Weadmire.net Blog

On April 12th 1961 Yuri Gagarin,  the Russian cosmonaut, became the first man into space, completing an 108 minute orbital flight before safely ejecting and parachuting down to the ground, from the Vostok 1 Rocket which had re-entered the Earth's atmosphere.  An incredible achievement for all involved. So the Soviets had won the space race, but only just. Less than a month later American Astronaut Alan Shepard followed suit on May 5th, in the Freedom 7 spacecraft.

It was not until 1975 that the USA and Russia joined forces with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.  The aim was to test the compatibility of docking systems between the Soviet and American spacecraft. This project paved the way for future collaborative manned missions down the line.

Fast forward 20 years: It is April 12th 1981 and NASA launches the first of its Space Shuttle fleet, Space Shuttle Columbia. Its purpose was to act as an orbital spacecraft, capable of atmospheric re-entry, which was partially reusable with modular add-ons and rocket launch capacity.  Columbia was the first Space Shuttle but certainly not the last.  Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour all took their turn in a 30 year history of missions to repair and recover satellites, carry humans into space and act as a base for the construction of the largest structure in space: The International Space Station. The final Shuttle mission took place on 21st July 2011 when Atlantis returned to NASA's Kennedy Space Centre, Florida.

It seems only fitting that our latest t-shirt design honouring NASA's Space Shuttle fleet should be published on April 12th.   Wear our Space Shuttle T-shirt in admiration of the remarkably successful series of space exploring missions carried out by NASA.

Call me a pessimist but the news this week that Battersea Power Station is up for sale on the open market for the first time in its turbulent history, seems like another false horizon for a triumphant return to service for the power station, decommissioned in 1982.

As many will know, The Cathedral of Electrons was designed by the prolific architect Giles Gilbert Scott - not to be confused with many of his Architect relatives including his grandfather Sir George Gilbert Scott who designed the Victorian Gothic masterpiece St Pancras Station.

Battersea Power Station is one of the largest brick buildings in the world, housing two individual power stations built in two stages, with its four iconic chimneys giving it perfect symmetry. It was operational as a coal fuelled power station between 1937-1982. Once it ceased its power output Central Electricity Generation Board wanted to demolish it, but were thwarted by the efforts of The Evening Standard newspaper who campaigned to get the riverside monolith listed in 1983.

Since then it has changed hands four times. In 1986 John Broome of Alton Towers fame, purchased it for £1.5 million, getting planning permission for a theme park. It was during the early stages of this attempt at redevelopment that the roof was demolished. In 1993 the creditor banks for the now bust Broome sold the station to Parkview International property developers for £10 million. It was not until 2000 that Parkview's project to restore and redevelop the site finally received planning permission to create a residential, retail and leisure complex. Six years later Battersea Power Station was bought from Parkview by Dublin-based Treasury Holdings for an eye watering £400 million. It is said something well bought is half sold. By a similar token something badly bought is not saleable. The Irish banks that lent the money ended up as owners otherwise owned by the Irish Government. The current sellers are receivers.

Whoever buys this 39 acre spanning property will have to have very deep pockets. Its Grade II listed status means extensive repairs will need to be carried out under strict supervision, to restore the roof and all the damage done while it lost its lid. And that is before any real construction can start. Plans to extend the Northern Line into Nine Elms has been given the go ahead by Chancellor George Osborne. Perhaps this will be the magic feather needed to get her back in action. Here's hoping!

Giles Gilbert Scott has made a contribution to this nation's built environment which goes beyond the 4 easily recognisable chimneys used as inspiration for, among other things, our London Design Festival t-shirt (designed by Tiago da Fonseca). He is responsible for the red phone boxes which are held so highly in our affections. The boxes went through many incantations but the design which proved most successful was Gilbert Scott's K6 which was designed in commemoration of the silver jubilee of King George V. His first box, the K2, was commissioned for the streets of London after the first standard public phone Kiosk (the concrete K1), introduced by the Post Office in 1920, received a frosty welcome from Metropolitan Joint Standing Committee. (For a detailed history of the different phone boxes and how they came to be, check out the wiki page.)

The K2 was welcomed on the streets of London, but it was not until 1935 that the K6 in all its Royal Jubilee glory became a common fixture throughout the nation's public spaces. Where our K6 T-Shirt and admire another classic piece of design heritage by Giles Gilbert Scott.

It was on February 10^th 1996 that IBM's chess playing computer Deep Blue was the first machine to win a game of chess against a reigning world champion, under regular time rules. Grandmaster Garry Kasparov went on to win 3 and draw 2 of the remaining 5 games, thus defeating Deep Blue 4-2.

