A while ago—back in late 2005 and early 2006—I was the co-founder of a little car enthusiast site named The Car Showcase. My partner and I figured that since we liked looking at cars, others would as well, and in spite of the absolutely horrible programming we had done, we established a social network for car enthusiasts the world over. We got over 3,000 members in just a month and a half, but maintaining the site was hard since it was so poorly developed.

Rest In Peace TCS

Now I figure I can use the name to represent blog posts when I find a really kick ass car. It’s the least I could do for a great brand that never had a chance. Our users were great; even more enthusiastic than Carlo (my co-founder) and I, and they had great cars and knew so much and the forums were abuzz with topic after topic. Today I stumbled across a really nice car in particular, the Novitec Tunero F430, a modified Ferrari. Anyways, here are the pictures:

Tu Nero F430 Front Passenger Side

Tu Nero F430 Rear Passenger Side

Tu Nero F430 Rear

Tu Nero F430 Driver Side

Tu Nero F430 Rear Driver Side

Overall, it’s probably the most well-made and beautiful car I’ve seen. Coming from someone who favors Aston Martins and Lamborghinis, that says something. There’s something about that finish that I just love, and the overall style looks so well thought out and well-executed. It’s something else…

What do you think? Do you know of any hotter cars?

Sabrina wearing the Pacman tee

If there’s one thing that transcends time and space, and perhaps even logic, it’s old school game icons. Pacman most notably. Donkey Kong and the Galaga posse are popular as well, creating a range of humorous and stylish pieces of art and clothing over the years.

I designed the Pacman Graph shirt for AntiClothes based off of a wildly popular picture floating around the internet, but limited only to the web culture. I wanted to see it expressed outside the web and in “real life” in a tangible form of art and humor. It’s one of AC’s best-selling shirts, and there’s no secret why.

Owah owah owah owah owah

Rumor has it AntiClothes is coming out with another type of Pacman shirt, so keep your eyes peeled! If you’d like to see more gaming-related clothing, make sure to check out Jinx, who is an online shop dedicated purely to gaming related clothes. Cool stuff, even though they’re our competition.

Want to get your hands on Mr. Pacman? Buy it here and use the discount code “kovar” for 15% off!

Epic Tees—The premier tee gallery

I’ve obviously been getting really into the tee culture as of late, and one thing I’ve noticed is that there is no solid, exceptionally designed  gallery to see all the tees that are out there. There are plenty of places to plop your tee to show off, but I feel none of the sites execute with the proper style an industry such as this deserves.

I think great designers deserve a great showroom, and that’s the mission behind Epic Tees. I’m still working on the design and debating what platform I develop it in. Here’s what I’ve narrowed it down to:

• Using Wordpress would be easiest for me, but it would also be the most limiting. Hacking up a pre-made theme with the proper functionality and making sure it maintains a particular level of aesthetic integrity would be hard to do—or damn near impossible.
• I could hire a programmer to do exactly what I want, but this would cost money now as well as in the future when I need an update. As I covered before, money is tight for me right now, though things seem to be turning around with the freelance work (I’ll post about it soon).
• I’m tempted to finally crack open my Beginning Ruby book and to take Epic up as my first fully-developed site. The language is supposedly the easiest to learn when stacked with Rails, and I’d like to be a little less oblivious in regards to code. Right now, it all looks like the Matrix to me once I step outside the realm of HTML and CSS.

As with my other projects, there is a business model involved. Remember, always have a business model. Epic Tees will let any designer or company add their tee for a fee of $10. This is to keep spammers out and to make it so I can tell clients to shove off when I have designs to put into Epic’s listing.

My goal is to get the site to hold 1,000 shirts and be PageRank 4 by the next Google PR update and to make the $10 worth it for the back link value alone, on top of the potential sales the site will generate for everyone. Obviously, some brands have affiliate programs and I will throw in as many shirts as I can from these companies so long as the quality isn’t laughable. If you’ve got a clothing label, give me a shout! I’ll gladly add you for free for the initial release.

Which platform do you think I should use? Is $10 too little per shirt, too much, or just right?

In my quest for PR coverage for AntiClothes, I’ve been contacting blog masters within the uber-cool tee realm, and of my initial contacts, two blogs loved our shirts enough to cover them in dedicated posts and share to their users a special 15% discount.

Pop Culture Tees - Run by Liz

Liz does an amazing job with running her blog Pop Culture Tees. She recently had a redesign and the site looks amazing. She features great guest posts as well, such as Blake Poutra’s article discussing the value of vector imagery versus raster illsutrations in tee designing. She reviewed AC’s Reformed Nudist shirt and I think completely nailed the approach AntiClothes takes in its work:

I think their ability to juggle that line between genuinely awesome artwork and being witty in a kind of dry, clever way, is what will make these guys stand out. Plus, we really dig the subtle humor you’ll find everywhere on their site. I bet these guys have a blast making tees.

Thanks a million Liz! Hopefully your users love your 15% discount code “POP”!

Hide Your Arms - Andy's masterpiece

With a name like Hide Your Arms, Andy’s blog has to be good—and it is. One of the largest tee-related blogs, ‘HYA’ is well-respected and being covered by his majesty is always exciting. Our confidant from across the pond has great character and an equally great interest in covering celebrities celebrating the tee culture. Andy points out:

…they run the gamut that runs far beyond the reaches of ‘funny’ (I’m sorry about the quotation marks, they just feel necessary when I write about ‘funny’ tees) towards the more serious end of things on the design scale too.

