I’ve been promising all my readers out there Good Tickle Brain merchandise for well over a year now, and am finally getting down to business – or, more accurately, getting down to figuring out what is involved in getting down to business. First up is that cornerstone of any self-respecting institution… a t-shirt!
Over the weekend I sent out a survey canvassing popular opinion on such things as t-shirt design, color, sizing, etc., so I could start figuring out logistics. Hundreds of you have responded so far, which is just fantastic! I’m still reading through the various comments you gave me (and I am reading them all, trust me), but at the moment it looks like this design, featuring snapshots from each of Shakespeare’s plays, is winning out:
In case you’re puzzled about which play is which, I offer you the following hint: they’re arranged in alphabetical order, and the multi-part Henry IV and Henry VI have been condensed to one image each.
A lot of you mentioned in comments that you would like to see a black version. (This was not surprising, as we all know theatre-folk live predominantly in black.) I didn’t originally offer an option for black on my survey, as the black outlines and arms of my stick figures would disappear completely against a black background, but, after some tinkering with modest white outlines, I think I’ve come up with a solution that will look something like this:
This is not final yet, but is what I am currently leaning towards, with ladies’ and possibly kids’ versions as well. There will probably be one or two other color options as well. I’d still love to hear from people, though. If you haven’t already done so, please take my shirt survey. Also, feel free to leave a comment on this post, or get in touch with me on Facebook, Twitter, or here on Tumblr. I realize that, no matter what the final design is, some of you will be probably disappointed. I just want to make sure that the number of the disappointed is as small as possible!
If this shirt is even moderately successful, there will definitely be other shirts, so all of you clamoring for three-panel play shirts or other designs (such as Smiley Shakespeare) can live in hope. Lots of you also mentioned wishes for additional items such as mugs and pins. Those will be coming too! If you have other ideas for products, please do leave a comment. All your input gets filed away for future reference.
I want to do this merchandise thing properly, so if it’s slow getting off the ground, rest assured it’s because I’m reading and learning and figuring out how to make the best merchandise available through the best online store possible. Because (cue cheesy line) my readers deserve the best. (Cue groans.)
Also, if you haven’t yet, please do subscribe to the Good Tickle Brain e-mail newsletter, which brings my comics directly to your inbox once a week, and also features bonus reviews, recommendations, and social media round-ups not found on my blog!
I thought Comic 1632 would make a nice shirt. Earlier, I had seen and bought a quite nice shirt Ryan North had made from teespring. It seemed like something I could do too: a lot easier than previous shirt making escapades, where I had to do the shipping and billing myself.
(As an aside, in case you didn’t know, Ryan North is one of my biggest heroes in comics. This will become important later in the story.)
A few days after having the idea , I get an email from none other than Thomas Bever, the first linguist to describe garden path sentences. He had seen the comic! He wanted to point out that “I like garden path sentences am delightful” is not a true garden path sentence because the speaker can use intonation and pauses to clearly convey the meaning of the sentence. Assuming you have a speaker who is trying to convey meaning rather than SOW DISCORD, you oughtn’t get led down the garden path by that sentence.
(As opposed to the classic “the horse raced past the barn fell”, where there is no way for the speaker to convey (without changing the words in the sentence) that [the horse (that was) raced past the barn] [fell].)
Anyway, I was quite starstruck, and even more than that, QUITE pleased with myself. I actually thought to myself “I bet RYAN NORTH doesn’t have Thomas Bever fact checking his linguistics comics” and “I wonder if this is what being a big shot is like”.
This also presented an amazing opportunity. I hadn’t thought to ask permission to make a shirt about garden path sentences because I hadn’t thought about who invented them. I asked if I could make a shirt out of my comic, and Thomas Bever said yes! We are going to split the profits, half going to his lab and half going to fund my projects (I’m still planning on self-publishing a book soon!)
And so, after some technical and artistic help from my friend Greg, I have this shirt design:
I AM EVERYWHERE (Also Thomas Bever is a great guy).
If you are not yet reading Dinosaur Comics, I can definitely recommend it as a source for linguistically-informed humour. (And perhaps “create a webcomic” can be added to the list of things people do with a linguistics degree?)
Kimchi and Justice 