Graphic design t-shirts

The graphic design t-shirts

For a long time the t-shirt, almost always white, was nothing more than a male garment to wear especially as underwear, under jackets, sweaters and shirts. Then, during the twentieth century, it became a symbol of rebellion, an icon of rock and roll, punk, a way to express their political or sporting ideas… In a nutshell, to tell others who you are, even before you have to open your mouth. But let’s see when and how it all began.

Although it’s virtually impossible to know who was the first to imprint a graphic design on a t-shirt, we can know for sure when we saw it first at the cinema: in the 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz”, the workers who assemble the scarecrows all wear a green t-shirt with the word “OZ” in white.

However, it’s after the WWII that graphic design t-shirts enter the imagination of young Americans first, and then the Europeans. The soldiers, in fact, during the war had covered their t-shirts with the names of their regiments or with some slogan to effect and when they returned from the front they continued to wear them in everyday life. The newspapers of the time, aware of the potential of the business, began to photograph them and made the t-shirt a sensual object.

Sex symbol Marlon Brando, in “A Streetcar Named Desire”, and James Dean, in “Rebel Without a Cause”, did nothing but give the final boost to a phenomenon now unstoppable.

In the same period, the company Tropix Togs bought the rights to depict on t-shirts the characters of Walt Disney, thus launching the product of graphic design t-shirts also in the lucrative world of children.

Meanwhile, the final explosion of rock and world phenomena such as Elvis Presley, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones meant that virtually every teenager wanted his t-shirt depicting his own musical hero. This phenomenon had its consecration with the explosion of punk since 1976, when a further step was taken: old t-shirts were elaborated by hand, giving rise to the phenomenon of “Do It Yourself”, so anyone could actually become their own designer.

The iconic Rolling Stones ‘Tongue’ logo original artwork created by John Pasche in the early 1970s.

In Italy the nascent ultras movement immediately understood its potential and so it was that small and large firms began to print their t-shirts as a symbol of belonging.

Since then this fashion has never seen a slowing, and extending to all fields: now even a small company or a small group of friends often print a t-shirt to affirm to the world its originality. And we’re sure it will be for a long time to come.

Our t-shirts from 2004 to 2020

The first “logo” t shirt was released in 1997 and for the first few years we didn’t introduce any graphic design. After more than twenty years the “classic logo” t shirts is still very popular.

Once we decide the subject then we liaise with our illustrators in order to give life to our ideas and it is great to work with people from all around the world. Our graphic designs come from Brazil, Wales, Italy, Indonesia, and England

We get inspiration from old photos, we invest in our own photo-shoots, we capture our everyday life, our passions, our hobbies including our favourite films, comic strips, pubs, scooters, ink, etc

For this gallery we selected about 40 graphic designs with some of them being 10 or more years old.

We loved adding a few notes about these images and it is just great for us to share them all together with you, old and new fans of Three Stroke Productions

This is what we are, what we feel and what we want to say

Combat sports

As most of you guys know already we have a special link with the world of combat sport so the first set of designs we are proud to display here are inspired by some athletes we’ve been or we’re currently working with.

Our TSP Combat Studio was a MMA and BJJ academy active in London in the early year 2000’s. Our first Combat Studio t shirt is dated year 2004

In 2012 we celebrated the values of MMA with our Courage, Honour, Respect tshirt

A “Terminator” style t shirt on occasion of the European Union title won by Italian boxeur Luca Rigoldi in 2017

Luca Rigoldi , current Super Bantamweight EBU Champion has a weak for stilish motocycles so we celebrated this passion through this t shirt in collaboration with the local chapter of Harley Davidson

Our “first and fight ” t shirt was one of the many graphic designs developed with Blast Art (Indonesia) since 2013

Movies

We love to reinterpret iconic film images according to our taste.

Glorious Bastards is our  celebration in 2017 of Tarantino’s cult film Inglorious Bastards (2009)

One of our favourite Leonardo Di Caprio’s interpretations inspired this design in 2015

Everybody loves a “casual” Freddy Krueger 🙂

Our version of Sergio Leone’s masterpiece

My City My Team
My Mates

We launched this slogan in 2012 and immediately we felt those words would represent well the state of mind of many of us.Our first t-shirt sporting this slogan was a huge success, so it was followed by at least 5 more new versions including this  comic strip style design in 2017

The most popular version is the one with the silver laurel wreath in 2018 which will definitely be available again in the future

My Generation

We guess you guys appreciate that we love music and we have a passion for cult bands (such as The Who).

