Evolution of a T-Shirt

Here's a little insight into how ideas become t-shirts around here. Our new t-shirt illustrator was going through his portfolio and remembered a sketch he'd done of astronauts floating in amongst some cubicles in space. "It's a play on workstation / space station," he explained, showing it to me (t-shirt girl). "It's an awesome design. But it's not really a t-shirt."

When I saw it, the first thing I thought of was the episode of This American Life, 329: Nice Work If You Can Get It in which Ira Glass interviews NASA astronauts and the listener slowly comes to the horrible realization that many of the amazingly high-achieving and smart people who got to be astronauts not only won't ever get into space, but also spend all their days in meetings. Great radio show. Also not a shirt.

So we brought it to our monthly t-shirt meeting. This is where we go through all our in-house suggestions and the best of the Bounty Program ideas. I brought the image up with the projector, and one of our web designers instantly said, "Office Space." Doh! Of course! So t-shirt illustrator took it back, added some references to Office Space, reworked it a few times, and voila! A shirt. From idea to the warehouse.

Astronauts floating in the midst of a cubicle setting in space on a black, 100% cotton shirt.