T-Shirts for the World of Tomorrow!
The Retropolis Transit Authority - famous throughout the Future That Never Was for keeping its monorails running exactly on time - is happy to present its online shop full of stylish and colorful apparel that's decorated with retro - futuristic designs for Faithful Robots, Mad Geniuses, Retro Rocketeers, Space Cadets, Space Pirates, and Demented Housewives.
And they're not so mired in the future that they've forgotten to honor the Art Deco retro past, with a line of retouched futuristic masterpieces from the future's heyday of the 1930s. Black and dark colored shirts a specialty!
There are a lot of styles of art that have influenced me over the years - and it does change, of course, over time. But many of these can be gathered together under the heading of vintage graphics.
At the Retrovert, I've taken many of these older works, which have gradually passed into the public domain, and I've used the same digital tools I use in my own work to restore and revitalize them. Then, with these restored versions, I've made them available as posters, greeting cards, tee shirts, and coffee mugs.
You'll see some great old art deco WPA poster designs, souvenir art from the 1939 New York Worlds' Fair, vintage crate label art, and a fantastic series of magazine covers from the mid 1930s.
Ars Celtica offers customizable business cards - celtic art designs, with typography, so that you just enter your own name, job title, and contact data - along with postcards, greeting cards, coffee & travel mugs, and more.
The business cards are my favorite new product; I can design a business card for you - and in fact, I have - and all you have to do is to go there and do a little typing. Neat!
The Retropolis Travel Bureau invites you to visit the Retro Future for your next business trip or family vacation.
Complete with travel & tourist advisories, this travel bureau promotes the attractions of Retropolis - and encourages you to buy a souvenir of your stay.
Check out the customizable business cards for mad scientists, rocketeers, and airship captains. Also of interest are the customizable greeting cards and postcards and some really nice styles of coffee mugs and travel mugs.
"Organizing Against Conformity Since 1903!"
The Non Conformists' Union (which, of course, hasn't ever really existed) has a rich and complex history that spans over a century. This site is run by Local 404, the only non-regional chapter of the organization, and it's the home of all itinerant and international Non-Conformists.
The graphics I've done here for tee shirts, journals, membership items, and coffee mugs are all based, in one way or another, on vintage graphics. But they're remixed with the cheerfully misguided slogans of the NCU, like "Let's All Go on the Road Less Traveled", "Individuals Unite!" or "Organize Against Conformity".
It's possible that I had just a little too much fun here. There are pages of news and local events and the massive history of the NCU, which is illustrated with family photographs of my vaudevillean great-grandparents.
Original Celtic knotwork designs in a clip art / pattern book (Celtic Knotwork Borders in Repeating Sections) and on the covers of a selection of blank books whose pages, either with or without lines, are decorated with intricate Celtic border patterns.
Here I get to exercise both sides of my brain. You see, there are a couple of different worlds I like to explore in my work and most people wouldn't think they fit together very well.
On the one hand, you've got traditional and non-traditional Celtic Art - while on the other you've got the streamlined retro-futuristic world of The Future That Never Was, home to folks like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and, well, my own characters. There are posters, archival prints, greeting cards, blank books, and lots more.
Anyway people tell me it does sort of all fit together, but then again, they may be humoring me. Mainly they're sort of backing away with their hands up at the time. Decide for yourself!
I did a series of wall clock designs based on 78 record labels from decades past (well, I guess there aren’t too many recent 78 labels, when it comes down to it) and I had such a fine time with them that I spun that series out into a collection of T-shirt designs.
Not to be stopped, I designed a bunch of swing dance T-shirts for the sort of folks who still love that music, as I do. Bring it!
This site is all Celtic art - but it's spun a bit differently. The Saga Shirts t-shirts are black (and, now, in a variety of colors!), and the flavor of the site itself is both dark and a bit playful. "The Tragical Tale of Saga Shirts" describes the curious circumstances that lie behind this online store, as it might have been written by the redheaded stepchild of H.P. Lovecraft and J. Peterman.
Many of these designs are based on recognizable symbols, like the Biohazard symbol, or the Chaos Star - but within, around, and in fact forming those modern designs are intricate knotwork patterns that live within them. Pretty neat stuff, if you ask me.
So as you may have figured out by now, my retro future Retropolis art is where my brain spends most of its time. I know this because it sends me these cool postcards.
But the fact is, I have done other things too. Some of the sites you see on this page may look familiar - the top row lists the three online shops that this site's products come from - but keep going - there's more!
Highlights are the several spots where I feature my Celtic and Celtic inspired art. That's a style of work I did a lot of back in the 1980s and I still go back to visit from time to time.
And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention my Webomator blog. That's where I most often take a little time to mention what I'm up to right now.
