Jan 13, 2015 •Permalink

Freshly Laundered 014 / Jory Raphael

Our fourteenth interviewee (and first for 2015) is Jory Raphael. Jory is the co-founder of Notabli, a designer, illustrator, awesome Dad, and pretty funny guy. You may know him from such things as his line of vector icons, Symbolicons, his artwork for 5by5.tv, or perhaps one of our best selling tees, Sportsball. Click through to learn more about Jory, his work at Notabli, and what he works on in his free time.

CB: We love your latest Hipster Icons for the Flat set of Symbolicons. How did Symbolicons come to exist?

JR: Hey, thanks! I happen to like the hipster icons, too :) I have a ton more in the same style that I hope to release soon - if I could stop procrastinating. And by procrastinating, I mean “being ridiculously productive at other things while ignoring my icons”. And by “ridiculously productive”, I mean procrastinating.

Symbolicons have gone through quite the evolution. The very first icons I ever designed were actually for a couple of pedestrian wayfinding signs. From there I created a few more in the same style to use on a client’s website. And since the creation of icons hadn’t been scoped for that project budget, I offered to make them for free, as long as I kept the rights. It was a rare moment of prescience for me.

At some point, I looked down and noticed that I had created a bunch of icons that weren’t half bad, and I thought “hey, maybe I can sell these”. And so I did. And then someone actually bought them. And then I was hooked.

CB: It’s definitely easy to get hooked on selling things, you could say we have that problem too. Tell us a little about your newest venture, Notabli. Where’d that idea come from?

JR: If Symbolicons are all about creating something of value for designers (and developers), then Notabli is all about creating something of value for parents (and their kids) [and their family] {and their friends}. Basically what I’m saying is that I’m all about creating value.

My buddy and fellow designer Jackson Latka and I created Notabli as a way to authentically document childhood. On the surface, it’s an easy way to privately share photos, videos, audio, quotes, and notes about your kids with the people who actually want to see them. But below the surface, it’s a way to create a powerful archive of the most important part of life. So instead of selfies, status updates, and pictures of last night’s dinner, we encourage folks to post moments that they want remembered. P.S. Your dinner last night looked fantastic.

CB: Notabli sounds awesome! Parents are going to love having that virtual archive to go back through I bet. What’s the response been like so far?

JR: The response so far has been fantastic. If you’re a parent, and you love your kids, you’ll love Notabli. If you’re a parent, and you’re only mildly fond of your kids, then you’ll probably still love Notabli.

Right now, we’re iOS-only (with a web viewing app and email digests), but are working hard to complete the picture. A full-featured web app will be launching in the next couple of months, along with an Android app.

CB: Awesome! When you’re not working on Notabli what are you doing?

JR: Are my partners at Notabli reading this? If so, then I’m never not working on Notabli. Right now, while I’m responding to this question, I’m actually working on Notabli. When I make breakfast in the morning, the pancakes are shaped like the Notabli logo. (And yes, I eat pancakes every single morning. It’s a requirement if you’re a Vermonter. I wake up early, tap a few maple trees, convert the sap into maple syrup in my attached sugarhouse, milk a cow, and then make pancakes… and then work on Notabli.)

But seriously (yes, I know what that word means), when I’m not working on Notabli, I’m spending time with my family. And occasionally making icons. And even less occasionally working on a children’s book. Wait is “less occasionally” a double-negative?

CB: A children’s book!? That sounds cool. Are you writing it? Illustrating it? Both? Tell us more.

JR: Both! Albeit rather slowly. I actually have two ideas for children’s books. The first will be called “The Little Girl, the Little Boy, and the Rock Giant”, or something similar. It’s a story about (you guessed it) a little girl and a little boy meeting a rock giant (and also a baby turtle - awwwwwwww) and the shenanigans that occur thereafter. The kids will, of course, be modeled after my own. But they’re used to that. The Notabli logo is actually based on them (my daughter has a little gumdrop haircut and loves headbands, and my son has a double-cowlick).

