Well, I’ve been working on this for a while, and I’ve finally gotten my first t-shirt design up. Granted, this is not a mass market t-shirt, but instead one that will have a very limited audience. But it’s the basest for a (slightly) broader line of t-shirt ideas directed at Information Architects and Designers, which have been given the short thrift in the Tech Geek t-shirt world. It started out about 6 months ago when my former/current boss was leaving GSI, and I thought it would be cool to get him a funny IA t-shirt. But in looking on Cafe Press, Threadless, Think Geek, Veer and others, I couldn’t find any. None. Lots of IT shirts, lots of programmer shirts and even a good number of design t-shirts, but nothing that was specifically for IA. So I set out to come up with one.

I threw around some good ideas and bad ideas. But a co-worker sparked one that really worked – she was talking about a friend of hers that worked tech support and was frustrated at the apparent lack of intelligence in the users of the product. When they mentioned that they were the users¹ and therefore might be right that it wasn’t easy enough, he replied “F*ck the User”. That mantra – while diametrically opposed to what I believe, and what I do – created a spark. Coming from that came the idea of the frustrated IA/designer who was constantly being pigeon-holed by those who didn’t know (or understand) their role. And from that can “Information Anarchy“. I came up with the design of the Anarchy ‘A’ and then trying to put together the “I” and a small bit of text with it. I modeled the ‘A’ on some designs I saw, using different wicked worn and splatter patterns to create the effect.

After doing this, I knew that I wanted to use the lower case ‘i’ and have it offset and subservient to the ‘A’, and that I wanted to use a simple sans-serif font for the tag. I asked my buddy Teil if he could help me out with some of his own ideas, which turned out to be an inspired choice. He came up with 3 different versions, and
I liked certain aspects of them, such as the worn, rocky finish of the ‘i’ on one, the font on another. We talked and came up with the idea of using the annotation symbol as the dot to the ‘i’, and bracketing the “Information Anarchy” name. In the end, an amalgam of each of them gave me exactly what I wanted:

I’ve since put the t-shirt up at my CafePress store, which was a little more complicated than I had expected. And since I am planning on having several other shirts (of different subjects, including that F#ck the User one) soon, I’ll probably open up a full shop to give me more flexibility with what I can put up. I know that almost no one will be in the target market for these shirts, but who knows. Maybe they’ll at least pay for a beer down at Monk’s one of these days.

¹ Admittedly, ‘user’ is an odd term. As Edward Tufte said, there are only two industries that call their customers users – computers and drug dealers; he thought we should come up with a better name. After hearing that, I had to agree.

Funny Stuff

• Jarvis Cocker – Don’t Let Him Waste Your Time (video) – Brilliant. This guy keeps gaining stock in my book.
• Chewbacca arrested for head-butting in Hollywood – Bad Chewie!
• Brilliant video about how Web 2.0 has evolved – and is changing us – via Van
• Big, Bad Granny Kills Cardinal – Stupid, stupid woman