The World According to Origin68

Samples Box

2011-11-30T14:34:00.000-08:00

Here's our nifty new samples box. If you're a shop owner/retailer and have an interest in stocking our tees then drop us a line and maybe we will send you one of these little beats in the post.

Grotto Shop

2011-11-28T11:38:00.000-08:00

This Christmas a selection of Origin68 shirts will available in a new pop up store located in Manchesters Chinese Arts Centre. This seasonal treat goes by the name of Grotto Shop and provides a space for Manchesters finest designery/crafty types to sell their wares in the lead up to Christmas. It's a great place to get the best, unique, Christmas presents, cards and wrapping paper whilst supporting local artists and small businesses.

Inspiration_Quote Posters By Pogo Design Studio

2011-05-27T08:11:00.000-07:00

Really like these posters by pogo design studio.

Inspiration_Dana Tanamachi

2011-05-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

Also stumbled across these beautiful chalk drawings by Dana Tanamachi. Some great lettering and typography in her work. CHeck her site out http://www.danatanamachi.com/chalk/

Inspiration_ Baltic posters by Founded

2011-05-25T15:03:00.000-07:00

Going to try and post more stuff on the blog and not just repeat what we post on the site. It will mainly be inspiration, cool stuff, brain farts etc. Hopefully it will make this a little more interesting....let's see how long it lasts!

Ok, let's kick things off with 4 sexy limited edition posters by Founded. I love these, so simple but so nicely done. (Found on http://caroleguevin.com/page/2)

Origin68 Featured In Torso Book

2011-04-20T14:52:00.000-07:00

So we recently discovered by chance that one of our tshirts made it into the Torso book that came out a while back. We had no idea until we were having a flick through a copy at Margin that belonged to the guys from The Affair (nice guys and super nice tees by the way). It's our Anthony Aguero design 'The World In Your Eyes' so it must have been the man himself who sent them in. There are a few of his other designs in there. Anyway, we thought it was pretty cool and worth showing off about!.

Here's some pics. If you like tees in general it's worth a purchase as there's a tonne of cool stuff in there.

Internal Error by Melvin Galapon

2011-04-14T07:34:00.000-07:00

Prince once blamed it on something in the water, messing with his computeé shizzle, but we know pretty much anything can throw a spanner in the pipes causing massive internal errors.

Saying all that it’s not just those damn computers that have internal error’s, us humans are perfectly capable of having our own internal meltdowns too. So this one is for all the doom mongers, schizophrenics, bi polar, manic depressive types out there...or maybe your just having a bad day.

We’re pleased to say that Mr Melvin Galapon has crafted this shirt, a homage to the error. Our legal eagle, Eddie, recommended a legal disclaimer, so this shirt comes with a special Origin68 public health warning… we will not be held liable if you stare at this one for any longer than 6.8 seconds. It has be known to melt eyes/minds, sofas and small reptiles.

Check out Melvin's work here www.mynameismelvin.co.uk
Watch your eyes!

handmadehands- I Did Nothing

2011-03-18T09:16:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd post this too so you can enjoy seeing a man use a plastic chair as a drum. Plus it mentions tectonic plates which gives it a bit of a sciency flava for all you science lovers out there....what am I even talking about. Just watch

handmadehands - sunshine video

2011-03-18T08:55:00.000-07:00

Our friends handmadhands from sunny Leeds have released their debut album this week. It's a fine blend of folk, strings, beards, loops and other such niceness. We're big fans and we say that as fans of music not just as people who happen to know some guys who play in a band. We probably wouldn't post this if we didn't deem this worthy of your ears. Anyway have a listen, albums available from all good online retailers. You don't need us to name them...

Hot Drink Mugs

2011-02-28T08:04:00.000-08:00

We've all gone a bit Ronseal with this. And I don't mean perma-tanned. Oh no, it's a mug that does exactly what it says on the tin.. I mean ceramic, er mug. It's got hot drink in it innit. By the way ours is a tea, white with one sugar if you're putting the kettle on.
WARNING: Contains Hot Liquids.

Available in the shop www.origin68.com

Here's some interesting tea facts for you too Uk Tea Council website

Digital Arts Spotlight

2011-02-11T02:59:00.000-08:00

This is pretty old news now but it should be on here. Our Si Scott Dove tshirt was featured in the October issue. Man that's old. Anyway, it was there, there's some pictures to prove it and everything.

