As summer comes to a close, i just wanted to share a look into some personal images from MY summer. As i get older i find myself doing alot LESS of the whole going out and getting drunk, partying….you know. Images are a snapshot of times in your life and as i sit here and edit these photos i realize my life has become more about building this business and spending QUALITY time with people i care about. Click through the photos to read a detailed explanation of whats going on in each picture. Enjoy.

So….after successfully presenting Citizen Cope with a design i made and having him place an order i was asked by his assistant to design another few. This was the first one i did. If i need to design for someone, ESPECIALLY a band, i listen to their music while i create the art. i kept seeing Clarence strumming the guitar almost like the way a painter does with brush strokes. So what i did what hand draw a portrait of him with a pencil, then digitally painted swirls coming out of the guitar.

Truthfully i wanted to do a piece specifically for the first single off the Rainwater LP (Healing Hands) since i had just done one for what i believe to be the 2nd single (Couldnt Explain Why). it just didnt come to me. i didnt just want to do an image of …hands. Anyway this is what i got from the music. Hopefully they love it and use it for something.

I set up a table for the 1st Annual Wine for Cure event given by Rochester Womens Magazine. This was definitely the biggest event ive done seeing as i gave away 150 high quality Jayarr Customs shirts (Fun Fact #7). The response was overwhelming, yet youd be surprised sometimes how HARD it is to give away something for free. This is the caliber of event that ill be doing from now on…no question.

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I had a  barbeque here for friends and family last weekend. i printed free tshirts for everyone, hand packed and spiced my own burgers, AND COOKED for them, all on me. it was perfect weather. We played Kan jam and just vibed out with eachother listening to a 6 hour playlist i handpicked…all good summer tunes i like. Maybe ill have a more open invite barbeque next year.

Very few of you know im doing a barbeque in August. I wanted to give back to my family and close friends by buying food and cooking for them, printing them tshirts, etc. For some reason im inspired at night to do art. I have no idea what it is about the twilight hours that gets the juices flowing but this is the type of stuff i come up with.

As soon as I print a shirt and hand it off to a customer it begins a journey. It may end up on the back of a politician in the white house.  It may be used  to wipe baby spit off of someones arm. It may end up in a landfill in New Mexico. Who knows. I recently printed a shirt whose journey ill never forget.

Anyone who has been to my shop for more than 30 minutes has heard music by an artist named Citizen Cope. I have NO idea what it is about this man’s music that makes me feel at peace, but it does. His soulful, hip hop laced way of telling stories is on HEAVY repeat here at the shop. I mean like….literally every day of the last year and a half has been graced with his guitar plunking. Needless to say when I heard his tour was coming to this area I got really excited. So I began to plan.

I am a designer by nature, so I began to think of potential designs for a shirt I would wear to the concert. My love for all recognizable corporate logos led me to create a play-on-sight of the Coca-Cola logo. Its perfect. Citizen-Cope…Coca-Cola. Anyway within a few hours I had about 5 shirts, very high quality printed to bring them to the show.

One thing occurred to me as I packaged these really…NON AMATEURISH looking shirts into see-through poly-urethane bags:  “I hope this dude doesn’t think I’m trying to bootleg his merch and make money at the show”. So I went to his website and emailed the merch account a mock-up of the shirt. I let them know I was coming there and wanted to give a shirt to Clarence  (Cope’s real name) and wasn’t trying to land an account or anything. No response. Here’s where it gets good.

So I arrive at the show, with the shirt on. Awesome. I’d say about 5 people asked me where I got the shirt. What a tough question. I couldn’t tell them that I MADE THEM just in case when they realized Cope’s merch table didn’t have any, they run to the promoters and blab. My response was,”I dunno…you better ask him later.” We were right by the front of the stage so my shirt was in full view. I had to have acknowledgment. From stage right enters his traveling band…then Cope.

Immediately he saw the shirt. I don’t mean like after 30 seconds of being on stage…I mean like as soon as he got to the middle. His face lit up as he clasped his hands as if to mime his approval. The crowd was roaring, so I had to mouth,”Hey I made you a few.” and gave the hold on 1 second sign. I reached into the bag and threw the shirts onto the stage. He picked it up and then mimed,’Meet me off stage let me get your number.” Double Awesome.

The show ends and his assistant meets me off the side, gets my info and introduces me to Cope after all his fans are done swarming him. He says “Let talk about this behind the trailer.” So to make a long story short we ended up chatting for about 10 minutes about my shirt, how I designed it, if I’d print for him, shirt quality etc. I KEPT saying how important it was to me that he didn’t think I made the shirt TO get a printing contract I really did it for the love. Which is true.

So I told you that to tell you this. I make A LOT of tshirts every day. Its fun. But there’s NOTHING like creating something that one of your favorite artists respects and is really interested in, enough to pull you away from the crowd and talk with you one on one about. THAT’S why I’m in the business. Weird to think he could be looking at the shirt right now smiling.

Update: They ordered 440 of these shirts. Uggggggaaaawesome.

Yeah. It gets hot in here sometimes. As alot of my regulars know i keep a candy jar in here and when i keep the mini fridge stocked, beverages. I got sick of offering customers sugary soda and lemonade and such, so i found a custom water bottle maker here in the city. Some money changed hands and now i have 12 cases of Jayarr Customs Water here for my patrons. Anything for you guys….

My screenprint company was featured in a local publication called Insider Magazine. As you can see by the picture above, i am pretty excited. I work VERY hard to provide good service and to make people feel good about the shirts theyre getting because to me theyre not just Tshirts with logos on them. Every order is a small step closer to me realizing my dreams. So with that said you can see why i am so stoked to get some confirmation from the media that im doing something right.

So the idea behind this REALLY simple flyer is that people dont really care about your phone number. No one is writing down your email address from a flyer. No one needs your url anymore. All they need is the name of your business and an interest in researching you further. EVERYONE USES GOOGLE FOR EVERYTHING. So i just put an image of me….being me. I have a tshirt on thats really straightforward. If anyone wants to know more about me, theyll do what they always have and go to google.

Extremely simple. Oh the power of google.