Now I’m not one for giving blatant plugs to just anyone on this rickety ol’ ship I call my Blog, but I will give credit and exposure where appropriate.
I’ve already drawn everyone’s attention to my mate Christine’s Vancouver based clothing design company “thorn & vine” following her successful graduation exhibition at the Emily Carr Institute earlier in the year. Now Chris and her business/design partner have got their business off the ground and are finally going commercial with their distinctly Vancouver-themed t-shirt designs.
This Sunday 24th September, “thorn and vine” will have a stall set up at the Portobella West Markets at Vancouver’s Plaza of Nations between 11am and 5pm where they will have a number of their t-shirt designs on display and available for purchase.
The story behind “thorn and vine’s” creative inspirations is cool and goes something like this which I have extracted from their new “MySpace” page:
A bit about thorn & vine: thorn & vine is a collaboration between 2 emerging designers, which began as an extension of their graduation project at Emily Carr, based on developing a graphic visual language for Vancouver.
The project began from Vancouver’s mixed reactions to the 2010 Olympic logo. This formed the catalyst for their project. We found there was a lack of a unified contemporary identity for the city and felt that Vancouver needed a new form of representation. A personal, more intimate take on what it is to be a true Vancouverite.
We collected and created an inventory of photographs, images & drawings of Vancouver dealing with aspects of culture, entertainment, food, landscape, & environment. We wanted to create icons that were flexible and diverse in style, simple enough to use as building blocks, to pull apart and compose to create conversations about awareness, knowledge & issues.
With fashion as our canvas we used the illustrations to develop graphics for clothing. Every T-shirt has a unique story & explanation based on the city.
We researched the cult of the t-shirt as it is a form of expression & identity. When people travel they often collect t-shirts as keepsakes. We thought that if the people of Vancouver would wear our graphics then our images were successful & would create a new sense of pride for the city.
If you check out the “pics” section of their MySpace page, you can see some of their designs in greater detail. I LOVE the “Gate Love & Hate” design I have featured in the graphic above featuring Vancouver’s much loved “Lion’s Gate Bridge”.
A final big THANKS to Chris for being sweet enough to link to my site from hers too… thanks hun!
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