The second is called “The Day the Signs Went for a Walk,” and will probably be aimed at a younger audience. The goal is to teach about types of signage, and why we need it. I did wayfinding design for a number of years, and it has always fascinated me. The book starts when the dude on the crosswalk sign decides to abandon his post and take a stroll around, and then all of the havoc it creates.

Apparently both of my book ideas have an event happening that results in havoc and/or shenanigans. In other words, write what you know.

CB: Jory, you are seriously so amazing. The idea for the wayfinding book is so clever and cute. Thanks for taking time out of your hectic schedule to chat with us. Now, back to work!

You can keep up with all things Jory via his twitter feed and website. Check out Jory’s 2015 Year of Icons project on dribbble. You can find out more about Notabli here and if you’d like to see any of Jory’s tees come back for another round, make sure you get your requests in.

Nov 18, 2014 •Permalink

Better Than Cheap

What if I told you, there was something better than cheap t-shirts? What if I told you, that’s what we have at Cotton Bureau?

I’m listening to the New York Philharmonic’s program “Summertime Classics: Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and Friends” (introductions by Alec Baldwin) on SoundCloud, right now, for free. A brief ad was read at the beginning and another toward the end, but nobody ever asked me for any money. My SoundCloud account is free. (Though the Philharmonic’s is not.) The performance has been made available to me by the Philharmonic for free. I could be wrong about our Russian comrades, but I suspect their work is in the public domain and their estates are no longer being compensated for their compositions.

If neither SoundCloud nor the Philharmonic nor the deceased composers are being paid by me, the customer, and the revenue from ads and SoundCloud Pro subscriptions is limited, why is everyone okay with it? Kevin Kelly provided the answers all the way back in 2008 in his seminal post on the economics of the Internet, Better Than Free. “In short,” Kelly wrote, “the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.” Both SoundCloud and the Philharmonic are perfectly happy—thrilled, even—to accept our attention as payment, today. Each, of course, would like to collect real money from us at some point in the future.

How will they do this? What do they have to sell that can’t be copied? Kelly lists eight possibilities: immediacy, personalization, intepretation, authenticity, embodiment, patronage, and findability. While SoundCloud does not offer a for-pay service (waiting to be acquired, probs) there are services that you can pay for, depending on which of those generatives you value most. The Philharmonic, for example, makes its performances available on Rdio, a service known for its personalization. Alternatively, if I prefer the Philharmonic to receive the lion’s share of my money, I can buy access to this performance directly from their store. Of course, iTunes and Spotify also carry their recordings. Spotify in particular has had reason recently to claim that theirs is a business in which both they and the artists are thriving—all because not despite living in a universe of super abundant copies.

What does any of this have to do with t-shirts? In our world, things cost money. There’s no way around that. How much money though? Some things are cheap and some things—usually our things, as it turns out—are not. Price is supposed be a simple function of supply and demand. That’s what classical economics teaches us. The number of people that want a thing combined with the available quantity of that thing should yield the price people are willing to pay. In the case of recordings of Tchaikovsky, the supply is infinite—which means price ought to be zero. With t-shirts, the supply isn’t infinite, but it’s certainly quite large, which should make price correspondingly small. While that’s an undeniably valid explanation, it’s not even close to complete. We have to go further. Demand for what? Why shouldn’t you buy a cheaper version of the same thing? I’m glad you asked. Because—and here’s where we blow your mind—there is no cheaper version of the same thing. (Hold that thought, if you can.)

I’m going to introduce one more economic concept here, and that’s the idea of a substitute good. You can read all about it if you like, but the essence is that all goods (things we buy) are in some ways similar to each other and can do the same jobs. You might want a t-shirt to keep yourself warm. You know what could do the job just as well, or better? A blanket or a coat. You might want a t-shirt to make a fashion statement. But a new watch or a stylish haircut might be a better use of your money. After paying your bills and setting aside some money for a rainy day, you may wish to spend some of the money you have left over. You could go to the movies or an amusement park or a restaurant or a concert. Or you could buy a t-shirt. When you think about it that way, the potential supply of “dollars for t-shirts” (that’s just another way of saying the demand for t-shirts) is enormous.

