Celebrating Brief Statements with Powerful Intent in 2015
Personalized t-shirts almost always feature a small snippet of text, a quote or a saying. These are meant to be humorous, witty, inspiring or to designate belonging to a team or organization. Oftentimes as of late, statements on shirts make the news because the copy is radical or intended to make a powerful declaration. To celebrate the New Year though, we’re going to share some short statements in the form of New Year’s inspirational haiku’s written by the original poet of extreme brevity, Issa. He is known to be one of the four haiku masters of Japan, enjoy a selection of fifteen and best wishes for the New Year, 2015!
on New Year's Day
a cute little pilgrim
at the gate
big field--
my New Year's walk
follows holes made by canes
my shadow too
in good health...
"Happy New Year!"
world of man--
even in mountain shade
New Year's water
even an old man
has New Year's eyes...
cherry blossoms
New Year's Day--
that I'm still on this journey
unbelievable
my New Year's
lucky direction walk...
to cherry blossoms
up to yesterday
I saw you every day...
New Year's herbs
New Year's pine--
alone, listening to
the evening rain
on New Year's Day
tall as a sleeping man...
the clouds
keeping the falling
snow company...
New Year's pine
birds singing--
on a tatami mat in a field, too
happy New Year
the trainer lets
his monkey hold it...
New Year's kite
putting on my
New Year's clothes...
the mountain owl laughs
on New Year's Day
I have company
bird without a nest
Motivational New Year's Resolution T-Shirts
The New Year is upon us and many of us will be making New Year’s Resolutions! As may be expected, either losing weight or getting fit typically tops the charts as goals for the upcoming year. For all the people that are intrepid enough to set lofty goals, we've curated some of our favorites and of course, as screen printing experts, we’re bound to display them as personalized t-shirts. Here’s a salute to a fantastic 2015 and a hearty wish that you reach your goals whatever they may be!
5 Free Art Tools to Create Alternatives to Copyrighted Graphics
We love to print t-shirts, but sometimes we get requests from customers to print graphics that we know are copyrighted. We can never print copyrighted graphics or logos except of course with permission from the copyright holder. Because we know people love to create unique and personalized apparel, we researched some fantastic free tools that will allow you to create some very different types of art and use it for your own t-shirt. These tools offer copyright free use of your creation but only for personal use. Warning, you are entering a time sucking, fun zone.
Need street swag? This tool allows you to choose your street style font and customize the look with different fills, outlines, and backdrops.
2. Weavesilk
This tool creates ethereal imagery based upon the movement of your cursor within the interface. Have fun with this zen-like experience.
3. Piq
Simple name, simple art. Love Minecraft-style art? This tool allows you to create your own pixel art!
1. Bomono
For the artist that likes to explore possibilities. This tool isn't for the type that needs absolute control, Bomono has a mind of its own.
5. Hero Machine
This tool is awesome and allows you to develop your own superhero. Choose all the components of your hero's appearance. Mix and match, colorize and then take a screenshot.
What you don’t know about the Dangers of Online Shopping
Do you have concerns when it comes to online shopping? You’re not alone. With all of the big retailers that have announced security breaches in the past year, it’s easy to be paranoid when it comes to giving up sensitive bank account data and other personal records. However, the majority of these breaches did not involve online shopping.
Let’s take a look at a few incidences that impacted really well-known retailers recently. Supervalue Inc. (SVU) which runs Albertson’s grocery stores announced in August of this year that, “it experienced a criminal intrusion into the portion of its computer network that processes payment card transactions for some of its retail food stores, including some of its associated stand-alone liquor stores.” The breach was isolated to point-of-sale systems (POS) in-store and was not detected for almost a full month. An additional intrusion was discovered in the form of installed malware, again only impacting POS systems.
SVU took immediate steps to mitigate the damages and dutifully notified the public as well as providing resources for customers to monitor their accounts.
The massive data breach of Home Depot was not handled as smoothly during their crisis. Yet again, the compromise only impacted brick and mortar stores. Their online presence, HomeDepot.com was unaffected although they received some harsh criticism in the press for seemingly aloof responses from leadership. The hackers gained access to their internal structure through an outside vendor’s system credentials. The insidious nature of smart hackers is, once they gain access, they will systematically create back doors within the system so they have a point of reentry even if they are detected.
As recently as December 5th, 2014, Bebe clothing store announced a security breach, again, limited to in-store purchases, not online purchases. Little has been released as of yet but the infiltration was in progress for almost 3 weeks of the holiday purchasing season.
Why are brick and mortar stores more susceptible to security breaches? According to Ken Coburn, founder and CEO of Data Doctors, “stolen online credit-card information only can be used online, while the data stolen a cash registers allows criminals to create counterfeit credit cards that can be used anywhere.”
Often, the criminal will purchase gift cards and items that can be resold quickly on sites like eBay and Craigslist. Purchasing an expensive item online often requires that the shipping address is the same as the billing address and not very many thieves want to camp out on their victim’s porch waiting for the mailman to arrive. Even the savvier minded criminals that use a “drop house” must still employ mules to move the merchandise once it’s delivered thus cutting down on the profit.
Is it totally safe to shop online? Of course not, any arena where a lot of money is to be made will remain vulnerable, but the public seems to have become slightly desensitized to the entire problem presented by data breach. According to a recent article on www.softwareadvice.com by Daniel Humphries, the half-life of the negative pallor cast upon retailers that are subject to hacks is greatly diminishing. In fact, the massive eBay breach exposing 145 million user records in May of this year is hardly remembered. 77% of survey responders were not even aware it happened. Were you?
30 Team Names that will make you Howl with Laughter
We know that being part of a team is something special so we came up with 30 creative fictional team names! Once you decide upon a team name, don’t forget to order your team sports personalized apparel because everybody loves team swag!
1. The Boston Baked Beans
2. Daytime Legends
3. Couch Carnivores
4. L.A. Shockwaves
5. Kingslayers
6. The Not Noobs
7. Blue Demolition Squad
8. Toxic Talons
9. Spinning Kamikaze Pilots
10. The Death Miners
11. The Banana Peely’s
12. The Fighting Folk Legends
13. The Mexican Jumping Beans
14. Boast Busters
15. Narly Ninjas
16. The Nasty McGees
17. The Mighty Millhouses
18. Killer Cannibals
19. The Deadly Dishwashers
20. Ferocious Felons
21. Skin Flayers
22. Space Trotters
23. The Snapping Turtles
24. The Sasquatchers
25. The Chupacabras
26. Washington Wearwolves
27. Notorious Nutcrackers
28. The Howling Pumpkins
29. The Crazy Cat Ladies
30. The Malicious Martini Makers
Share your ideas for creative and funny sports team names with us!
