Fri 16 Nov
2007

Testing, One, Two, Tees

Body

It’s Friday and everyone’s exhausted, so I just thought I’d throw this out there to maybe brighten up a few folks. Herewith, test prints for a brand new batch of my Hel-Fucking-Vetica shirts. Yes, I’ve finally gotten around to re-running them — or am nearly ready to get them run, anyway. With a little luck, they’ll be ready in time for holiday sales and shipping. What better way to celebrate during the December holidays than with a little typographic profanity?

Color Ways

Right now though, I’m not prepared to announce when or how they’ll actually be sold, so please bear with me a little longer. In the meantime, note the slightly modified design and the new color palette (the F-word is run in an off-white ink on some of the shirts, and yes, the letter ‘k’ is a little messed up at the moment, but it’s only a test). These are quickie photographs with less than ideal lighting so the color is pretty inaccurate, but you’ll notice the tests were run on two different color tees: gray and dark gray, let’s call ’em. Which do you prefer?

Hel-Fucking-Vetica Test Photo 1
Right: Note the F-word in off-white, at top, and pure white below.
Hel-Fucking-Vetica Test Photo 3
Hel-Fucking-Vetica Test Photo 3
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Remarks 45 total remarks were added before the post was closed.

Fri 16 Nov 2007 at 06:03 PM
Bill I

Love the shirt! Of the two, I prefer the grey. Can't wait to pick one up.

Fri 16 Nov 2007 at 06:03 PM
tre

looks dope. my vote's on the dark grey.

Fri 16 Nov 2007 at 06:04 PM
Bill I

Oops - I meant dark grey...d'oh.

Fri 16 Nov 2007 at 06:18 PM
Kevin

Dark grey.

Man, I need one of these shirts.

Fri 16 Nov 2007 at 06:47 PM
dave

Light grey, then dark grey.
Then dark blue/off white.

(On light blue, I like the pure white)

Also, I'd vote for a tagless shirt.

Fri 16 Nov 2007 at 07:30 PM
Jim Ray

I dig the "daringfireball" gray, m'self. Does this mean my original pink on blue is, like, 00b3r133t now?

Fri 16 Nov 2007 at 08:02 PM
patrick foster

Dark gray. Sweet.

Fri 16 Nov 2007 at 08:33 PM
GT

Dark grey.

Fri 16 Nov 2007 at 08:33 PM
Joey Pfeifer

Yes! I've been waiting for you to do another batch.

Fri 16 Nov 2007 at 09:12 PM
Chris

They all look great - but I do prefer the dark grey.

Fri 16 Nov 2007 at 09:32 PM
Bram Pitoyo

I like the dark gray, though I also dig the light brown look on your first photo. Light brown = not your usual deal, y'know?

Fri 16 Nov 2007 at 09:39 PM
lauralemay

dark grey, yup

Fri 16 Nov 2007 at 09:40 PM
matt

Dark Grey by a landslide!

Fri 16 Nov 2007 at 11:37 PM
Dennis

Dark grey!

Sat 17 Nov 2007 at 12:34 AM
sean coon

threadless?

Sat 17 Nov 2007 at 01:05 AM
Yuda

I like the dark gray of those choices, but in the first photo it almost looks brown to me. And a brown shirt with tan and cream lettering would look mighty fine, I think.

Sat 17 Nov 2007 at 08:08 AM
Christopher Cabanillas

Don't care which colour, I just want another shirt. But, do a cat test. Take a shirt, rub a cat on it. Whichever one attracts the least amount of cat hair, run with that.

Sat 17 Nov 2007 at 09:07 AM
Dannii

I'd love to get one as it combines two great loves, morphology and topography, but everyone says it's in bad taste... of the dilemmas.

Sat 17 Nov 2007 at 09:26 AM
Michael

I definitely prefer the look of the T-shirt at the bottom of the first photo.

Does this mean I'll have to carry an incandescent light around with me whenever I wear it?

Sat 17 Nov 2007 at 01:24 PM
Dominik Lenk

Very nice! I just showed your initial shirt-design to a friend of mine a couple of days ago; he is a Helvetica addict. One of the things that he remarked was that the colours were, well, a little bright...
It's nice to see that you toned them down just 'a little bit'.

From the new batch I prefer the grey version.

Sat 17 Nov 2007 at 01:29 PM
Ashur

I think it bears mention that I was initially over-excited to see it available in what I thought was black.

