if the weapon isn't the key visual, it's alright.



medio victim is the only shirt with a great use of the weapons as the key visual.



-Chris

Threadless submilinaly advertises hate!

Maybe because a lot of Threadless participants are teenage males?

For some, 'gun' is 'power' written in shorthand.

maybe because more then half the people who submit stuff have no art background. they just purchased photoshop or illustrator and automatically think that they are artists.





i think the whole "gun"phase has kinda passed. the new thing is the drawings that look like something a 5year old would draw. and all these people are like "omg, thats like so cute", "i would so wear that". you know you wouldnt. why in hell would you wear a stick figure with baby like writing on a t-shirt.... its not cute, its trash and cheap.

yeah, guns are definitely overused. can't people think of anything more interesting? there are certainly more creative ways to be violent, if violence (or anti-violence) is the message. at this point, i give designs with guns automatic zeros, unless they are incredible... but i can't think of anything that's been incredible lately.



the worst are the guns with flowers and hearts designs. some things about the 80s should stay dead.

I can think of a few "morbid" designs which are the subject of great controversy on threadless. They don't all involve guns, but violence appears to be the main theme:



Flowers In The Attic

The Killing Tree

Medio Victim

Mourning Girl

Gunjector



I own all of these except Medio Victim and I really like them. I certainly don't think wearing them makes me some sort of badass or rebel, but I find the overall images to be powerful and significant.



Flowers In The Attic, to me, is a conflicting statement. Out of great violence is beauty. I agree that there are a lot of images of guns with hearts or other pretty insignia that are just sort of lame, but the way this image is put together is what works for me.



Medio Victim makes the knives and weapons almost secondary. It is more about the threat than the actual individual elements.



Gunjector probably uses the gun as the most central element and I really like it because of it's representation of pulp films. It is a bit cheesy and cliche, but it works for the theme.



The Killing Tree is much like Flowers In The Attic in that it displays two opposite sides of one underlying theme. It is controversial, but I think it has a stronger message that isn't entirely of the violence itself.



Mourning Girl is probably the most simplistic of them all and I admit that the gun is sort of useless in this one. The main reason I bought it is the placement of the image and the fact that it is a red shirt (which I have few of). I like it, but the image of the girl could have been just as bold without the gun. That said, I find the girl the primary focus, not the gun.

i agree there's too many guns, and it's a shame because one of my first ideas was a shirt saying Guns Are Gay or something like that with the intention of pissing off rednecks, but now i just don't want to do a gun design.