The Shirt Site
Documenting a failed side project
In an effort to document things I've created and partially revisited over time, I wanted to take some time to talk about something I worked on two years ago - a website I called "Interactive Stitch", also informally known as the "shirt site". The gist is that the site would allow users to “create” a tee shirt with custom fields and buy that shirt on demand. I created custom user-interfaces for each shirt design and created software that would create product images and artwork images on the fly. I was able to use a DTG (direct to garment) printer who exposed an API so I could make purchases programmatically, they would even handle shipping to the customer directly.
I’ve had this idea back many years ago with the popularity of those Helvetica tees. But I’d constantly be reminded of the idea by someone I deeply admire, Adam Savage. It's no secret that Adam is a space enthusiast, and he and his contemporary Tom Sachs both adopt and put their own spin on NASA branding.
The original shirt design for the site was what's known as the "NASA Meatball" logo: the classic blue circle with the white orbit line and the red swoop. The hard part about this design is that one side of the swoop (the right side) is above the text, and the left side is behind it. This means I’m overlaying different images in real time and sandwiching the text in between. The idea for the site was to allow an input box and let anyone type in whatever they want. Hence the name "Interactive Stitch". The site would provide shirt templates like this one, and you could choose to customize it however you want. Here's a GIF of the site in action:
Once the Nasa shirt was complete, I moved on to the helvetica design as well as several others.
The site worked! People were able to buy shirts. I only sold a handful to some friends and family and a few actual customers who found the site, most likely through Twitter. However, my progress was cut short when the printer required me to have a business ID for taxes. At that time, I had just started a new job, and I wasn’t about to start an LLC for this site, as I didn’t know where to start. Moreover, the printer started to malfunction more and more, and the print times became slower and slower. I felt like I would need a new printer to continue.
My internal conflict is whether this project matters. I think it’s cool to have a custom tee, but do other people care? Does this project contribute to unnecessary waste that people don’t need in their life? Probably. I’m the worst capitalist. However, I think this idea has a lot of potential to apply to any type of product, such as hoodies, posters, mugs, totes, etc. The dream would be to be the printer and deliver on the software. There’s so much work involved in getting this kind of business truly off the ground, even though I do think that there’s so much potential. From working with artists to come up with new shirt designs, to coding them, creating the “mini apps” that are necessary for each design, and also marketing, advertising, and ordering shirts, as well as getting some real people in them, hiring models, photographers, etc.
I’m still tinkering with the underlying codebase and thinking about revitalizing the site with a new printer (still on the hunt) or ordering a DTG print setup at home as well as a healthy stock of tees. If you’re interested in working with me to get this back off the ground, or if you have any thoughts, ideas or reccomendations feel free to reach out.
Since the site is down, I had to boot up a local version of the site to get these images. I think it’s essential to document all the work that was put into the site.