Dove by Si Scott

2010-08-30T13:40:00.000-07:00

This shirt needs no introduction...Ohh, go on then.

This design is by the now legendary Si Scott and displays a dove, the symbol of peace, in his indomitable highly detailed illustrative hand drawn style. If you haven't come accross Si's work over the last few years you must have been living under a rock, he's pretty much become the grand master of intricate swirly designs. We're really proud to bring you this one!

After gaining a degree in graphic design at Buckinghamshire University College, Si Scott used his skills to develop a characteristic style which combines hand-inked and penned artwork with modern typography.That style has won him a prestigious and ever-expanding client list, including Vogue, Nike, Polydor, Guinness, MTV, Absolut, Tiffany and Co, Miller and American Express.

New Stockist - Dais Boutique, Huddersfield

2010-08-27T03:25:00.000-07:00

We have another brand new stockist. In fact we've had a few more of late, we'll do them one at a time though to keep things simple... This time it's in Huddersfield and goes by the name of Dais Boutique. We met Dais at last February's Margin tradeshow down in London. Alan who runs Dais boutique found us worthy of a spot in his brand new venture. The store aims to appeal chiefly to young males and females with “classic, contemporary, innovative and unconventional” fashions providing an alternative to the high street chain stores.

We're pleased to be selected as one of the brands to grace the rails of Dais boutique and we wish Alan all the best with the new store. If your in or around Huddersfield then pop along and see it for yourselves.

Shopping Bags

2010-04-22T09:22:00.000-07:00

As you may know...or not know, the week currently flying by is Earth week. We've decided to save you on a plastic bag or two by bringing you another slice of organic heaven. It's the good old fashioned tote bag, perfect for carrying those veggies home from the greengrocer's. Here's a few pics of it sat on my sofa. We were gonna bring you another shirt but it's been delayed until next week, it can be like some kind of post Earth Week type thing.

Find it here: http://www.origin68.com/shoppingbag

New Stockist - Junkfunk, Brighton

2010-04-01T09:41:00.000-07:00

We have a brand new stockist down in luvverly Brighton. The guys from Junkfunk are located in the fashionable North Laine quarter of Brighton. Their quirky concept store specializes t-shirts, design, books, art, gifts and all things creative. They have a website of thier own which is well worth checking out if your'e shopping for nice things.

https://www.junkfunk.com/

MARGIN Tradeshow London

2010-02-24T11:04:00.000-08:00

Well Margin was a pretty big deal for us guys. It's a now well established streetwear and emerging labels tradeshow which has been the spring board for many now well established brands such as Your Eyes Lie, EIO Clothing and Lazy Oaf, all of whom we admire. We didn't really know what to expect as it was our first time but it turned out to be great. It's basically an opportunity to get your gear seen by hundreds of buyers, retailers, boutique owners, bloggers and journo's. We made some great contacts and had a great deal of interest. It was definately worth all the stress of getting everything ready!

I'm sure we will be back in 2010, bigger and better and knowing what to expect. Big thanks to Odysseas and the rest of the Margin posse for having us.

Progress Report

2010-02-24T09:51:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a while people.... It's been a pretty hectic to start to the new year, we spent the first month preparing for our International tradeshow debut down in London Town . That involved alot of prep work and sorting out the range to be shown, getting printing done blah blah blah. Anyway, we got that done (we will add some pictures in a seperate post) and now we are cracking on with getting some new stuff done, a few reprints, some new designs and some general improvements. Keep your eyes peeled for all that. Human Being continues to be hugely popluar, we have already reprinted this 4 times in the space of 2 months. We seem to be spending way too much time in the post office these days with big bags full of swag (much to the annoyance of the post office staff!) So it's onwards and upwards.

Artist Spotlight - Anthony Aguero (Aliadotony)

2009-12-15T09:56:00.000-08:00

We thought we would give you a bit of info about our latest designer Anthony Aguero. He's the man responsible for our latest jazzy creation 'The Worl In Your Eyes'. It has always been one of our aims to use other designers who's work we respect and like, so we thought it would be nice to start a little feature on the blog when we do use someone.

We've followed Anthony's work for a while now. Some of you may know him as Tomo77 or Aliadatony. He's got a great body of apparel work out there and is a multiple contest winner at both Threadless and Design By Humans so it's great to have been able to use his services.