After some heavy upgrading by IBM, Deep Blue 2 (Deeper Blue) played Kasparov again in May 1997. This time Deeper Blue won the deciding 6^th game. Following his defeat at the hands of the computer, Kasparov accused IBM of cheating, using human chess players to intervene during the second game. A claim IBM strongly denied. The developers had permission to modify the programme between games but not interfere during play. Kasparov demanded a rematch but IBM refused, dismantling Deep Blue shortly after.

Created from the work of Feng-hsiung Hsu, Thomas Anantharaman and Murray Campbell, Deep Blue was the culmination of 12 years work on Feng-hsiung Hsu's doctoral work on ChipTest in 1985.

Deeper Blue derived its playing strength from shear computing grunt. It was a massively parallel, RS/6000 SP Thin P2SC-based system with 30 nodes, with each node containing a 120 MHz P2SC microprocessor for a total of 30, enhanced with 480 special purpose VLSI chess chips. Its chess playing programme was written in C and ran under the AIX operating system. The net result is a scalable, highly parallel system capable of calculating 100-200 billions moves within three minutes, which is the time allotted to each player's move in classical chess.  It was capable of evaluating 200 million positions per second. This was twice as fast as the 1996 version. The Deep Blue chess computer that defeated Kasparov in 1997 would typically search to a depth of between six and eight moves to a maximum of twenty or even more moves in some situations.

Vikram Jayanti's 2003 documentary Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine is well worth a watch.

So too, is the magnificent realisation of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). On to another chess match between man and computer, this time fictional. Much to my disappointment the supercomputer HAL who beats the astronaut Frank,is not so called because each letter is one along from IBM. Instead it stands for Heuristically programmed Algorithmic computer. Nevermind. The film still stands as testimony to the mood and perception of what was computing in its nascent stages. David G. Stork's essay Public perception of AI, discussing A Space Odyssey, is compelling reading.

Of course, computer science did not start with Deep Blue's predecessors , ChipTest and Deep Thought. Who are the forerunners to these incredible feats of technology? Where to start? There are so many inventors & scientists whose creations and innovations have opened up so much technological potential that is still being refined and improved long may it continue!

This theme is one we will be revisiting again very soon, but for now, wear our Deep Blue vs Kasparov t-shirt safe in the knowledge that computers have not taken over the world, yet...

When I was asked to create a number of cycling designs for Cycling Weekly, I was fortunate to have access to photographs by Phil O'Connor from his book '21 Years of Cycling Photography'. There's no deep mystery to what I do as a Graphic Designer. Despite attempts by many to lend it gravitas with phoney esoterica and design babble. Without a doubt, the success of these designs must be attributed to the quality of the photographs themselves. As the title above suggests, quality ingredients is the key to any creative endeavour. Very little needed to be done on my side. Dynamic photographs that capture the essence of the sport and a clear eye for framing the shot, did the vast majority of the work.

O'Connor's work has also inspired a number of our other designers, despite limited interest in the subject matter. Ray Charles once said, there was 2 types of music, good music and bad music. I suppose the same could be said of photography (and many other things) as well. Great images will always inspire designers.

The above designs are just a few of the many cycling themed t shirts that we have here at WeAdmire.

Unknown TT (top left), Greg LeMond (top right), Bernard Hinault (bottom left) & Berlin Time Trial (bottom right)

We Admire's Top Ten T-shirt picks for from the 1600 tshirt designs available:

Music Moguls, these t-shirts are for you:

Drummers t shirt: there are about 200 of them listed and you have never heard a good band with a bad drummer. Is there a sweeter instrument than an acoustic guitar? The Taylor Guitar t shirt is a nice guitar nicely drawn.

For those who like things recorded we have a good deck and the best headphones in our Deck & headphones t shirt. The Shure Microphone has been used by everyone who was anyone and quite a few besides from Billie Holiday and Eta James through Elvis to JFK and Frank Sinatra and Yukio Miyamoto has delivered a stunning illustration of it on the Shure 55 t shirt.

Camera Lovers, these tees are perfect you:

For those who love form driven by function we have Yukio's Hasselblad 500C t shirts or his Leica IIIf t shirts.

Love your motorsports? Check these tshirts out:

For an appreciation of racing complexity we have John Surtees' 500cc MV Agusta t shirt by Peter Hutton and by contrast for comparative racing simplicity, Geoff Duke's Manx Norton t shirt also by Peter Hutton. Four cylinders v 0ne.