Since 2014 we added different “My Generation” t-shirts to almost every new collection and some of our followers love to collect each one of them, year by year.

Some of the images are situations many of you guys have been involved with,

.. and yes, fans are the best part of football.

Tattoo

“A man without tattoos is invisible to the Gods”  Whether you like having arms inked or not, we believe that some tattooists are real artists and we have celebrated them in a number of different t-shirts.

Here we have selected three of them.

Heroes

All good, decent, and honest jobs deserve respect but there are few of them who deserve celebrations as well.

This is the case of Firemen, Divers, and Mountaineers

This heroic firerman is the first of a set of 3 design by Blast Art Indonesia between 2017 and 2018

Depeche Mode in the deep ocean…

In the mountains, you are sometimes invited, sometimes tolerated, and sometimes told to go home

A Guy called Minty

One of our favorite illustrators hails from Wales, and is also the author of some of our most popular graphic design t shirts

From the Three Casuals in 2012 (reissued in 2019)…

…to Subbuteo in 2013 (and reissued in 2019) …

… to one of our favourite: The Boys are back in Town that was initially released in 2015 and will be available again soon.

Heritage

Since 2017 most of our designs have been made by Elias, a graphic designer, specialized in comic strip from the Sao Paolo area (Brazil).

We love football and not only the “contemporary” one. In the past there were other versions of the most popular game on the planet. One of them is known as Calcio Storico Fiorentino: the teams are composed by boxers, rugby players, and all sorts of tough lads. It’s a great medieval event involving the whole of the city of Florence with 4 teams representing four city districts to compete for the title that in case of victory, will bring them glory and respect from everyone.

The four teams are : Azzurri (Blues) / Rossi (Reds) / Bianchi (Whites) / Verdi (Greens)
Each team has 27 players and no substitutions are allowed for injured or sent off players,
The “goal” is called “caccia” but teams manage to score through a real fight including punching, kicking, tripping, and wrestling with each other where players engage and are forced into submission by as many opponents as possible. You have to watch the game to understand what Calcio Fiorentino is and in 2017 we tried our best to portray the game adding our own personal sense of humor

Modern Gentlemen: style-conscious, sophisticated, with lad attitude:  these are our Modern Gentlemen

Defy the tyranny of modern football. A Vintage style flyer showing our way of seeing modern football. Too distant from the genuine values we’ve always been standing for.

Subculture

This image was made for a t shirt aimed to sponsor the 2009 edition of the Camber Sand scooter rally, one of the most important events for scooter lovers in UK 

…We ve always had a weak spot for motorcycles in general and for scooters in particular. We’ve owned Vespas and Lambrettas, a long time ago but the appeal of a cool scooter is still strong for us

Terrace Culture

Ultrachic is about grace (or coolness) under pressure (2016)

We come in peace… Need we say more?

Both t shirt were inspired by the same photo shoot we did at Stamford Bridge in 2004

We launched this  t-shirt to support the 3 Lions team for the Brazil World Cup in 2014.

We have at least 8 various t-shirts including our Gas Mask Man

A gas mask is used to operate in a dangerous environments so it can represent the need to avoid being poisoned by anything, including trends, moods, and styles we don’t like.

It’s a bit aggressive in a way but at the end of the day our “gas mask man” is just protecting himself!

The one we most love is the one in a Soviet style: One for all, and all for one.

City adventures are just about the fans. Have you ever found yourself in London on a saturday afternoon? Different football firms, pubs, the old bill. Like a risiko or a monopoly game aiming to get to the goal: the Stadium!

Miscellaneous

In 1986 the guardian released a video called “points of view” which was great for both the message and for the subcultural flavor given by a skinhead who appeared to be wrestling a man’s briefcase from his hands. But the camera then cuts and viewers see that he is in fact trying to rescue the man from falling bricks. That advert inspired a video that we made to release our Sheffield jacket in 2015 and also our “Casual Romance” t-shirt in 2019 . “It’s only when you have the whole picture that you can fully understand what’s going on…”

This is just a selection from our archives of more than 15 years of graphic works.
We still want to say thank you to the illustrators we’ve been working with and to those who appreciated our ideas.

As we say, we keep drawing, so the best is yet to come.

Btw we just launched a series of posters which we offered for free to all those who buy our clothes

The first 2 have been “The Boys are Back in Town” and “My City, My Team, My Mates” (comic strip version)