A few months back we teamed up with Tent London to offer designers from all backgrounds the chance to create limited edition tote bags to be given out at this year’s festival
With only a week to go until the doors open and creatives from across the globe descend on the Old Truman Brewery, we’re thrilled to announce our winners. Hundreds of brilliant entries flooded our inbox making it a tricky choice, but we narrowed it down to the five entrants below!
A big congratulations to our 2015 winners:
Adrian Zorzano, Matt Lewis, Jess Gray, Kate Farley, Thom Lambert
The bags are being printed as we speak and we’ll be sharing the designs on our social platforms next week. If you’d like to get your hands on one, all you need to do is register online for a ticket then be sure to stop by the ICON stand where you can tweet or Instagram a snap referencing @iconprinting @tentlondon and #tentlondon2015. You’ll then be given a perfectly printed tote to take home! Be sure to arrive earlier though as only 100 will be dished out each day.
ICON can be found at Stand N10, Hall T4 from 24-27 September 2015 at the Old Truman Brewery. More info can be found here.
With thanks to the judging panel:
Hey! I’m Lucy, aka ShinyThoughts, a colour loving 25 year old living in North London who loves gallivanting in the woods, ugly dolls, Lazy Oaf, loose leaf tea (cos I’m, like, posh) and Zumba. (more…)
Enter your best clothing designs for the chance to win your one-of-a-kind printed item, Intous Pen and Touch and 11” MacBook Air. (more…)
Each September, thousands of design savvy folk descend on Tent London looking to discover the best contemporary talent from around the world. (more…)
How would you like to get your hands on a limited edition geometric t-shirt designed by Made Up and printed by ICON Printing?
The collaboration with our friends at Kemistry Gallery continues with the release of another amazing limited edition tee, featuring an exclusive new design by the mighty Supermundane.
To celebrate this collaboration, as well as the launch of our recently updated instant quote tool, we’re giving away a t-shirt to 20 of our lucky followers.
To be in with a chance of winning simply click this tweet, RT and you’ve entered! We’ll announce the names of the winners on 5th December.
Supermundane (aka Rob Lowe) is a London-based artist, designer, typographer and illustrator who skill-fully combines clean lines, bold colours and intricate patterns to create engrossing compositions. His work has previously captured the attention of such clients as Liberty, Nokia and the V&A.
Above: Rob working on one of his illustrations in London
Rob has also been responsible for designing some of the most exciting independent magazines around, including award-winning food quarterly Fire & Knives and Anorak, “the happy mag for kids”. More recently, he’s been designing a series of patterns for a Swedish underwear company and working on a number of new prints for this year’s London Illustration Fair, where he will be one of the featured artists.
Above: Supermundane t-shirt, part of the Rounds series
This exclusive new t shirt design is the latest in Rob’s Rounds series. “For this one I’m using moiré interference patterns to create depth,” Rob explains. “I began by sketching the basic shape until I had a composition I was happy with. I then worked this up in vectors, experimenting with line, pattern and colour until I got the desired effect.”
A selection of Rob’s other projects can be seen below.
Above: Supermundane – Hell
Above: Supermundane – Face 7
Above: Supermundane – Face 4
Above: Cover for Brummel Magazine, by Supermundane
Above: Supermundane for V&A
ICON Printing is a t-shirt printer & custom clothing supplier based in Shoreditch. If you’ve ever enjoyed a visit to our friends, Kemistry Gallery, and want to show your support for what they do, please back their Kickstarter project and spread the word using the hashtag #savekemistrygallery.
If you’re a graduate designer or illustrator, this is for you! Do you have any illustrations or graphics in your portfolio which would look awesome printed onto a t-shirt? Have you ever wanted to kick start a t-shirt brand and get free exposure for your designs?
We’re looking for up-and-coming designers to submit one design from their portfolio which we’ll use as a limited edition prize in a weekly competition for our readers. In return we’ll credit you with the design, give you awesome exposure via our blog and social profiles, plus we’ll send you one of our softstyle t shirts with your design printed onto it using DTG Printing (which is perfect for illustrations and beautiful full colour designs).
How to enter?
It’s really easy, just send an email to contest@iconprinting.com and include the following information:
1. Your chosen artwork file (refer to the artwork guidelines below before submitting)
2. Your selected t-shirt colour (from the options here)
3. Your t-shirt size: S / M / L / XL / XXL
4. Delivery address
5. Twitter handle and/or website address
6. A sentence or two about yourself and your work ambitions
The deadline for submissions is October 30th. We’ll notify all winners within 2 weeks and you’ll receive your t-shirt when the weekly competition featuring your design ends.
Artwork guidelines:
– Format: PNG with a transparent background (on white tees, JPEG is suitable)
– Image Size: 100% of the intended print area (max. print area W350 x H400mm)
– Images should be at least 150dpi
Above: Printed t-shirts for freelance illustrator and recent graduate Dominic Kesterton
Top: Design from one of our favourite artists Supermundane
Last year, we ran the Graduate Design T-Shirt Contest – a competition designed to give one emerging illustrator the resources required to set up their own t-shirt label.
The contest was won by Dominic Kesterton, a then recent graduate from Edinburgh College of Art, who impressed the judges with his colourful and kinetic design. He won himself a bumper crop of prizes, including £1,000 worth of DTG printed t-shirts courtesy of ICON Printing and Continental Clothing, a one year subscription to Shopify, an ASOS Marketplace boutique, business cards from MOO.com, in addition to exposure from It’s Nice That and Glug.
Dominic put all his winnings towards setting up his own clothing brand – half joyed. One year on from his victory, we caught up with him to hear how business has been going, as well as his plans for the future.