Literature Lovers, these are for you:

For seduction with simplicity we have our Goethe t shirt: What is uttered from the heart alone will win the hearts of others to your own – passion and authenticity poetical combined. A killer combination. For gritty and witty worldly wisdom we have Ben Johnson's The Alchemist t shirt.

Science & Peaceful Protest get a look in here:

For an appreciation of a scientific polymath we admire Richard Feynman and finally for the last word in a declaration of personal responsibility we have Gene Sharp's Pencils t shirt.

On reflection it should have been a Xmas top 20 or 30, selecting ten was too brutal, that might be why there are more than ten in my list...

Introduced in 1929, the Rolleiflex, Twin-Lens Reflex, was the first medium format roll film camera. The two lenses of a twin lens reflex camera deliver a crucially more simple exposure process than the single lens reflex – there is no mirror to move and no interruption of the view of the shot through the view finder. TLR users would not have it any other way. In terms of timing the system is flexible at both extremes of the photographic process. The view of the shot is not interrupted by the movement of a mirror, so shots requiring a long exposure can be taken with greater flexibility and adjustment, while for similar reasons shots requiring movement can be composed and exposed more quickly because a heavy mirror does not have to be accelerated and shutter lag is minimised.

In the hands of photographers such as Robert Doisneau, Robert Capa and Jane Brown, it would go on to play it's part in producing a catalogue of enduring photographs, from Richard Peter Sen's image of a post war Dresden. To the apparent spontaneity of 'Kiss by the Hotel de Ville' and the intensity of Jane Brown's portrait of Samuel Beckett.

It was important then, that any depiction of this camera reflect it's build quality and precision engineering and few illustrators are more equal to the task than Yukio Miyamoto. Created using 3D software, the materials and textures, taken from high resolution images of the camera itself, were mapped onto the surface of the 3D image. A departure from Yukio's previous illustrations built using Adobe Illustrator, he, nonetheless, maintains his usual high standards.

These incredible images are perfectly reproduced on our shirts, with no loss of resolution or detail, as all are printed at a minimum of 700 DPI, creating clean, crisp prints.

We presently have 5 Rolleiflex designs. Each taking advantage of a number of angles that creating a 3D model like this allows. We are confident that your expectations will be exceeded.  You can see some images of fully printed shirts in our video about Yukio's t shirts becoming available at The Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea.

With the possible exceptions of Robert Palmer, Ry Cooder and John Hiatt (none of whom you would really describe as poppy) 80's pop passed me by. I am therefore caught by the pleasure of Olga Wilhelmine Munding's latest, an album called Whatever You Want. It is co written and recorded by Olga and Cody Dickinson with a nod in the direction of the 80's but with some Mississippi and Louisiana muscularity woven into its DNA. The rhythmic muscularity is matched by Olga's voice and the lyrics have the quality of refreshing your memory. The lyrics resonate, they talk to you. Behind the singing and the lyrics comes Cody Dickinson. To front this man's rhythm takes strength and confidence. Strength and confidence really only spring from class and preparation. In saying this I am trying to express what would be the antithesis of what should be felt by the over hyped and over exposed when they play in the company of talented and original musicians. I am sure you have wondered, when watching a Jools' Holland show for example, how a headlining mediocrity must feel when they play before or after some less well selling act has taken to the stage and really cut the mustard. If you have what it takes, such that you will not be overwhelmed, then Cody Dickinson will give you a gorgeous foundation from which to express yourself. Olga carries off fronting her colaboration with Cody Dickinson. The album is surprising, classy and musically and lyrically witty.

Buy it/download it here.

Meanwhile we are working on the t shirts.

 I went to see Ian Siegal at the Borderline Club just off The Charring Cross Road last Friday. A sell out by the look of things.

Siegal had a half way interesting voice but he is not a lead guitarist. Nor was the man on keyboards about to lead proceedings, similarly so the bassist. A bit too self conscious the bassist, me think he thinks himself handsome. The man who should have led proceedings was the drummer. All night I had this sense of willing him to let rip. On reflection in terms of attention I hardly noticed the others. The drummers name was Cody Dickinson. I found myself wishing he was more demanding and cantankerous, a bit more Ginger Baker in temperament and like Baker willing to be the lead instrument whenever the others were wanting or merely because he deserves to be the lead instrument. This band would have been in serious trouble on the night without Cody Dickinson. Dickinson's playing absolutely keeps the rhythm but constantly surprises with counters and fills. Marvellous stuff, I thought the equal of the likes of Baker and Jim Keltner in their pomp.