Tony has been working in design industry for over 15 years. His experience is in the advertising world working over the years with mostly all product categories from cars, to fast food, technology and more. The last 4 years though he has been workingmore and more in the alternative design sector, apparel, skate decks and more, which are printed in Europe and USA.

Above are some images from his up and coming book titled '12x12' which he is hoping to get printed up. There are plenty more images from this and his other work on his website
You can check it out here:

http://www.tomo77.net/

NEW DESIGN - The World In Your Eyes

2009-12-03T10:02:00.001-08:00

So you may have noticed already that we have a new design in, well here it is again in case you missed the magic...

It’s a graphical treat of trippy imagery hailing all the way from Costa Rica, courtesy of Mr Anthony Ageuro.

http://www.origin68.com/the-world-in-your-eyes

New Storenvy Store

2009-11-06T07:49:00.000-08:00

Storenvy this week launched their new social shopping community....

"In a nutshell Storenvy is _the_ social online store and shopping community. On one side, Storenvy is a series of online stores run by independent sellers. "The little guys."

On the other side, Storenvy is a network of shoppers who can shop across all of those stores at once, interacting with each other by watching what notes and ratings they leave on products and stores throughout the site. It's like following your friends and style icons on a shopping spree, watching what they pick up and what they actually buy."

We decided to give it a try and see if it creates anymore traffic for us. It won't ever replace our standalone store but it's free so it's got to be worth a shot. It may pull in some more sales from the good ol' USofA

Check it out http://origin68.storenvy.com/

Computer Arts Project Magazine features Origin68

2009-11-05T04:40:00.000-08:00

We were approached by the guys at Comupter Arts Projects asking if we would like to be featured in their "How To Launch Your Own Streetwear Brand" edition of the magazine. Obviously we said yes.

The magazine features lots of great articles highlighting how to get into the world of streetwear and design. Our stuff made it into the Showcase section as well as having one of our quotes make it into the Big Question section. We did send them a pic of the two of us together, however they decided to cut poor old Harry out of it! He's still crying about it as we write this.

If you're a budding entrepreneur and fancy launching your own label then this is a great place to start, there's some great articles about getting stuff printed (by White Duck Screenprint), designing your own store (By Shred Clothing) as well as examples of great existing stores, designers and illustrators such as 123 Klan, Fl@33, Sixpack, Beautiful Decay.

Here's some pics from it.

Front Cover

Big Question

Paris'68 in the Blogs

2009-10-09T04:59:00.000-07:00

We've had plenty of bloggers feature our site. All of these sites are well worth checking out too. Some are dedicated to tshirts other's to good design in general.

Paris'68 on Iloveyourtshirt (tshirt blog from France)
Paris'68 on Coty Gonzales (one man tshirt blogging machine)
Paris'68 on HideYourArms (UK based tshirt blog)
Paris'68 on Duty (cool designery stuff)
Paris'68 on DirtyMouse (food for designer's dirty mouse)

NEW DESIGN - Paris'68

2009-10-09T04:53:00.000-07:00

Last week we droppoed our latest design. It's a bit of an hommage to the Paris uprisings in 1968.

The French aren’t stupid. When they don’t like stuff they get up off their arses and kick up a stink about it. In fact, they’ll pretty much go on strike before you can say "improved workers conditions".

May 1968 was one of those iconic moments where the people came together and took on the powers that control them and through not inconsiderable sacrifice changed things for the better. We made a tshirt about it.

You can find it here www.origin68.com/paris68

Phone Book Art

2009-08-18T07:57:00.000-07:00

Looking through the morning paper I found this. Thought it was pretty cool. Not because it's a portrait of Obama but cause it's carved out of an old phone book. There must be millions of redundant phone books lying in people's houses and this is Alex Queral's way of reusing his. The image is actual 3 dimensional. There was a side view in the paper but I can't find it. You will have to use your imagination to work out what it looks like. It seemd relevant seeing as we had done our own bit of telephone book art.

Origin68 @ Kendal Calling Festival

2009-08-04T10:11:00.001-07:00

So, it's Tuesday...and we've still not recovered from the weekend.

We played our first gig at the Kendal Calling Festival set in the beautiful Lowther Deer Park in the Lake District. We say gig, more of a tshirt stall. It's the first time we've done anything like this so it was interesting to get out there and see how the public reacted to our stuff. It seemed to go pretty well. We managed to shift a good amount of shirts, chatted some jive with a few people and generally got Origin68 out there to the masses. It was a great experience. Sadly we didn't get to see much in the way of bands and stuff as we were manning the stall all day and night. We still had a top time though.

