Check out all his videos on his Vimeo Channel HERE and make sure to visit his store to pick up some new threads HERE.

(also thanks to Andy from Hide Your Arms for the tip)

This week’s Iamthetrend T-Shirt pick of the week comes to us by way of the new Death, Shred! Spring Line. There were so many great designs in this release but for me Bruised & Broken takes the cake! It is currently available for $26 HERE

Chris’s basic idea was to display the amount of unread emails that he had on a shirt. Is this completely impractical? You bet your ass it is! But I absolutely love the creativity that went into this tee, and I can safely say this is one of the craziest tees that I have come across to date!

Check out a video about the tee here:

Seems like it might be a bit itchy!

So upon arriving at Warped Tour, I took the tour of booth and came across the Stheart booth, while it was anything crazy over the top they had a ton of products prominently displayed. While looking over the products in their booth I decide to purchase their Classic V-Neck. Im not a huge fan of logo tees but for some reason I absolutely love the STHEART logo and type. After perusing their booth I met Aaron, whom owns and runs STHEART, we exchanged contacts and setup this interview and the rest is history!

Website: Stheartclothing.com

So when and why did you decide to start STHEART Clothing?

The first tees I ever printed were back in the summer of 2005. Yes, they were horrible and I have no clue as to why I chose the clothing industry, haha. I guess it just seemed really cool! It was something I always thought about doing & figured I’d give it a shot.

Lets get this out of the way. I have to be honest when I first saw the name STHEART, I thought it was Saint Heart, but now I know Im wrong! How do you pronounce the name and where did you come up with it?

Haha, I get that all the time! So many people ask for the correct pronunciation. It’s fairly simple, just say “start”. My older brother was actually the one who suggested it way back when & I loved it. It’s simple, yet effective. The word is a combination of “start” & “heart”, it’s all about the beginning of something new & following your dreams. Basically, do something with your life & make sure to give it your all!

So do you do all the artwork or do you hire artists to create your line?

I have done all the design work up to this point. Between doing the shirts for every line and setting up files for the website & myspace it gets pretty hectic. I have two designers helping with Stheart’s fall line. I’m pretty excited to add a few shirts to the mix that I haven’t done myself, and they look pretty awesome so far!

It seems the hot trend right now is very loud illustrations and colors on tees, I have noticed that you guys have a very good balance of simple designs as well as very loud designs. Was this a conscious decision and where do you see future STHEART lines going?

Honestly, my favorite shirts to wear are the simple ones. When I began the company a few years ago, all of my designs were cartoon-ish & colorful. There’s always a time for change & I’ve been loving the bold & straight-forward designs lately. I think keeping both aspects of art in our line is really important, everyone has their own taste of style and in the end I want to make something I love as well. You’ll definitely see Stheart venturing more & more into the bold aspect of art with future releases, but the loud & colorful designs will still have it‘s contribution.

I actually had the pleasure of checking out your booth at Warped Tour! How was your experience and what did you take away from it?

Warped Tour was so much work, yet a lot of fun! Waking up at 7am, setting up our booth/tent, then working until 9pm everyday was rough (not to mention the driving aspect). The two and a half weeks we did this year was a great learning experience. For the most part everyone was super helpful. Everyone seemed to work together & help out when needed, it wasn’t all just a competition on who’s the best or can sell the most. I couldn’t be more pleased with the response I received this year, definitely surpassed my expectations. Look for Stheart to be on the entire tour next year!

I have really started to see a lot of bands wearing STHEART clothing. Im sure you get a ton of requests from bands for sponsorships and I’m sure a lot people are wondering how to get sponsored and what you look for when sponsoring.

Of course. I never really sat back and looked at the direction Stheart was headed into the music industry, things just kind of happened. Stheart seems to now be a part of the indie music culture. With that being attached to the name, I get requests daily about sponsorship. I currently have 15 bands on our roster & couldn’t be happier with the ones I’ve chosen so far! The guys that are a part of the team really represent Stheart well from wearing it live, in promos, and just telling people about it. As far as how to become a member of the stheart family, just put yourself out there & do something original. When our sponsorship program opens up, I personally go and seek out a new band to wear the threads. It’s all about timing & making sure we’re both ready. Again, never be afraid to put your name out there, email: support@stheartclothing..com

I wrote an article awhile back on the importance of taking professional pictures. I just came across a bunch of promo pics for your summer line and I must say these are some of the best looking product shots I have seen! What was your thought process with that shoot and can you give any advice about shooting a clothing line?

