The Kafkacotton Blog

Gregor is here!

He’ll be traveling around the whole US in 2010 – look for him in your city! He’s out to raise illiteracy awareness and put great books on the peoples’ chests. First up:

Feb 1-3 | Florida State University | Tallahassee, FL

Feb 8-10 | University of Southern Mississippi | Hattiesburg, MS

Feb 15-17 | Louisiana State University | Baton Rouge, LA

He may look funny but, well – yah – he just looks funny.

After a week of voting on which book we should “t-shirtize” next, a winner has emerged: “1984.” You guys gave it 16 out of the total 35 votes – that’s 46%! A clear mandate!

George Orwell

Moving right along, I’ll be working up some designs for you guys. And – here’s another first – I’m accepting designs from “challengers.” If you’re keen on design and know your way around a vector program, I want to see what you’ve got! And you could win $125! Here’s how it works:

1. You have one week to send me your “1984″ design in .AI format and in a t-shirt mockup (brian@kafkacotton.com). That’s Tuesday, Feb 2, noon EST.
2. The shirts will go up for voting on Wednesday, Feb 3rd for one week – most votes wins.
3. If you win, $75 cash and $50 Kafkacotton store credit is yours!

There’s one week – get working! And pass the word along to your design friends.

Finally, look out for our “On the Road” shirt next Wednesday morning. You’ll have to wait till then to see which design got the most votes and ended up being printed (it’s gonna look good).

People of the world, I am sacrificing my book-picking monopoly at your feet!

Starting today, all the books Kafkacotton works with will be 100% picked by your votes. Every week I get a few requests to work with specific books (which is great keep them coming!) so I decided to hand over the reigns. I’m pretty excited to see where our community takes us.

In other news -

Voting on the “On the Road” design has closed and the winning design will be released Wednesday, February 3rd. You’ll have to wait until then to see which design won.  Thanks for all the votes!

I’ll shortly be welcoming a new part-time employee from Germany named Gregor. Look out for a video next week introducing everyone’s new German friend…

Our newsletter has known for a while, but now it’s official: our next shirt is from Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.” But – surprise - we have two original designs! Whichever gets more votes by noon EST on Friday, Jan 15 will be printed.

That’s just 60 hours – if you like one, tell your friends to vote because the loser ain’t comin’ back!

Mañana, man. Mañana.

“We go find a farmer with some manure laying around. Tomorrow we drive back in the truck and pick it up. Man, we’ll make a lot of money. Don’t worry about nothing.”

“It was always mañana ["tomorrow" in Spanish]. For the next week that was all I heard  - mañana, a lovely word and one that probably means heaven.”

And everybody goes “Awww!”

Taken from one of the book’s famous passages, this shirt depicts Dean Moriarty and all the mad people in our lives.