I’m not really interested in football at all, but I was trying to design a football-style shirt. For some strange reason I found it incredibly hard to find photos of the backs of Premier League shirts, which I wanted to look at to try to copy the font. I tried Google, Google images, picking random clubs’ web sites - no luck.
But I did find an entire web site - in the Netherlands - devoted to the typography of football shirt numbers. Quite amazing. Well, if you’re a sad type-spotter like me, it is.
And the answer, in case you’re wondering, is that the English Premier Legaue use Optima Black squashed to about 70% normal width. And the Dutch footy-loving type-spotter is quite right - it looks awful.
There’s something strangely satisfying about being able to switch off the downstairs hall light and switch on the landing light by sweeping my hand across two switches on the same lightswitch that are both in the same position.
Anyway, I just got back from three weeks in Cornwall. Bliss. In the chalet there was a copy of Coast magazine which was filled with seaside houses to die for, and one had an article on Howies, who have now moved from London to Cardigan Bay. They can even canoe to and from work. So not only do they make deeply cool clothing, they now have a deeply cool lifestyle I think.
I first discovered Howies in the book that got me bitten by the t-shirt-designing bug in the first place - ‘100% Cotton’ by Helen Walters and Tim Fletcher (although as Howies point out, non-organic cotton is actually not 100% cotton, but filled with chemicals).
I’d often wondered whether there was a UK version of CafePress so I could get some t-shirts on sale without the start-up costs of screening and printing and buying inventory - and there is a European site called SpreadShirt that offers sterling pricing and better printing methods.
Inspired by Howies, and by the Cornish sun, sea and surf, in an evening I set up my own online t-shirt shop - though I haven’t seen the merchandise for myself yet!
Have a browse around though, and check out the very cool stuff from Nerdiac.
I don’t have organic cotton - yet - but as they say at Howies:
Right now
Make a list.
Don’t sit.
Don’t moan.
Don’t talk.
Do stuff.
Change things.
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