You should buy one of our t-shirts. Sadly, these are no longer available.
As always, there’s a story. I’ve wanted to offer some sort of apparel to the world for as long as I can remember. My biggest difficulties were how to make a shirt that seems useful, and how would I actually make it? These were not the kind of questions to take lightly.
Because this is something of an experiment, I wanted to do an extremely small run of shirts. Most places I went to required that I buy many more than I wanted to. Until I found a printer that was willing to work with me. This is so limited, that I’ll only really offer the XL size right now. But, if you want more, I can go back and make more.
Initially, I wanted to make something that showed off the company logo redesign. That was good for me, but it didn’t seem like it would make a shirt that people would want to wear. Why slog around with my logo? I went back and looked at the logo and thought about how I could make it a little more fun. I thought, why not change the circles above the letter to something? Then it hit me, CWL is Canadian; Why not let people show their Canadian pride with a shirt too? This is where placing the leaves (leafs?) above the letters started.
You might already know, but sporting a Canadian shirt can have some serious drawbacks. I designed this shirt to ensure none of that is possible, and the leaves above CWL will show if you wear an open jacket or sweater. The idea of showing off the maple leaf plays a central role in this shirt. You can take this shirt along when you travel and proudly proclaim that you are a “real Canadian”[1].
The shirt itself has printed off two screens that held transparency. I was able to see a large portion of the process, including what the screens looked like with the print material. Screen printing is a laborious process where each coloured section has to be loaded into a machine and pressed onto the shirt. Then, the coloured material is placed on the screen and pressed through holes in a transparent material to create an image. Once that’s pressed onto the shirt, the shirt is dried.
Naturally, adding a second colour made the shirt more expensive. I think it was worth it to add the iconic Canadian symbol. The circles that adorn CWL’s logo use a darker shade of red, so I requested that the printer lighten up the red to make the leaf more in line with what we see on our flag.
As is said often, this is just the beginning. I hope you like it. If you support this, I would love to make more and build other interesting designs. You should buy one.
The first, very limited run of CWL T-Shirts is available now for a limited time, shipping included within North America. International shipping rates can be determined at a later time.