What about the t-shirt itself? Surely we can at least agree on that, you plead. Absolutely. A t-shirt is a t-shirt is a t-shirt… except when it’s not. A t-shirt is not just a t-shirt when you care about, say, how long it will last or whether it boasts your favorite sports team’s logo or your rival’s, or, in fact, whether it has a genuine copy of your team’s logo as opposed to a shoddy ripoff. You might care where and how the shirt was made. In America? By people being fairly compensated and well-treated? It might matter a lot to you if the t-shirt profits are going to a mega-corporation or a mom-and-pop shop. All of these attributes—and many more—are integral parts of what it is exactly that you are purchasing.

There’s an inherent duality or tension in every exchange. Goods are both mere elements on a spectrum of more or less perfect substitutes and utterly unique snowflakes, sui generis bundles of traits that not only can’t be obtained anywhere else but also vary according to the preferences of you, the customer. That’s a long-winded explanation for what I wrote earlier: there is no cheaper version of the same thing.

Let’s talk, then, about how that all applies to Cotton Bureau. First, unequivocally, yes, you can buy cheap t-shirts on the Internet. No, you cannot buy cheap t-shirts (and hoodies and sweatshirts and, someday, hopefully even more things) on Cotton Bureau. Cotton Bureau t-shirts qua t-shirts are nowhere near the bottom of the price spectrum. If the price of your shirt is critical, by all means, shop somewhere else. Shop at Walmart or Woot or any of a thousand million other places you can buy cheap t-shirts. Just know that you, friend, are not buying the same thing that we are selling. You think we are selling t-shirts, expensive t-shirts. We are not. We are selling quality. We are selling community. We are selling convenience. We are selling authenticity. We are selling longevity. We are selling trust.

Every time you buy a shirt from Cotton Bureau, you know it’s going to be a good one. We work with a tremendous local print shop, and we pack every order right here in our office by hand. If—this happens every so often—there is a problem, you know Sara is going to take care of you. When you come to the site, the selection is guaranteed to be fantastic—unique designs in a diverse array of styles from the best graphic designers in the world printed on a growing variety of product types. We are absolutely committed to making Cotton Bureau a haven for designers and people that love design, a place to support and be supported. You + us + designers is an iron triangle of awesomeness. Every feature we add that makes it easier to check out, easier to follow designers your care about, easier to see what’s new; every design that goes to print; every shirt and hoodie that we deliver; every new year that we’re in business; every soul-searching blog post that we write only strengthens those relationships. You believe in what we’re doing because we’ve been straight with you from the beginning. We don’t have investors, we have customers. We don’t exploit designers, we pay them. We don’t sell cheap t-shirts. We sell the incarnation of our blood, sweat, and tears—and we do it at a fair, sustainable price. That is what nobody else can copy.

Many, many, many of you have supported us in the past and are supporting us right now because the ideas expressed above are meaningful to you, and we love you for it. Let’s pause for just a second to celebrate that support and the fact that the number of t-shirts, hoodies, and sweatshirts we sell each month is enough to pay our bills. Cotton Bureau is a business—a small one and a young one, but a business nonetheless, not a startup without revenue or one just hoping the numbers begin to add up before the play money runs out—that pays a living wage to every person working on its behalf and still manages to pay designers real money. (If making a big pile of money by growing quickly and selling out was what we wanted to do, we would have raised funding a long time ago.) We will continue to make Cotton Bureau better for as long as people keep coming back to us with new designs and you all keep buying them. We are beyond thrilled that each day we come into the office we get to work on improving Cotton Bureau for the long haul. We have ourselves a real, sustainable business. We might be biased, but that sounds a whole lot better than cheap t-shirts to us.

If you think so too, we covet your support. Share this blog post, subscribe to the RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, join the newsletter, buy a shirt, tell a friend—we can’t do this without you.

Nov 13, 2014 •Permalink

What’s New?

