Comments on: Compo: Splendid-o-shirts

By: moa

moa — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:32:57 +0000

there are my versions of abyssuk design.

By: Crispy

Crispy — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:06:34 +0000

Sadly I only had time to do one of my ideas, this is what I came up with.

I had to rush the shotgun in the end and just completely rip the GTA icon instead of adapting a different image into the GTA style. The boxes could have been better (they look a bit too Nintendoey, mainly because I took a PS noob pixel art approach instead of using the advanced Style options, which I couldn’t find to begin with!), but I’m a PS novice so it was fun to jump in and have a play around.

By: Crispy

Crispy — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 11:54:44 +0000

@elias:
One of the new ones, but it’s a tough call.

@Lunaran:
True, anyone will ‘get it’, but without anything to point out that it’s a (good) website, it’s nothing more than gamer stash. Considering the guys here want to make a living from this site and T-shirts are a good way to communicate between PC gamers (words often fail in this respect because it requires striking up conversations with strangers who you either meet outside of your bedroom or, less likely, you invite to your bedroom)… (still with me?)… I don’t see why RPS shouldn’t leverage the merch to get more pageviews, more ad revenue and closer to their dream of working on this site fulltime.

It doesn’t hurt me to have a .com label on the back of my T-shirt just below the neckline if the T-shirt is good and the website is one I am proud to endorse (not a full URL obv.). Below the neckline is a surprisingly effective area to advertise when you think about it. On the one hand it doesn’t have to interfere with the main design if there is one on the back of the shirt. On the other hand, think of all the time you spend stood in line looking over someone’s shoulders. Queueing for tickets to the cinema or for the checkout, for entry to a music gig or club, on an escalator in the mall or metro station. There are simply zillions of opportunities for people to see this website’s name, get the joke, and log on for enlightenment.

P.S. Yeah, I know the bedroom gamer is a horrible cliché, and one that isn’t wholly representative nor one we should perpetuate, but it is still representative of a fair group of specifically PC Gamers, if we’re brutally honest with ourselves.

By: Lunaran

Lunaran — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 20:15:33 +0000

The phrase “Rock, Paper, Shotgun” is itself a gag, a surprising and hyperbolic twist on a known phrase. We all ‘got it’ and smiled the first time we came to this site, and I think anyone that sees a shirt bearing the aforementioned will interpret it the same way. They don’t have to know it’s a website for the shirt to ‘work’. (And honestly I’d prefer they didn’t – I’m not wearing anything with a URL on it. :P)

By: elias

elias — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:08:57 +0000

Ok, these are the last changes I’m making. Which should I submit, this or this? Or the other one?

By: dartt

dartt — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:08:27 +0000

@elias I couldn’t agree more, the obscurer the better, I want people to be either delighted to be in on the joke or backing away slowly.

Which is why I submitted this

By: The D-Man

The D-Man — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:25:37 +0000

lol, no worries about the bill gates thing.
I just had an awesome idea though, which really ticks me off as I entered that other one, which I think was a bit rash.
No chance of entering another one?
*sighs*

It would be awesome! *winks*
lol

By: Crispy

Crispy — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 09:21:48 +0000

Heh quite like that, but there’s something about the word order of the ‘Cleverthinks’ line that doesn’t quite ring true. Maybe thesaurus up a few different possibilities for ‘different’ and ‘sort’ and look at the word order until it sounds as catchy as possible. E.g. for me ‘A different kind of cleverthinks’ has a better ring to it, probably because the keywords are falling nicely in a way that allows them to be emphasised on the first syllable and in an order that is rhythmical (a DIFFerent KIND of CLEVerthinks).

By: elias

elias — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 02:45:56 +0000

How’s this?

The phrase can be changed to something else if desired. Other things can be changed as well. Should I submit it?

By: Subsonic

Subsonic — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:48:00 +0000

Submitted my entry last night. Pretty generic I’m afraid (all I had to work with was Windows Paint). But what someone with the skills and tools ought to do is a “Girls of RPS” t-shirt. Something along these lines:

http://bayimg.com/paJeoaAbf

(with the last chick holding a shotgun, of course.) ;-)

Best of luck…

By: Crispy

Crispy — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 20:52:22 +0000

Well, at the end of the day it’s down to the judges to decide. I am not one of the judges, so all I can do is imagine how I would judge such a contest based on what I would want to have on a T-shirt, and that basically boils down to:

- Possibly humourous or clever, without being untasteful, lurid or puerile

- Possibly related to games or gamer culture

- A design that isn’t so woefully geekcore that I cannot wear it outside my bedroom during daylight hours, not something that is garish, written in Lucida Console or has a picture of Bill Gates’ face (RPS faces are okay, in fact this gives me another idea for a T-shirt)

- Appropriate content that ties in with RPS somehow and something somewhere that tells people that RPS is a ‘views on PC games’ website (although this last part does not have to be part of the main design, as I’m sure that if they did choose a particular design, this could always be added on later)

—

I wouldn’t worry about the ideas being particularly original, I think a lot of people are going along lines of the clenched fist, outstretched palm and shotgun motif. I think the way they’re incorporated is the clincher.

One idea I just came up with, which I’ll share because I don’t have the Photoshop skills to do it justice, is a Blur-style T-shirt with the faces of Gillon, Rossignol, Meer and Walker. If anyone can do that justice they are onto a winnar, for sure!

P.S. Apologies, D-Man, I wrote the Bill Gates thing before I saw your design. No offense is intended.

By: elias

elias — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:28:42 +0000

@Crispy

Ok. I thought from other comments that obscurity was a quality people were interested in for this, but I’ll try again.

To the others who’ve posted images, these were all pretty much ideas I thought about. Guess I’ll have to come up with something different. ; )