Q. What was the first thing you did when you found out you’d won the competition?
A. I think the first thing I did was have a big sip of orange juice. I found out I’d won while was in France, using the Wi-Fi at a McDonald’s.
Q. What have you found to be the biggest challenge in setting up your own t-shirt label?
A. For me, the biggest challenge was just finishing stuff. I entered a really cyclical phase of refinement and second-guessing myself. I really wanted to come up with some good stuff and put loads of pressure on myself to do so. I’m glad it’s out there now.
Above: half joyed’s ‘Pool’ t-shirt
Q. How has the response been to the tees so far?
A. Really good! I’ve been sending them out all over the place.
Q. What’s next for half joyed?
A. I’m just going to keep on trucking. I’ll be doing some new t-shirts soon, and maybe some jumpers for the winter.
Above: Detail of half joyed’s ‘Orb’ t-shirt
Q. How do you go about making your images?
A. My approach is pretty simple really. I’ll usually sketch out an idea in pencil and then draw over it in pen. Drawing is very important to me. I always have a sketchbook on the go and will pull various ideas from it to create my finished images. I’ll work in Photoshop if I’m adding colours to something or separating layers for print.
Above: Back print on half joyed’s ‘Boy Head’ t-shirt
Q. You also make comics as well as t-shirts. How did your interest in visual storytelling begin?
A. I think it began when I was a boy. I used to read Beano, Sonic The Hedgehog comic and stuff like that. When I got to university, I became aware of zines and off I went, making weird stuff.
Above: Spread from ‘Hoss Bay’, a 20 page, Risograph-printed comic written and illustrated by Dominic
Q. What are the five best comics or zines you’ve read recently?
A. I did a zine swap a while ago with Nicolas Menard and was blown away by his comic Elsewhere. This year at ELCAF, I came across Free Fall by Alexis Beauclair, which is also awesome. I still haven’t read all of Mould Map 3 yet, but it’s been great so far. I don’t think I’ve actually read five comics or zines recently, but there are a lot on my list that I need to get around to.
We’ve teamed up with one of our favourite illustrators, Jean Jullien, to produce the first, in what we hope will be an ongoing series of limited edition tees in collaboration with Kemistry Gallery.
Jean Jullien‘s instantly recognisable signature style has seen him become one of the most sought after illustrators around. His work has been featured in Wrap magazine, on the London Underground, Byron Burger, and even on beer bottles.
The custom t-shirts have been produced here at ICON Printing using water-based screen printing for a super soft feel, and will be sold in Kemistry Gallery’s store. But… we’d also like to give a handful away to you, our awesome readers!
We have 20 t shirts to giveaway. To enter, simply do the following:
•”Like” our Facebook page.
•Find the picture below on our Twitter page and RT it.
The lucky 20 winners will be chosen at random and will be announced on 3rd October 2014.
Our introduction to Jean’s work came courtesy of our friends and neighbours Kemistry Gallery when, last year, their space served as the venue for Allo? – Jean’s first solo show in London. Here are some of our favourites from the show below.
It is just one of many outstanding and inspiring exhibitions that Kemistry Gallery have hosted over the years. Their current exhibition features one of the most important Modernist German graphic artists, Hans Hillmann, who designed 130 film posters between 1953 and 1974, including designs for landmark films such as Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai and Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket.
If this is the first time you’ve visited our blog, we are a t-shirt printing company based in London. If you have any questions about personalising your own range of garments then get in touch today. We offer a wide range of printing and finishing services, including Direct to Garment printing and embroidery.
Writing a guest blog on Icon Printing is somewhat of a busman’s holiday for us at Diginate. T-Shirt and sticker printing have a big overlap on the venn diagram of print-based marketing and promotion, and we know that Icon approach their work with the same customer focus and enthusiasm for the final product that we do at Diginate.
We know that stickers and T-shirts are both great promotional tools, and that they’re fun, tactile products that people have a lot of love for. They both have strong followings in street culture, but you’ll also find them working in harmony at conferences, trade-shows and corporate events the world over. Finding parallels is easy, so we started to wonder what the key differences between stickers and t-shirts are. The results of this extensive research is detailed below:
Stickers are not suitable attire for dress down friday
Don’t even entertain the idea of a couple of strategically placed stickers in lieu of more traditional fabric-based attire. For 10 months of the year you’ll be extremely cold, and you won’t have a job any more.
You can’t fix errors in your Annual Report with T-shirts
Fixing typos, mis-labelled diagrams and erroneous dates in already-printed annual reports with tiny stickers is the world’s oldest profession. Don’t attempt this with a T-Shirt – it won’t match the paper, and if anything, will draw attention to your mistake.
Everyone can use the same size sticker
If you’ve ever purchased clothing for yourself you’ll know it’s a total nightmare. It’s crucial to get the right size – otherwise the clothing you’ve bought will be either too ‘big’ or too ‘small’. You’ll be a laughing stock amongst your peers. As for buying clothing for somebody else? Well, you may as well just forget about it. Fortunately, stickers use a one-size-fits-all strategy. Big people can use small stickers, and small people can use big stickers. It’s a totally egalitarian system.
There’s no such thing as a wet sticker competition
All the stickers we produce at Diginate are waterproof.
When your sticker gets old and knackered you can’t cut it up and use it to clean your car
There’s nothing quite like removing the roadkill form your Vauxhall Astra on a Sunday morning with the tattered remains of a1994 Shed Seven tour tee, M-People’s ‘Elegant Slumming’ on the stereo, reminiscing on better times. Try this with the tattered remains of a sticker and you’ll just get adhesive everywhere. So that you can discover the many differences between stickers and T-shirts for yourself we’re giving away £150 of free print from Diginate. You can use it for stickers, posters, art prints, or a combination of all three. Check out the prize draw below for your chance to win: