| Back in the day – the early ’90s, to be exact – the T-shirt of choice for most of the cool kids underwent a graphic transformation. The basic T-shirt became bolder and edgier than its silk-screened fashion brand cousin, displaying original logos hijacked from corporate America.
The really cool kids who wanted to separate themselves from the crowd of "walking advertisements" opted for T-shirts that were reminiscent of the Topps Wacky Packages trading cards, which featured witty renaming of household consumer products. Produced by young graphic designers from skateboard companies like Fresh Jive, X-Large and Fuct, the T-shirt screen prints took on the same colours and design as the original corporate logo, but in place of the usual icon was one that spoke directly to those who understood the intent behind Fresh Jive’s Big Jive T-shirt (a take on 7-11’s Big Gulp).
"Some little-known brands made a killing by hijacking the logos of institutional products. The California manufacturer Fuct skateboards simply borrowed the Ford logo, a hazardous high-risk game of appropriation, especially when the owner is not just any old company," writes Charlotte Brunel in The T-Shirt Book.
The risk taken to parody the iconic graphic designs of American corporations such as Ford, Chiquita Bananas, Tide and Coca-Cola resulted in a powerful form of alternative visual communication for a hip viewing audience.
Times have changed, but original graphics produced by young designers are still available for those who prefer an original graphic to a commercial logo on their T-shirt. To check out what some of our local graphic designers are producing, I paid a visit to Giant 45, purveyors of all things original in the scene for the young and hip.
The first T-shirt worth noting is their own Ape T-shirt, which is a collaboration between Clay, an Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD) student, and Geoff McFetridge, an ACAD grad and skateboard enthusiast who now resides in Los Angeles, where he has produced and collaborated on projects with the Beastie Boys, Marc Jacobs and Sophia Coppola.
"Geoff created the logo for the store as well as the T-shirt, and Clay created the ape," says owner Al Testa.
Another designer, Kevin Berggren, who creates his T-shirts under the label Klyde, designed a Cowboy Jesus T-shirt that reminds me of the early skate companies that appropriated corporate icons, but takes it one step further – and riskier – by appropriating Warner Sallman’s Head of Christ, which many North American Protestants revere as an icon.
"The Cowboy Jesus shirt, like all of my other work, is the result of a series of happy little accidents," explains Berggren. "There is no conceptual stage. I collect images and stuff that I find laying around. Something will appeal to me because it’s bizarre or funny or stomach churning and I'll file it away, maybe look at it from time to time.
"Then, late some night, some of these elements will smash into each other, make love, something beautiful is born into the world."
This sounds like the Immaculate Conception all over again, but this time it takes place in the creative mind of a Calgary graphic designer.
Testa notes that Giant 45 will also be carrying T-shirts designed by Heavyweight, a design trio from Montreal that has done work for Nike, Levi’s, Ninja Tune, And 1, Giant Step and others, and recently showed their art in action at a performance at the Night Gallery. Heavyweight’s graphics have a strong urban feel – most of it would be considered graffiti art. |
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