Fair & Bare – The little shop I run (with a little help from my wife) is having a January Sale right now in celebration of entering the year 2010. Every shirt we’ve made to date is just 10 squid! Hurry up people, it only runs until Sunday.
Posts Tagged fairtrade
Fairy Tale Design Challenge
Jan 13
It seems that all I do these days is talk about what’s going on over at Fair & Bare and if you’re here because you prefer the more geeky side to me I apologise I’ve not been indulging you recently. However, that said, these posts do represent a significant part of me right now and what’s going on in my life so I think it fair I shout about it.
We’re holding our second design challenge right now and calling for designs based around the concept of a unique twist on a fairy tale. The prize is our biggest ever, at £200 + a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS3 (which was kindly donated by one of F&B’s community!). You have until 15th February to both submit a design and get it voted on by the F&B peeps!
It looks like I’ve also failed to mention over here the winner of our Snowdodgers competition as the amazing Mister Shrew. The shirts we printed look amazing and you should pick one up now if you haven’t already.
I’m really pleased to announce that Fair & Bare has just released 2 new shirts. First up is “Feel the Force” based on a slogan submission by JonnyDanger and secondly is the fantastic Esther Aarts’ “My Bike is My Castle”.
We printed these on super-soft, Fairtrade certified, organic in-conversion cotton using fantastic waterbased inks. They also look pretty darn good. It’s the net result of a ton of hard work by our printers, designers, community and the original cotton original farmers that mean that these have been able to be released. Head over to buy one (or more!).
Fair and Bare’s first shirt!
Jul 22
So, its been a long time coming, but Fair and Bare’s first t-shirt is now available to purchase!
Thanks to everyone who’s participated since we kicked off. Really appreciate all your designs, words and support. We’re still taking submissions for our competitions, so if you haven’t hit us up already make sure you do!
Some of the visitors to this site might be aware that I like my t shirts, each with their bold and awesome illustrations. I’m also quite an avid supporter of fairtrade, being involved with fairdos and purchasing fairtrade options such as tea and chocolate where possible. One of the big bugbears my friends and I have always had in the support of the fairtrade movement is that many of the designs put across upon fairtrade cotton products don’t appeal to us at all. Some of these friends are people who are right up there within prominent fairtrade companies, who although avid promoters, won’t wear fairtrade on a day to day basis if it means they have to sacrifice their style. It seems that the fairtrade companies don’t do design and so we’re not given a choice between two similar products. The end result is we’re faced with looking great and feeling a little discontent that the garment isn’t as fantastic as it could be, or feeling great about a product – but not looking so awesome. We’ve often spoken of beginning a fairtrade company that puts out clothing that is both ethically produced and well designed, but held off doing so because it felt a little beyond us. I can say here now that we’ve made the first step in bringing that vision a little closer.
Fair and Bare is a crowdsourcing project which pays out comission to designers who successfully produce t shirt design ideas for fairtrade t shirts. It’s also an attempt for the fairtrade community to lose that somewhat ’serious face’ with which I think they are often associated and relax the shoulders a bit whilst having some fun. We’re currently offering £200 for designs and £50 for design ideas which we think are worth printing up onto fairtrade cotton. We then hope to offer shirts at a somewhat more accessible price than other fairtrade shirts. It’s a fun, small project at the moment, but I hope that we can help rejuvinate an otherwise awesome product and maybe inspire others to do the same.