A lot changes in a few months, it turns out. Let’s run through it all, shall we?

Hoodies + Multiple Tee Options

Did you ever think, “I wish that shirt came in a different color”? Or, maybe, “Tees are great. But it’s getting cold. I could use a hoodie.” We read your mind. Each Cotton Bureau design can now be printed on up to three different blanks (blanks are what screenprinters call the item that receives the ink). If you’ve worked with us before, you might be curious how the process has changed. As in the past, you submit you artwork along with your preference for the primary design execution. We then work carefully with the you to come up with a few additional great looking options—say, a neutral-style for those that prefer black or grey tees or a brighter option for those that like a little more color in their wardrobe.

More Sizes

Besides the additional style options per design, we’re also very pleased to be able to now offer a fuller range of sizes. Nearly every new design on the site is now also available in Men’s XS as well as Men’s 3–5X. We’re still actively exploring sizes and manufacturing options, so if you have particular needs, please let us know.

Design Improvements

You know what’s really important for a retail site? Making it easy for the customer to buy things. Increasing the complexity of the design page by adding more products meant we needed to find an even smarter and more elegant way to communicate your options. We whiteboarded a depressingly-large number of techniques. In the end, we think we really nailed it though.

Each design has a number of executions, which we’re showing as a stack of options to the right of the product preview. Each option shows the most important details: manufacturer, fabric, color, and an SVG icon showing the shape and texture. Selecting any of those options updates the product preview to the left (or above if you’re using a smaller screen).

You’ll notice we chose to build something custom here instead of using a dropdown. Dropdowns are lazy design. We’re showing you more information, reducing the number of taps or clicks, and giving you a bigger tap and click target. We built a similarly-custom size selector. Again, rather than using a dropdown, we’re showing each available size as a nice, big clickable target. We think the attention to detail on this page is going to make a difference.

Once we got started tweaking the design, we just couldn’t stop. The home page has been lightened up. We’re back to using product mockups instead of the zoomed-in detail view thanks to our fancy new mockup templates we re-built (you can pick those up right here), but you can filter by detail, tee, and, now, hoodie. If you’re really paying close attention, you’ll also notice we moved away from our beloved Futura to the friendlier Brandon Grotesque and sprinkled in Minion Pro for contrast.

Designer Payouts

It is essential to us that designers are fairly compensated for the designs they sell on Cotton Bureau. Because printing t-shirts is a pretty straight-forward process, we’ve never allowed designers to set arbitrarily large, Kickstarter-style goals. If a design hits 12, we’re going to print it. It’s your job as a designer or community leader to find ways to promote it without misleading and manipulating your fans. Kickstarter projects need a critical mass of people to fund an idea; t-shirts don’t. That’s why we automatically increase our designer payouts as our costs decrease. Each time you hit a new cost tier—50, 75, 100, 150, 600, and 1200 items—we add $1 to your margin. Every item successfully sold counts toward those tiers, no strings attached.

Looks like that’s about it. The next 12 months are going to be as busy for us as ever, and the next four weeks are absolutely critical. We’ve got a truckload of features we really, really want to add to the site. If you want to see that happen, we still need your help. Follow us on Twitter and sign up for the newsletter if you haven’t already (in addition to our lovely, weekly newsletter highlighting all things awesome about Cotton Bureau, you’ll also receive a 10% OFF COUPON as ~~a token of our appreciation~~ an inducement to spend money with us.

One last thing: please, please tell a friend about Cotton Bureau. Christmas is right around the corner here in the U.S. It’s just not possible to give a better gift than one of our small-batch tees and hoodies.

Nov 5, 2014 •Permalink

Freshly Laundered 013 / Wade Ryan

Lucky number 13, Wade Ryan, is a designer living and working in Dallas, Texas. When he’s not busy designing sports trading cards at his day job, he’s out exploring the scene and sharpening his skills with a little side work. Read on to learn more about Wade.

CB: Tell us about your Sports Cards designs, how’d you get that gig? Where do you look for inspiration?

