A Word About Repeats...

Sometimes when I take a suggestion for a lot shirt it has been done before. Years ago, this was easy to avoid, as there were a lot less people doing it then. Now, you can try to run your ideas by PhanArt and see if the image or idea appeared in the book, but beyond that there are not very many places you can test your idea without someone taking it for their own.

Besides the constant flack I get regarding the use of corporate logos, there's also the "it's been done" crowd. On the other side of that coin, there are people who specifically ask to re-make a shirt they can no longer find. I often find myself in the middle of this conversation. For the record, I do not set out to remake an idea. I either come up with it, or an idea is floated my way and I try to make something out of it. After the fact I am sometimes told that it has been done before.

Let's take my Ghost shirt from last year as an example. After the Ghost shirts first went to press, I was told about a 97 version that sold at Darien Lake. That design kept the original logo and featured a bright blue shirt with no lyric reference on the back. I thought the original Ghostbusters idea was not executed in the best way it could so I continued making that design until last fall.

In the case of the Lawnboy shirt from last summer; I was selling that one at Deer Creek and was approached by a guy that said they were exactly like his from a few years back. I found out later it was so close to the original that I stopped making those, and sold out of the rest of them. Now that I hear the McConnell ones had an earlier version, I will most likely stop production on those as well. The tag-line on the previous shirt was "88 keys played" and "Have you had your Page today". I still like mine better, but they are still a little too close to the earlier version.

In the end, they are short run T shirts, and I am not going to either destroy or save the world with them. The goal is simply to get a smile from another fan and get a little extra money donated to the Mockingbird Foundation that otherwise wouldn't have been.

If you would like to see some of the designs from last year, check out the Jiggs Facebook page and take a look at the "Past Designs" album.