We also got to meet the man, the legend that is Mr Howard Marks which was nice (no pun intended). He popped over to the Laughing Cafe where we were situated to have a spot of breakfast.

Here's some pics from the weekend.

LookBook 2009/0.1

2009-07-29T06:33:00.000-07:00

We now have our lookbook available to view online for any potential stockists. For prices and what not email us at info@origin68.com and we will send you the relevant details. We are always looking for new an interesting places to stock our tees so don't be shy, get in touch.

Thankyou please.

Find it here: http://issuu.com/origin68/docs/look_book_2009_0.1

Open publication - Free publishing - More tshirts

Origin68 in Protest Tshirts Book

2009-07-10T04:56:00.000-07:00

This happened a while back but since we changed the website there was no evidence to show that this actually happened. So here it is...again...for those that never saw it the first time round.

It was pretty cool seeing our shirts in a real life tangible book. Big thanks to Ellie over at Graffito Books for finding us and getting our shirts in there.

More info can be found here http://www.graffitobooks.com/protestts.html

XOX shirt featured in The Answering Machine's 'Obviously Cold' video

2009-06-05T04:11:00.000-07:00

Yep. The title of this post says it all really doesn't it. It's our white xox tshirt in the video. You can just about make it out!!

XOX - Reprint

2009-05-22T06:19:00.000-07:00

OK guys.
The XOX shirt has been flying out of 068 Towers... Like pigeons. A lot of people were left disappointed when the first print run pretty much sold out. We didn't think that was fair, so we have got a re-print done! Get them while they're hot!... Obviously they're not actually hot... that would be silly.

XOX Badges - Now available

2009-05-22T06:08:00.000-07:00

We now have some xox badges available for you all so whilst you're investing in a shirt you can now get a nice set of badges (pins for our North American viewers!) to go with it. We will even throw in one of our own origin68 badges as a freebie. If you collect enough of them you could even play noughts and crosses with them on somebodys back. Not sure how much fun that would be though....

New Release - Anonymous

2009-05-19T09:40:00.000-07:00

Dear people,
It's been several weeks since our last confession......
We have made another tshirt for your lovely bodies. For this we are sorry, you may like it enough to buy it and there's a credit crunch running rampant through the lands.

Anyway here's the story......

"It's nearly summer gang, we can practically taste it here at 068 Towers... we can certainly smell it. Hmmm. Anyway, we figured we needed a nice new shirt in the proverbial wardrobe to kick off the season. That shirt is the zingy lemon fresh typographically adorned, Anonymous.

This t-shirt has two purposes. Most importantly it's some great telephone book camouflage should you find yourself on the run and and the only place you can hide is a giant stack of Yellow Pages. Secondly, don't just be another one of lifes lemmings, you may well be unfortunate enough to actually be called John Smith, Joe Bloggs or Horationzo Van Sprancockelstein III, but that doesn't mean you have to act like one of them. Man up and do something amazing. This shirt also looks pretty sweet... damn... This t-shirt has three purposes..."

Grease them up at the website.

Two New Origin68 Stockists.

2009-03-24T03:24:00.000-07:00

The first one is very exciting...... If you happen to find yourself in Sheffield and you're somewhere near The Foum then be sure to pop into TOAST. Here you will find a new selection of origin68 wares hung from the shelves. Rich (the owner) has himself a tasty little shop and stocks great labels such as Concrete Hermit, Linty Fresh and Drop Dead. It's great for us to be sat alongside those types of labels, that's where we want to be. Hopefully the people of Sheffield will appreciate them. Not long now till you can find origin68 in every city throughout the world! So the rest of you will have to sit tight a little longer.

The second stockist is the online store LIMTEES. We have had Consume on the limitees site before but this time they came back for Higher Than The Sun.

All in all it's loooking rosy in the origin68 garden. Here's hoping it's just the begginning.

Check out the Toast website: www.cookedbread.com

Check out the Limitees website: www.limitees.com

XOX Shirt on Myspace Front Page

2009-03-17T05:48:00.000-07:00

The XOX shirt is currently rocking the front page of Myspace thanks to the Same Teens getting their page featured. I believe they will be on there everytime a new issue of their fanzine comes out. It's pretty mental seeing our image up there on the front page. We captured a screen grab just so we can prove it.