I have to give 99% of the credit to our photograper Joe Gall! I really emphasize a lot on our photography, I mean, image & the way you present your work is everything. I try to give some advice for every photoshoot, but I let Joe do his thing for the most part. Joe does an amazing job at capturing what Stheart is about. I’ve always made sure to present Stheart in a professional manner & to do so you need great photographer check out www.joegallphotography.blogspot.com

From what I have seen lately STHEART really looks to be gaining some steam! What are your plans for the future and where do you hope to see STHEART going in the next year?

There’s a lot to look forward within the next year. It’s hard to process it all at once, I’m just going to keep focused on getting our customers what they want. Expect to see some new ideas & even bigger releases! I do plan on setting up at Bamboozle, the entire Warped Tour, and as many other events I can to continue spreading the name. I haven’t put any emphasis on any retail stores/outlets yet, I’ve still got some decisions to make with that.

Do you guys have any sales or discount codes our readers should know about?
Yep, go ahead & use the code: iatt809 to get 15% off your entire order! Expiration: August 31st

If you head on over to publicdomainclothing.com you will see that PDC has it a lot of great tees to choose from and for a limited time if you buy two tees they will send you another tee for free!

Overall I must say I was pretty impressed with their entire line, and if any of their line looks familiar to you it might be because PDC has been featured in shows such as Chuck, The Big Bang Theory and on Fuse TV. I was blown away by how many celebrities have been seen rocking PDC, such as Seth Green, Asher Roth and of course Paris Hilton. I see big things for these guys in the future and will definitely be keeping an eye on them.

So could you please start off by telling us who we are talking to and what you do at tilteed.com?

Well, my name is Patrick and I’m the main person behind Tilteed. I pretty much run everything from the web site development and maintenance to printing the shirts on our press to stuffing them and mailing them out.

Very nice! So how many people are actually behind the scenes at Tilteed.com?

Right now on a daily basis it’s a one person operation (me), though my wife does help out when she has time. The dog occasionally answers the door for the deliverymen, but other than that, he’s not much help in the running of the site.

LOL. Well you guys had me fooled, from the looks of how professional the site is it seems like you have a team running it! So before we go any further, how would you explain your site to someone that has never seen it?

That’s nice to hear because I’m definitely working really hard to keep the site professional, but hopefully personal at the same time. So Tilteed.com is a t-shirt design contest. It’s an open contest for anybody that wants to take a shot at our $500 dollar prize for winning designs. Winners are chosen by community voting and comments. We print the winners and sell them on Tilteed. Pretty simple really, nothing groundbreaking, but fun nonetheless.

Very cool! So what made you want to start tilteed.com and what do you feel makes you different than sites such as shirtfight.com, uneetee.com and other community based voting sites?

My wife and I decided to create Tilteed for a few reasons. I’ve always wanted the opportunity to create my own thing and build something from the ground up for myself and my family. We’ve always enjoyed t-shirts, whether it’s been finding funny ones to wear to creating our own with iron-ons, and now printing them on our screen press – it’s a fun market. So with the opportunity to do something on our own, with our own money and effort – it just seemed like a fun opportunity and a risk that we wanted to take. As far as how we’re different from other sites, there’s the differences like the 72 hour order period. But I think what really separates us is the fact that we are a relatively small, new site – but we’re trying to create something big. We wanted to offer a large prize and a short cycle in order to reward the artists and attract the top talent. Plus, everything is done here in house including the printing. We don’t outsource anything, so we’re pretty proud of that fact. That was one of the reasons we wanted to start Tilteed. Simply because we wanted to print some awesome designs ourselves. I can’t draw to save my life, but printing the shirts is enough a part of the creative process to be really satisfying.
That was a mouthful – lol.

LOL, definitely a lot of information there! All very cool stuff. I must say between your $500 prize money every 3 days and the generosity in giving away shirts, you guys have definitely made an early impact from what I have seen! So how much planning and tie went into launching tilteed.com?

From the moment we came up with the idea to try it, to the launch date was about 6 months. A good 3 months of research and market analysis, and then about 3 months of developing the site and prepping for the launch.

Very nice! That’s relatively quick for the magnitude of the site. You did mention that you screen print the shirts in house. What kind of shirts are you guys using, and do artists have any limitations when submitting their designs?

We’re printing on American Apparel – mens 2001 and women’s 2102. There are a few limitations we try to make very clear in our submission guidelines. We have a 6 color press, and although it says our print size is limited to 15 x 17, we’ve actually increased that last week so that we can do about 16 x 22 – which is about a full sized print on a medium.

Very cool! Well all the art that I have seen has been incredible! Just want to say keep up the great work, we look forward to seeing your new designs! Is there anything else you would like to mention before we sign off?

Just wanted to thank you for the feature – love IATT and we’re excited to be on there!