Welcome! Imaginary Shirt is a project where I research visual elements from high schools’ histories and then use them to make new t-shirt concepts. If you’re associated with one of these schools and would like to make any of these imaginary shirts a reality, let me know! I’d love to help you accomplish that. This companion newsletter gives some more details on process and on the schools featured. Enjoy!
Hi! I’m David, and I’m behind the Imaginary Shirt project. The project involves choosing various high schools, researching their visual histories, and rescuing elements from those histories to remix or reuse in new t-shirt concepts. I post a set of concepts for a different school every day on Instagram, but I want to do something a little different with this newsletter.
Every Monday morning, I’ll publish a newsletter. The newsletter will give an overview of what was posted on Instagram in the prior week, but will also go into some (hopefully interesting and/or fun) detail about either the schools represented or about my process in coming up with the concepts. If I’m being honest, I’m planning on the fact that sometimes there will be whatever digression I can dream up that’s at least tangentially related to the post. I’ll also include a design that I’ve posted in the past, and I’m thinking of some other regular features. I really hope you’ll join me. In today’s newsletter (issue? episode?), I’d like to post a sample of what you might expect. The regular, weekly stuff will start this Monday, April 17.
From the Archive
Queen Anne Grizzlies, Seattle, WA
Queen Anne High School in Seattle was closed in 1981, but not before it was attended by, among others, Hank Ketcham (creator of Dennis the Menace), L. Ron Hubbard (creator of Scientology), and former United States Representative and Lt. Governor of Washington Joel Pritchard (co-creator of pickleball.) And what would the American experience be without Dennis the Menace, Scientology, and pickleball?
You may be asking yourself when pickleball was invented, seeing as it seems to have skyrocketed in popularity in just the past few years. The answer was surprising to me—1965! It didn’t become the official sport of the state of Washington, though, until March 2022, when Washington governor Jay Inslee took some time out from trying to save the environment to sign Washington SB 5615 into law in the Bainbridge Island backyard where it was invented.
The Queen Anne building has been repurposed into condos. No word as to whether the units are haunted by the ghosts of Messrs. Hubbard, Ketcham, and Pritchard.
The Queen Anne set of designs is one of my very, very favorite, and I had a hard time picking only one to share here. See more designs from the Queen Anne set here.
A Recent Project
My project is focused on shirts, but every once in a while I like to dabble in some amateur jersey design. I was pleased with this set of Florida Gator basketball jerseys that I was playing around with recently. The white and orange versions (and the numbers on all there) include type based on the old type used in the football stadium (and in the end zones), which has been replaced. The side panels include a form of Gator legend Mr. Two Bits’s tie, as well as the old UF circle logo that I love so much. The blue version borrows the beautiful “Florida” script that the baseball team has been using of late.
A Recommendation
I’ve been listening to this song a lot lately:
This is just a sample of what you might expect. If you haven’t already, I hope you’ll subscribe—it’s free! If you do, I’ll see you on Monday morning.
Tell your friends!