While I made this design explicitly for people who already get the joke (this is probably you), I will nonetheless explain my influences thusly. Also you can actually buy it now at One Hell Of A Town!, starting today. I'm not sure how many copies were made, but OHOAT sells out of plenty of stuff so maybe buy it while you can?
I'm really happy to join forces with Syd for this, because she's built up such a cool little brand making stuff that nobody else does anything like, with so much charm to their offerings. It feels right!
Some backstory below the cut:
I've made a lot of designs over the years, and when it comes to shirts I have basically never "went to print" with them because it's kind of a hassle and I haven't been confident enough in any of my designs to build up inventory of them. Instead, I've put a number of things on RedBubble (and before that, CafePress, to really date myself). Those print-on-demand sites serve a purpose and I still have stuff listed there but I've barely advertised it because the quality isn't as good as a silkscreened shirt, the profit margin isn't great for me, and the shirt still isn't that cheap (although, when RedBubble is on sale, it's not too bad, actually).
When I conceived of this design I thought it was so good that it would DEFINITELY sell (not from a profit motive point of view, but from a "sell enough to make a print run feasible"). So as the path of least resistance, I actually submitted it to a very well-known "one shirt per day" brand focusing on car(-dork) designs. The business arrangement there is that (if they accept your design) they print it once on a pre-order basis, the shirts are made with decent quality, and the artist makes $1 per shirt (with a minimum of $250 or something, but this is a major site, popular designs will sell more than that). It's actually not a bad deal if you have a very mainstream idea, but this is the second design I've submitted that they've rejected. This time, they said they were afraid of the legal department of this particular automaker, but they went one step further and said they didn't see a huge market for this design. They could have left that last part out considering the first part made it a non-starter, right? In any case, it'll never be as funny as my first rejection, which was deemed "too personal" despite it being a classic parody logo.
In any case, I showed this design to Syd and she asked to collaborate! Of course I said yes. And now you can buy it and put it on your torso while supporting a really good person as well (referring to Syd, not me). Also OHOAT has a lot of other fun stuff, you should really check them out at https://www.onehellofatown.com!