WR: I came across the junior designer position upon graduating from Ohio University in the spring of 2010. I had collected football cards for years as a kid and when I saw the opening I immediately applied and bothered the company until they gave me a shot. The company owns and releases many different brands that are sold annually (within all the different sports), that each have their own niche and theme. Some are very low end, some are very high end. Some have vintage/worn looks, while other brands are minimal and modern. Because of the vast difference between brands, I’m able to design in a lot of different styles. Research is a necessary key to keeping these brands fresh and reinventing them year after year. Almost any design outlet available on the web could hold value for inspiration so we as a team can get new ideas relating to color, typography, photography, and other design ideologies. Inspiration could come from someone’s shirt design, or the body style of a car, or a 3D motion graphic. It’s everywhere and all over.

CB: How’s the design community out there in Dallas? Are you involved in anything happening around town?

WR: Dallas is a huge, exciting city with so many opportunities to see great art and hear amazing designers speak. Between the vast amount of agencies and boutiques in Dallas always having shows/galleries, the ridiculously talented design community in Austin coming through, and the constant onslaught of speakers and artists showing and nationally touring - I have my pick of things to see and people to meet. I try to get out there whenever I can to meet new people and experience other artist’s work in person. Dallas has no shortage of art events or anything close to a lack of a design community.

CB: That’s great to hear that the Dallas community is vibrant and giving some love to designers and artists. It seems Austin gets all of the credit for what’s coming out of Texas these days. Got any cool side projects going right now? How do you spend your time away from your desk?

WR: I try to do as much freelance and side work as I can to get better design-wise and experience some different types of clients and business. The want to create more and get more work out there is what drew me to Cotton Bureau. My freelance clients range from all different types of people and organizations. Recently, I just got done designing a label for an up-and-coming vodka brand out of Oklahoma City that should be in Texas by the end of the year called Success Vodka. I also have re-branded and created a lot of merch for some of my favorite bands including Four Year Strong in recent months. When I’m not designing I’m usually at concerts or exploring festivals and different things around the city with friends.

CB: It seems to be a common theme that designers are into some great bands. What kind of stuff do you listen to while you’re working? How does what you’re listening to affect the outcome of your project?

WR: I typically hate when I ask someone what they listen to and they respond, “everything”, but I listen to so many different things when I'm working. I think it changes throughout the day and I go on spurts with genres depending on what’s new and the time of year. I listen to a lot of pop punk and hardcore music on a pretty regular basis. Punk rock was my first love (as far as arts) and I actually began my life as a designer when I started drawing and creating promotional materials for friend’s bands in high school. I have always been, and will always be, into those type of bands. I also listen to quite a bit of electronic music, hip-hop, and country in the summertime. I think listening to music helps me zone in on a project and really focus. The outside elements around me disappear and the music gives me a pace that’s less easily interrupted. A great album can work me through a project like it could help someone get through a tough time or a road trip.

Currently playing: State Champs - Elevated

CB: That makes a lot of sense actually. Listening to a bunch of different genres while working on a project might make your mood a little disjointed which could show up in your work. Thanks for chatting with us Wade!

To pick up Wade’s latest design, Don’t Make Plans, make sure you place your order before Wednesday, November 12th at 2pm EST. You can also keep up with Wade on twitter or via his very prolific tumblr account.

Oct 29, 2014 •Permalink

Freshly Laundered 012 / Jamey Erickson

Our latest interview is with designer Jamey Erickson, from Minneapolis. We got the low down on his background and hobbies, from working with bands, to running his own agency, then folding that agency, to taking pictures of the moon from his backyard and teaching little kids to love science. Read on to get the scoop.

CB: Give us a little background: How’d you get into graphic design? What was your first gig?

JE: How did I get into design? Good question. I think it started when I was a youngster. I used to draw baseball cards of my friends and I, then cover them in packing tape so they were glossy like all the other one’s I had. I was always super excited about creating the logos for the fictional teams we played for. Then I got into flags for awhile in middle school. I would draw flags for fictional places in the world. I even won a flag design contest for our middle school and my “design” hung in the gymnasium for 10 some odd years.

