George Lois meets Jeffrey Zeldman on TypographyShop

I'm pleased to announce that legendary adman George Lois and web pioneer Jeffrey Zeldman are coming on board with us. George has given me his permission to use my favorite quotation of his: "Great ideas can't be tested. Only mediocre ideas can be tested."

Jeffrey Zeldman, who helped launch TypographyShop into the blogosphere and beyond will soon be selling shirts with his iconic pixelated mug and the phrase "since 1995." No name, no url. Like Che, Jeffrey needs no branding.

George told me that he's had many an offer over the years to produce shirts or buttons with his witticisms on them, but never bit until now.

George's royalties from sales of the shirt will be going to the Herschel Levit scholarship fund at Pratt Institute, Lois' alma mater. The award is named for Lois' mentor. According to George he "threw me out of school by getting me my first job, designing for the great Reba Sochis. Six months later I got drafted and went to Korea – but it was worth it."

Jeffrey's a huge fan of Mr. Lois. I'm not sure if George has heard of Mr. Zeldman, but he will. I'm honored to have them both on board.

Welcome aboard boys.

Another hit on our hands.

It looks like our new "Across the Univers" shirt is going to be as successful as our first, "Helvetica Neue Descending a T-shirt." The Google alerts and the sales and the stats tell me people like it.

Several of our customers from the first offering have purchased the Univers shirt. What's embarrassing is that I'm running this business out of an Entourage (for Mac, of course) mailbox labyrinth, with nothing whatsoever resembling a database. Fortunately I did recognize several names and was able to say thanks again, good to see you back. But a few wrote back when I asked how they found us saying, "er, I bought the first one. Are you ever going to send us e-mails telling us about the new stuff?"

Likewise our PayPal cart must go. I'm aware that it can cost one sales and the antiquated record keeping systems and laborious mailing label drill are a nightmare.

Learning about the vagaries of e-mail law and best practices as well as proper html e-mail coding was a hurdle but we're finally about to write our customers, thank them for their loyalty and finally establish the yet to be named club of early responders.

We've got a contest going to name the club and will be giving away shirts to the winners and runners up. And most of all we want to vow to our customers and fans that we'll do a better job of keeping in touch.

My design firm got very busy at the same time TypographyShop was taking off. It took us awhile to get this second shirt up there. Much longer than we'd have liked. But good stuff is happening. We'll tell you more as soon as we can.

How Magazine blog gets the scoop

Megan Patrick at HOW magazine's blog was the first to post about our new Across the Univers shirt. I'd written her previously about our first shirt, and she replied that she had seen it all over the blogs and could I perhaps give her a scoop on the next one?

Two months later it's finally up and Megan's got a lovely piece up about it. Thanks Megan.

Now onto informing the rest of the world.

Across the Univers.

We've finally added a new shirt to the TypographyShop line. Across the Univers celebrates Adrian Frutiger's 1954 classic in an ode to a classic pop tune.

When your first shirt is such a hit you feel like the one hit wonder band, fearful that your next tune will be derided and compared to the last, or just might not live up to the beauty of the first.

As we're only going to be adding a shirt at a time to this line it's been difficult to choose among the dozens of ideas in the typographyshop ideas folder. Many celebrate type, educate the public about type, about design. Some slogans I'm dying to get out there include the all time favorite "and where did you go to art school?" and the wonderful George Lois quotation: "Great Ideas Can't be Tested. Only Mediocre Ideas Can be Tested." But I should probably ask George first.

I feel that there's a market for designers and other creative pros to express their frustration in a witty, pithy fashion. It's always a question though, of sounding angry. Hopefully they'll come across as funny first. And true second.

JAI GURU DE VA OM