Tim Burgess in XOX Shirt!

2009-03-10T10:35:00.001-07:00

So imagine our surprise when we recieve pictures of The Charlatans frontman Tim Burgess wearing one of our XOX shirts. Tim was in Manchester last week Dj'ing at Moho Live and sported our XOX shirt throughout his set. We struggled to contain ourselves. We should give credit to the Same Teens & XOX posse for getting the snaps. Anyway here's a couple of pics so you can see for yourselves.

Dark Was The Night

2009-03-06T09:01:00.001-08:00

I thought I would blog about this record because it's for a great cause but mainly cause it's a kick ass record. It benefits the Red Hot Organization – an international charity dedicated to raising money and awareness for HIV and AIDS through popular culture.

It features a tonne of awesome artists such as Arcade Fire, Iron & Wine, The National, Feist, Bon Iver, David Byrne, MMJ, Beirut, Sufjan Stevens etc etc. It's pretty much a who's who's of alternative music.

More info can be found here

XOX on The Fat Seagull

2009-03-05T02:19:00.000-08:00

Mark over at The Fat Seagull was kind enough to give the xox shirt a little bit of space on his blog. See for yourselves........The Fat Seagull

About Us Photos

2009-02-25T06:12:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed we have updated our 'About Us' section with some nifty little photos. We though it was time we replaced the ominous silhouettes of some bloke we don't even know. I mean who is gonna buy a tshirt off someone they can't even see the facial features of?! I know we wouldn't.......we are much more likely to buy from some cute little rug rats......hence the pics we have chosen. It should get a few more mum's buying shirts anyway!

NEW DESIGN - XOX

2009-02-25T05:52:00.001-08:00

We have a new collaboration in.

We've been doing a little bit of work with Same Teens and XOX. These crazy cats started up on their own in April 2007 and quickly put together a fanzine, club nights and did a bit of Djing too... so far they have played for some of the biggest names in music, most notably Iggy and The Stooges asking for Same Teens to DJ backstage at their Harewood House gig where the audience included Tricky, who immediately booked them for one of his gigs. They have also opened up for before Los Campesinos, Black Kids and Noah and The Whale. their fanzine comes out every month and is well worth a read, check them out at www.myspace.com/sameteensmanchester

Of course we were only too happy to jump into the hot-tub to help them out with a T-Shirt.
Full of lovely liney goodness!

Origin68 Interviewed on T-Shirt Magazine

2009-02-17T08:45:00.000-08:00

The guys over at t-shirt magazine took the opportunity to fire some questions at us. We are one step closer to our appearance on Parky.....if he was still going anyway. Maybe we will have to settle for Jeremy Kyle........ when everything goes tits up, we have a massive break up, Harry steals all my furniture and sells it to fund his crack addiction...that sort of thing. Anyway I've gone off on one. Heres the interview....here

Higher Than The Sun on Hide Your Arms

2009-02-16T04:09:00.000-08:00

Andrew over at Hide Your Arms blog has featured out shirt today. Andrew was recently placed at number 1 in the t-shirt blog top 50 so whatever he says goes.
Check it out at www.hideyourarms.com

Higher Than The Sun - Primal Scream

2009-02-13T04:27:00.000-08:00

This seems like a good opportunity to post the song of the same name.... It's great song. Not sure whether Steven's design was directly influenced by it but that's what it made us think of.

NEW DESIGN - Higher Than The Sun

2009-02-10T14:56:00.000-08:00

This is our latest design fresh from the printer. We have teamed up with Scottish designer Steven Bonner to bring you this great piece of typography. We are really into nice type work at the moment and when we saw this avaialble on the emptees site we knew we had to get our greasy mitts on it. We're really pleased with how it's turned out and hopefully you guys like it to.

Pop along to check out Steven's work at www.stevenbonner.com

Welcome People

2009-02-10T14:10:00.000-08:00

So....we thought it was time to expand our horizons and bring you good people a little slice of what goes on in the world of origin68. There's alot of sitting around, plenty of cups of tea drunk and the odd bit of work when we can be bothered.

We aim to keep you up to date with the goings on at 068 Towers as and when we have a spare hour or two. That includes our latest releases, sneak previews, ideas, what we've been listening to, what we had for breakfast, and generally anything else we think you lot might find interesting enough to read through.