Three or four times Ian Siegal acknowledged Dickinson's contribution with the words what a privilege it was that Cody Dickinson has come to England to play "for" me... Self praise from Siegal by association, masquerading as self deprecation is how the word "for" in that context struck me. Cody smiled and I think he should have scowled. At the very least I think the word "for" should have been "with". Siegal's attire was suspect too. I think he wants to come across as an Englishman cum Louisiana swamp dog. Swamp dog guitar in a dark blue worsted wool pinstripe waistcoat with sun glasses?? I think he must be under instruction from the marketing types. Pity he apparently follows their advice with enthusiasm. In a crowded less than well ventilated basement music club you will inevitably become soaked in sweat, why add to your discomfort with a silly and meaningless wool waistcoat as a prop?

Half way through Friday's set I realised I had seen Dickinson before but had not clocked him properly. On the previous occasion the band he was part of were being fronted by John Hiatt on John Hiatt's tour to promote the album Master of Disaster. I was there to see Hiatt one night in 2005. The album Master of Disaster, one of Hiatt's best, was produced by Cody Dickinson's late father. From that album Love's Not Where We Thought We Left It and Ain't Ever Going Back are two of my Hiatt favourites.

Cody Dickinson will go onto our drummers t shirt today. Celebrate drummers generally and Cody Dickinson specifically - buy our newly modified Drummers t shirt.

A series of eight t shirts celebrating Gene Sharp, the “Machiavelli of non violence”, and the 198 techniques described in From Dictatorship to Democracy that can be used to rid your country of governors and governments who should go away and play with themselves.

Gene Sharp has defined how we allow ourselves to be governed, how we grant governments power over us and particularly how we can withdraw the permission we have granted. It is in the way of things that governments and governors are reluctant to give up that to which they have become accustomed and when confronted it is to be expected governments will fight to keep their authority. Gene Sharp has codified how such governments can be peacefully resisted with 198 distinct techniques, all of them non violent.

The techniques were first used in the break up of the Soviet Union. Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan have all successfully used Sharp's methods. It is understandable Arab resistance movements might be reluctant to credit an American academic for their “Arab Spring” found freedoms but is there much doubt Gene Sharp provided the vision and the map that allowed them to escape? I understand someone counted something in excess of 100 of the 198 Gene Sharp defined techniques in the so far unsuccessful Green Revolution in Iran. Unsuccessful? Give it time, I think the Ayatollahs and their puppet, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are dead men wa*king.

On the subject of dead men wa*king what to make of the work of Al Qeada in comparison to that of an 83 yr old American academic? One lot are all bombs fatwas, jihads, up your fundament and conspicuous failure while the other is all wit, subtlety, self expression, human development and conspicuous success. I hear Al Qeada have appointed some Egyptian ex doctor/eye surgeon as their supreme leader. Violent quasi religious psychotic looking for, and only talking too, “true believers” desperate for a franchise to buy into v mannered and intelligent gentleman talking too and pretty much for everyone. Take your pick.

There is one graphic shirt illustrating the pencil is mightier than the bomb and seven that celebrate Gene Sharp's 198 techniques. These seven shirts are grouped into related techniques with the individual techniques numbered on the shirts. The groups are: Protest & Persuasion; Social; Boycott; Strike; Political non-cooperation; Intervention; And finally all 198 together.

I am inspired, but where to start? Our local authority, Hackney, is well overdue and what can you say about Haringey and their self important and useless social services staff paying themselves extraordinary sums of money while observing the people who rely on them being tortured and killed? Then there are the monolithic and largely self serving corporations. Show me the big business that really outperforms. It has long been observed big business are regulation loving/exploiting un-civil services with share options. Such monopolistic leviathans should be introduced to some Gene Sharp, I think you would only need a handful of the 198 from a significant number of customers and it would be all over.

Celebrate and admire an iconoclast and promote techniques that will give us all freedom and better self expression, wear our Gene Sharp T shirts. 10% of the purchase price of these shirts will be sent to The Albert Einstein Institute in Boston. The institute was founded by Gene Sharp in 1983 and is dedicated to advancing the study and use of strategic non violent action in conflicts throughout the world. Buy the whole set of shirts and enjoy free post and packing to any country in the world and we will send a donation of £20 to The Albert Einstein Institute.

Fin de siècle, a Toulouse Lautrec t shirt and the antithesis of “What is uttered from the heart....”

My weekend was notable for a an invitation to a stag do. We spent Saturday at Lords: breakfast, lunch and tea. The cricket was good, the company was good, the weather perfect. The surprise came after we had eaten in the evening. Quality fish and chips followed by a table dancing establishment. My first experience of such a place. Once is enough.