It was around that time I was running giant 10 page long, dot-matrix printed banners for any occasion around our house.

[Football Helmet Icon] Go Minnesota Vikings!! [Football Player Icon]
[Birthday Cake Icon]Happy Birthday Megan!![Birthday Present Icon]

Anything that was happening I was designing a banner for it and printing it on as long a string of perforated paper as I could.

When I was a teenager I started re-creating super hero logos on our new fancy PC running Windows 3.5. I learned HTML in my free time and started creating websites for local bands in Rochester, MN area. Spent a few years doing that before heading off to college in St Paul, MN.

During college was when it really came together. Was touring with bands, doing posters, websites, merch, basically whatever they needed. Bands would get big and I’d work for their labels, or they’d get deals with clothing companies, so I’d do a new website for the clothing company, or they’d break up and get “real jobs” so I’d wind up helping build a website for the company they worked for. I was pretty much self employed for a good part of college before getting a “day job” at Target.com my last year in school.

Worked at Target for a few years, then bounced around a few agencies, ran my own 8 person digital creative studio, Sevnthsin, for almost a decade and now design complex software systems for companies aiming to make the world a better place over at Software for Good.

CB: That’s quite the varied experience you’ve had. Do you still do any work with bands outside of your full-time job? If not, what kind of side-projects are you drawn to now?

JE: Yeah, I still do some work with bands. I do some art/tech brainstorming with the guys from Rhymesayers Records on an occasional basis. My little agency did the most recent Bon Iver website, so I keep in touch with those guys about future projects. I do a bit here and there with Doomtree as I’m still running their site for them.

As for side projects, I’ve got a strong passion in using technology to empower more meaningful interpersonal human interactions. So I’m working on my own socially curated bicycle routing/guidance app to roll out with our local bike share program NiceRide. I’m also working with a local group called Dishcourse which is a sharing economy model aimed at connecting people, neighbors, strangers for lively discussion over home cooked meals. Both projects are VERY early in their lifecycle, but they’re my current passion projects.

I’m ALSO huge into backyard astrophotography. So I’ve been working on building a community around that here in town. Starting a space-club-for-regular-folks sort of thing, getting folks together to talk about the things beyond our own skies in a down to Earth sort of manner, as well as working with a Portland based developer to expand the capability set of his otherwise amazing backyard astrophotography planning app.

I also, also worked on a pretty great project recently, releasing an album for a local jazz trio’s side project doing tribute music from the old 90’s cult classic TV show Twin Peaks. Helped them record, get a double vinyl produced and then threw a costume party release show at a local theater. Great night for sure!

So I definitely have side projects I’m jamming on.

CB: You are one busy dude! Dishcourse sounds like something I’d be totally into - what fun projects you have in the works! Between the tees you’ve done for us (and your tumblr full of space/Twin Peaks reblogs) we’re not surprised to hear you’re working on projects involving your passions. How did you get into backyard astrophotography?

JE: Well, that’s another long story. I grew up out in the country in southern Minnesota, so looking up at the stars at night was something we always did. Used to love just staring up and finding patterns in the sky, even before I knew what the constellations were. Then as I got older, moved off to college in the city and lost sight of the skies (thanks, light pollution), I just kinda fell out of it. It was sometime around 2009 that I realized I was working like a maniac and missed the things that used to inspire me when I was younger. A friend of mine and I had recently seen an article on Wired about a group of students who’d launched a weather balloon up in the air to take photos of the edge of the Earth against the blackness of space. After looking into it, we realized we could easily do that, and do it all with cell phones. So we started a project called YAVIN IV (cough, nerdy star wars reference, cough). Did that for a few months before realizing how amazing it could be when we did it with kids and used it as a platform to inspire a younger generation. So I ran a kickstarter campaign to raise money to fund the follow up project BESPIN. Got my HAM license and did a bunch of launches to then ultimately launch with a group of kids in Chicago in the early summer of 2012. During a launch in September of 2011, I inadvertently got photos of the Moon rising over southern MN and something sparked in my brain. I figured if I could get cool photos like that from my little point-n-shoot on the weather balloon, I could probably do something pretty awesome if I put a little more effort into it. I tried renting some massive telephoto lenses for my DSLR and had some fun shooting the Moon, but knew the real deal would be with a telescope. Since I’d gotten my HAM license, I’d been up to a local radio shop near my house and knew they had a consignment telescope section in the back. So I went up there and scored a pretty sweet setup for an unbelievably reasonable price. Started tinkering, reading, trying (and failing) until I started getting the hang of it. Met a bunch of folks on Twitter from all over the world who were backyard astrophotographers and we all just started chatting and learning from each other. Over time I really started to get the hang of it and now I’m looking into getting out of my backyard and shooting from darker skies on a more regular basis.

