is a blog about design, technology and culture written by Khoi Vinh, and has been more or less continuously published since December 2000 in New York City. Khoi is currently Principal Designer at Adobe. Previously, Khoi was co-founder and CEO of Mixel (acquired in 2013), Design Director of The New York Times Online, and co-founder of the design studio Behavior, LLC. He is the author of “How They Got There: Interviews with Digital Designers About Their Careers”and “Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design,” and was named one of Fast Company’s “fifty most influential designers in America.” Khoi lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn with his wife and three children.
No one should listen to anything I say about anything.
For instance. My friend Sahadeva Hammari told me a long while ago that he was working on a new startup that would collect and display links to graphic tee-shirts from all over the Web. My reaction was, “That’s a neat idea, but to what end?” It didn’t strike me that it was a concept that would go very far. As it turns out, the resulting site, Rumplo is pretty damn engaging.
Entertainment You Can Wear
Below: Tee’d up. Some of the shirts I’ve favorited on Rumplo. See more here.
I’ve always been enamored of graphical tee-shirts, but rarely thought too much about them beyond their rather ephemeral entertainment qualities. Through the power of aggregation though, Rumplo unexpectedly shows that this kind of garment is in fact a rich medium of its own. Spend a few minutes perusing the site’s pages, and I think you’ll see right away that there is far more wit and visual invention than you’ll find in most graphic design annuals.
Actually, my favorite part of Rumplo is the email newsletter, which arrives once a week and features a hand-picked selection of ten of the best recently-added tees on the site. Amid the din of my in box, it’s easily the most enjoyable and consumable of my many email newsletter subscriptions. For fans of the more popular, generally excellent, community-driven tee-shirt site Threadless, you may already be finding similar amusement in their regular sales newsletter, which more brazenly hocks their latest wares. The Rumplo newsletter, though, is much less hard-sell, and feels more expansive in its culling from the most obscure corners of graphic tee-dom. In a way, it’s very much a weekly review of what’s happening in this hidden-in-the-open medium.
I just discovered Rumplo the other day, and I’m sort of in love. I’ve added the feed to my Google reader. It is a million times better than Threadless, where very often the t-shirts often don’t seem to rise above the sort of ‘ironic’ tees you’d find at A&F or Hollister. Rumplo seem much more oriented to limited runs and artist/designers.
Rumplo has been amongst my RSS feeds for a minute. Its great entertainment. I love the fact that they link you to a place to get the tshirts. So I don’t have to remain envious.
Yeah, I’m glad we’re over the ironic slogan t-shirt era. Great post, Khoi, It’s pretty interesting to see how the t-shirt designs are a growing force greater then those found on design annuals. It’s pure creativity and what people are really made of. Great idea, Sahadeva. Rumplo is pretty neat!
Thanks for pointing out Rumplo Khoi! Both Threadless and Rumplo newsletters are sent via Campaign Monitor (who I work for) and your post inspired my own on the Campaign Monitor blog.
Different approaches to the same product, very interesting.
No one should listen to anything I say about anything.
At least we’ve left behind the ‘ironic slogan’ t-shirt market.
I just discovered Rumplo the other day, and I’m sort of in love. I’ve added the feed to my Google reader. It is a million times better than Threadless, where very often the t-shirts often don’t seem to rise above the sort of ‘ironic’ tees you’d find at A&F or Hollister. Rumplo seem much more oriented to limited runs and artist/designers.
Rumplo has been amongst my RSS feeds for a minute. Its great entertainment. I love the fact that they link you to a place to get the tshirts. So I don’t have to remain envious.
I have to say, you come up with some pretty damn witty post titles!
Looks like a great site, I just wish I could find some of the tees you put in this post.
Joey: all of the shirts I show above can be found in my favorites list on Rumplo, which you can access here.
Gabriel: no false modesty here. I’m really proud of that title!
Rumplo is a really great t-shirt site.
I’ve just recently been introduced to Rumplo, it’s the best tee site I’ve seen. I am on that site at least a few times a day.
Yeah, I’m glad we’re over the ironic slogan t-shirt era. Great post, Khoi, It’s pretty interesting to see how the t-shirt designs are a growing force greater then those found on design annuals. It’s pure creativity and what people are really made of. Great idea, Sahadeva. Rumplo is pretty neat!
Thanks for pointing out Rumplo Khoi! Both Threadless and Rumplo newsletters are sent via Campaign Monitor (who I work for) and your post inspired my own on the Campaign Monitor blog.
Different approaches to the same product, very interesting.
We’re sending with Campaign monitor,too. Great tool!
Thanks for the Rumplo tip-off – you just never know where some inspiration might come from and I could definitely use some humour in my ‘inbox’!