We love a good coffee t-shirt, but they’re not all created equal. Some branded coffee t-shirts make you want to get your picture taken! Some are better purposed for laundry day, or take-out night.
Falling firmly into the former category are these new shirts from Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters, designed by Chicago artist Hillary Miles and available in a fun cavalcade of colors. We love cartoons, and this one has a coffee table guinea pig, a snail schlepping a coffee roaster (buttressed by a bunny!), and a blissed-out cartoon puppy. What’s not to like?
These shirts feature two design placements — the ladies-cut design up top, and a unisex style seen here below modeled by Wrecking Ball roaster Kyonghee Shin.
The concept was fantastic creatures, on an imaginary journey, but carrying coffee gear. We drew inspiration from Hillary’s prior work (like “Far Away”), as well as from “Where The Wild Things Are” and fantasy books (like Lord of the Rings).
As we developed the concept, Trish had the idea of having Kyonghee Shin, who roasts alongside Trish and who’s been beyond precious to us, lead the parade of characters. Kyonghee (@beanwife) adores Golden Retrievers (and hopes to adopt one soon), always wears an apron when doing coffee work, and usually has about an inch of heel on her shoes. So we’re calling this design, “@Beanwife Dream.”
We hope work-a-day roasters will note that the flame is pure blue!
We’re screen-printing these two different ways, across the chest for unisex cut styles and around the middle for our ladies-cut shirts, to provide an alternative to the “stare at my t-shirt means stare at my boobs” thing, which was the consensus within our female-dominated staff.
These shirts will be available via the Wrecking Ball Coffee webshop in May. Here’s an early sketch of the design to tide you over, courtesy of Wrecking Ball.