It’s nice to have someone outside the AC circle notice our efforts on supplying the world with humorous and strictly delicious tees (and of course sometimes a combination).

Andy, you’re the man! Enjoy your 15% code “HIDE”!

Are you a blog or magazine and want to cover us? Have at it.

I’ve been on a real creative kick the past week, which might explain why I’m out doing things rather than taking the time to blog. I’ve done a little work for Noah’s project, betArcade. I’ve applied for the internship position available at Challenge Games—the people who created Duels as well as the new game Baseball Boss (the project I’d be working on if I get the position); both are browser-based games. They’ve gotten about $15M in funding from big daddy VC firm Sequoia within the past few months, so things are looking in their direction for sure. I’ll cover more on their market later.

Lately Jörg, my partner on Datewi.se, and I have been kicking around ideas regarding development for iPhone applications, and one very simple one came to mind today which I took the time to mock up: A gallery featuring t-shirt designs from companies all over the web displaying shirts randomly pulled from our database in a grid, where users can click on a design to order it if they like it.

T-Shirt Gallery displaying random shirts

The app would be monetized similarly to Gary Vaynerchuk’s brand new site Please Dress Me where shirts are sold via affiliate deals with the shirts’ retailer websites, and our app would also charge a listing fee per shirt hovering at about the same price as your average shirt ($15-20). The image above displays how the app could look when opened, shuffling through the database to display shirts at complete random (though I only used AntiClothes shirts in my demo). I’m not sure I like the grid; I think it could look much more structured and less cramped in the iPhone interface.

iPhone T-Shirt App Search Functions

It will also have a search function, allowing the user to search based on what color tee they are looking for, particular tagwords that interest them, and also price (not displayed). For instance AntiClothes’ Zombie shirt might be tagged with ‘zombie’, ‘blood’, ’smear’, ‘red’, ‘black’, etc. etc.—By the way, go get this shirt before Holloween; it’ll be a hit. In the demo, I searched for both a description and a brand name, so if you wanted to look specifically through one brand’s offerings, you can.

I intend to bring this to market. It’ll be a great exercise for me in developing the front-end of an iPhone application and will be great back-end work for Jorg, especially since we have a much heavier app in the pipeline, as well as other ideas we’d like to get out.

What do you guys think of this app? Would you use it? Should we charge users for it?

Splattered Eagle tee design

The design of the Splattered Eagle shirt I did for Bryan over at AntiClothes was meant to expand the brand into a more stylized realm, rather than text-based or humor-based tees. The splatters surrounding the eagle were meant to contrast with the comparatively smooth form and profile birds have, really gripping the viewers attention and (hopefully) forcing them to investigate further.

Production of the shirt was actually more simple than it may seem. Creating brushes and patterns using Photoshop and Illustrator (here’s a tutorial on how), as well as using brushes I have gotten amongst the web for free really helped in creating this design. One thing I love about the ready availability of brushes for Illustrator is how it allows the designer to focus on the design rather than preparations for the design; though some may argue creating brushes is a more authentic process. I’m not sure I disagree either, since I make all my brushes in Photoshop myself.

Monkey graffiti outside my apartment

Recently money hasn’t exactly been on my side. I haven’t had any luck in getting a co-signer for my student loan, and 10 months of schooling costs $4,047, and the housing for this period costs $10,050. Add on food and keeping myself sane (read: entertainment) with an extra $400 a month and that brings my yearly expenses to $18,097, or about $1,800 a month. And of course, as life seems to happen when you don’t want it to, I’m sure a few more dollars should be tacked on for randomness.

So my goal should be to generate $2,000 in revenue a month, right? Sure, but I think I can do better while not sacrificing and am striving for $5,000/mo. Of course it sounds greedy, but I would rather avoid being in any debt what-so-ever and be able to start saving, because once this constant in my life known as university is over, who knows where I’ll be or what I’ll need to do.

How will I achieve this? I have my startups of course, which will conveniently be releasing during late September and mid-October; Datewi.se, Jobzor, and Football Bio. I also have my commission-based work for AntiClothes and QwikMenu, my dad’s website due to be released at the end of this month—congrats on the release pops!, as well as whatever freelance or contract designing I can find.

I think I have more than enough tools available to me to secure this level of financial freedom, so let’s see what I can do with them!

What do you think? Am I taking on too much? Is my goal too high or low?

Sabrina modeling Cold Hearted

I designed this gem of a shirt for my buddy Bryan over at anticlothes.com. AntiClothes is a new take on the humor and designer tee realm. They print every design on 100% cotton American Apparel shirts and the quality of each design is, in my opinion, higher than most other companies.

I think there’s room for a more tasteful and stylish mass-audience tee company, and AntiClothes fills that void nicely. The other companies skimp on quality shirts and their designs are usually obviously cooked up in a matter of minutes; and if not, they sure appear that way. I don’t see why it’s acceptable for these companies to spare attention to detail, but I’m proud to be one of AntiClothes‘ designers—focusing on the quality of the shirts rather than quantity. That will come with time.

Snag this shirt at AntiClothes.com $16 with my 15% discount code: “kovar”

What do you think of this shirt? Should I give one away?

I know, I know… I got rid of my old blog. I didn’t find it very insightful or meaningful or entertaining, so I didn’t bother backing it up here.

My main focus now will be on my companies and things I learn with them, as well as my other entrepreneurial endeavors. I’m having issues deciding what to write as my official first blog entry. I was thinking of maybe writing about what my definition of entrepreneurship is and how I relate to it, but I think that’s a bit too insightful as a hello.

Any ideas? What would you like me to write about?