All in all, it’s been an amazingly wild adventure and I’ve really enjoyed the uphill battle that is learning to shoot deep space photos.

CB: Wait, you’re shooting pictures of the Andromeda Galaxy with a telescope in your backyard?! That’s amazing. How did the kids like the BESPIN project? Is that ongoing?

JE: Yep. I absolutely shoot in my backyard. I live up in Northeast Minneapolis, so it’s pretty light polluted, but I make it work. I keep it all on my back patio and just drag it out when I get the itch to shoot. There are certain objects I’ll never be able to shoot in the city because even with a high band light pollution filter, I’ll still get too much city light before I pick up the faintness of the object. It’s also much more difficult to find any object that isn’t a planet or the Moon, as again the light pollution washes out any real object detail to the naked eye. So I have to do a lot of aligning based on what stars I can see, taking long test exposures, then blowing out the histogram to see if I’ve got what I need. I also spend a lot of time comparing my test photos against the star patterns in some software I use to both find objects, and if it stays connected properly, control my scope to slew to the right spot in the sky. So it’s not easy to get set up and start tracking things in the sky, but it’s not bad once you get the hang of it. Then just start letting the computer run long exposures and you go sleep on the patio until you hear the creepy computer voice tell you your series is complete. Then you start another series :)

As for BESPIN, the kids loved it. I started small, just launching with like my little cousins or some of my friends’ kids. Then that’s what led to the idea to do it with a larger group. So I worked with a 3rd grade class in Chicago. A good buddy of mine’s daughter brought some photos I’d sent her into her “show and tell” and the teacher got in touch with me about launching one on their own. I suggested it’s not hard, but not really easy either, and that I’d love to come down and launch with them. So we did that for one of their last days of school in 2012. We attached a Beaker doll from their classroom to the outside and officially called the project the BEAKER-I, so the kids were just losing their minds thinking Beaker was going to space. We lost it in Lake Michigan for a day until, by some strange miracle, one of the electronics turned on long enough for us to get a position and a fishing boat captain happened to have the day off and was willing to take us out there. It was all pretty amazing and we had a big “Welcome Home” ceremony at the school where we were awarded badges of honor by the kids for helping Beaker make it home safe. You can read all about the adventures here. There’s an amazing video at the end made by Dave, my buddy whose daughter’s class it was. We showed that to the kids at the event and there were kids just going nuts over it. Really rewarding experience for sure.

CB: That’s really, really, really cool. Was your Moon tee inspired by any of the backyard photos you’ve taken?

JE: Yeah, actually. The Moon shirt was from one of my first attempts through a telescope. Borrowed a buddy’s Refractor and put it on a camera tripod and snapped this thing.

Thought it’d be fun to make the shirt based on one of my first astrophoto attempts.

CB: Beautiful photo. The tee turned out pretty well too, we think. Moon was CB’s first glow-in-the-dark tee, pretty cool! Thanks for chatting with us, Jamey!

To keep up with all things Jamey, you can follow him on twitter and tumblr. He also has a brand new website showcasing his work which launched this morning. Let him know how much you dig it, cool?