In subsequent photos, it seems in fact to be Daring Fireball dark grey which, while not quite as exciting as Subtraction black, looks better than Rik Catlow Monster light grey.

Sat 17 Nov 2007 at 02:48 PM
John Gruber

Dark gray, I say. Both look terrific, though.

Sat 17 Nov 2007 at 06:06 PM
Brent Dayman

Another vote for dark grey - looks great

Sun 18 Nov 2007 at 10:13 AM
Joesan


I like the the lighter grey.

The design is very nice but isn't the use of the expletive a little crass?

Seems like an easy, and cliched, way to get some 'edginess'. From a designer of your calibre I would have expected something more.

Hope this doesn't come across as too critical and that you get my point...

Sun 18 Nov 2007 at 01:00 PM
lewro

Cool. I want one :o) The right one on the second image works for me.

Sun 18 Nov 2007 at 01:25 PM
louis w

That charcoal is HAWTTTT. I still prefer my baby blue/pink version 1, but I would get this new one in dark grey in an instant.

Sun 18 Nov 2007 at 03:45 PM
Edo

Hel yes, I'll take the dark gray.

Sun 18 Nov 2007 at 06:10 PM
Sara Flemming

Ooh, the dark gray is killer, but really: I like both!

Sun 18 Nov 2007 at 06:29 PM
Draplin

Bravo. I dig!

Reminds me of the pic I saw a couple years back where this kid got "Helvetica" tattooed onto his forearm, in about 200pt!

My vote is that the whole shirt would have been set in Helvetica. Then, taking it one step further, maybe doing the "fucking" part would be in "glow in the dark" ink. Ha!

I love yer work. You are an inspiration, man.

Plus, I love the word, "Fuck." Liberate that shit.

Thank you.

Sun 18 Nov 2007 at 09:33 PM
Robb Irrgang

Any chance of, er,plus sizes in the new batch? big dudes hate/love Helvetica too.

Sun 18 Nov 2007 at 10:20 PM
Thomas Mango

Dark gray.

Sun 18 Nov 2007 at 11:08 PM
Diana

Those look great!

Dark Gray, white text.

Can't wait to hear about how to get one :)

Sun 18 Nov 2007 at 11:40 PM
Nik Kantar

Dark gray with pure white looks best to me - the contrast is rather nice.

Mon 19 Nov 2007 at 07:16 AM
Jim Barraud

Dark Gray. Much nicer contrast.

Mon 19 Nov 2007 at 11:01 AM
Matt

Another vote for Dark Grey. Hope I'm around to get one before they sell out this time.

Great work as always Khoi.

Mon 19 Nov 2007 at 11:08 AM
Luis Escorial

Anyone will do. But probably I will go with one of each gray, light and dark.

When can we purchase?

Mon 19 Nov 2007 at 12:15 PM
Ryan Bergeman

Hoo boy, this just made my day! Grey or dark grey; I'll probably pick up one of each, to be safe. ;)

Mon 19 Nov 2007 at 05:32 PM
Lode

Hi Khoi,

when shopping these internationally, please don't just write any amount in the "value" field like last time. This value is used to calculate the taxes, which made my v.1 tee a bit more expensive than planned. International shipping was quite steep, and because the declared value was $40 instead of the actual retail price, I had to pay more than 10 euro on top of it.

Other than that, love it, probably going to order more of those.

Mon 19 Nov 2007 at 08:27 PM
Jason Cosper

So long as they come in 2XL, sign me up for the dark grey (that's actually AA's asphalt, right?).

Tue 20 Nov 2007 at 12:06 AM
nico

dark grey, white print for sure.
although i was rather fond of the original run's color...

Tue 20 Nov 2007 at 06:41 AM
matthew

Nice, can't wait to get my hands on one .. please..

Tue 20 Nov 2007 at 02:04 PM
Patrick Beeson

I like the light gray, but would be happy purchasing either one.

I also bought the previous incarnation, and wear it as often as I can!

Tue 20 Nov 2007 at 03:52 PM
Andrew

Love the grey. I'd buy either one. (I wish I could see the difference between the off-white and white in your photo, but I can't.)

Tue 20 Nov 2007 at 04:15 PM
burin

I like the dark gray one with the off white. Looks kinda vintage-y.

The dark blue with the white-white is nice too.

Out of the two I like the dark gray :)

Sat 24 Nov 2007 at 11:43 AM
denise

i like the dark grey

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