then you’ve got a two colour print (with 3 colours, black image white base and khaki shirt).... just from an economical standpoint black could = red or whatever your vision sees fit etc ?

posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  01/11  at  03:47 PM



do you have an SVG file for this?
i’d like to print it on a poster.

posted by ryah  on  01/25  at  06:15 PM



sorry about commenting on an old thread but i was wondering if the illustrator file and/or a t-shirt was still the works.

posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  02/23  at  10:07 PM



@patrick: the t-shirt is most likley not going to happen. it would take 8 screens as it stands now which is not really feasible for a low cost tee and i see no reason to modify it right now. perhaps sometime down the line once we start offering other tees here. as for the vector art i will be making that available in the near future in our downloads section. if you need the artwork sooner email me and let me know what you are using it for. we can figure something out.

posted by jmorrison  on  02/24  at  12:13 AM



I just checked the download section for the vector version and did not find it. Is there any chance to get it?

posted by Markus  on  12/27  at  10:33 PM



Greats site Thanks for your work!
http://animeepisode1.cn
ranma anime

posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  10/18  at  10:33 AM



Just to let you know: I am still interested in both the vectors and the t-shirt! :-)

posted by Markus Hansen  on  12/25  at  03:32 PM



Same here!

posted by Brandon Franklin  on  12/25  at  06:58 PM


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