Most of the breasts were organic as far as I could tell - you get very close but no touching allowed, so hard to be sure, most of them seemed proportional. But the limp wristed predatory thing going on (flaccid mano o mano heavies who would likely fold up like deck chairs in the event of drama strutting about encouraging you to encourage the girls and selling expensive drinks) was more than I could stand. And although some of the women were cute and fit the ones who weren't exuded a negative and all absorbing sexuality for me, sort of erotic matter and anti matter. The positrons were mixed up and eroticism vanished in less time than antimatter held in a CERN brand magnetic flux flask. These antimatter ones tended to an unintelligent tattooed aggression they confused with something they thought comely. Where do they get their ideas?

I think the world's view of what is considered erotic is being distorted by what can be seen on the internet. In terms of eroticism the internet is disappearing up its own fundament. Literally.  Best to ignore it.

The woman I thought most attractive came to sit next to me and quickly got to the subject of dancing, I had had one woman dance for be by that time and did not want another. One of our party was flush with cash and despite everything apparently had the appetite. I pointed him out to this young woman and remarked that he seemed wanton, flush and a little self destructive. Why is he self destructive came her reply. By way of explanation I asked if she had any tattoos? I could not see any. An emphatic no was her answer. I asked her why so many of the women had them in the face of so much evidence that they looked ugly? Her expression confirmed I had explained self destruction.

I see the dancing establishment closest to us in Lehman Street E1 is “Closed for Refurbishment” This despite being open for no time at all. So despite the entry fees, £10 beers and £200 bottles of er Champagne? They apparently can't pay the rent. If porn has ever been sexy it seems to have lost it, perhaps it's all the shaving and artifice. Nearly all porn on the internet is un-erotic and table dancing is no better. Perhaps it is the end of an era.

It is the way of these blogs that they have to be linked to our t shirts, so celebrate a man of talent who celebrated bawdy decadence with skill and style and helped define fin de siècle, buy one of our Toulouse Lautrec t shirts instead of a couple of beers at a gentleman's club.

Gil Scott-Heron t shirt

About six weeks ago the conversation with Ben Turner proceeded in the usual way when he came to our studio and asked if he could design shirts for us - authentic expressions of admiration please, generally unconstrained by choice of topic. We want admiration rather than sentiment. Admiration tends to be about something specific in the way that generalities tend to sentiment. Or put another way: Topic before aesthetic and, quoting from our Goethe shirt: 'what is uttered from the heart alone will win the hearts of others to your own.'

Music was the general thing Ben selected and when pressed gave us Gil Scott Heron's Or Down You Fall as the artist and song that particularly resonated with him. I asked him to consider how he would put his take on Or Down You Fall on a t shirt.

The song has the line “I ride my horse of nuts and bolts we made to never tire“, Gil is talking about his car. I have read class A drug users spend inordinate amounts of time in their cars driving to and waiting for their suppliers who are never where they thought they might be and are always late. To paraphrase Dr John always 'the right place but the wrong time.' The song seems to me a take on general human frailty.

Three weeks or so after our first conversation Ben returned. His take on the song was witty and interesting, you will see Gil is on his horse made of nuts and bolts not in his car. Whether you are a Gil fan or otherwise it is a good looking shirt.

Celebrate a couple of iconoclasts, buy and wear Ben Turner's Gil Scott Heron t shirt.

We Admire Chess Records t shirt.

Ray Charles said there were just two types of music: good music and bad music. Somewhat out of time, the designer Ben Turner was raised on a strict Chess Records' diet by his parents. He has delivered five shirts, four with line drawings of four of his favourite artists: Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Howlin' Wolf and one featuring all four with the old Chess logo as a background.

In the 1950s the likes of Waters,  Berry, Arthur Burnett aka Howlin' Wolf, J B Lenoir, Buddy Guy, Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon, Etta James, Sonny Boy Williamson, Eddie Bo, Big Bill Broonzy John Lee Hooker and many more were all signed to the label. What happened? If you had a label with half this talent signed today you would dominate the music business and deserve to be bigger than Wal Mart.

We have a popular t shirt: Money Killed The Beautiful Game. It is hard to conclude money did not kill beautiful and original music. An extrapolation of the mindset money talks and therefore comes first is that quality expression and music must come second. Certainly money brings all those spivvy pretentious types for whom music was a means to an end rather than an end in itself. This focus is antithetical to quality innovation and creativity although it does not have to be so. Indeed you will tend to find quality and monetary success are bedfellows provided you put quality first.

It seems to me the Chess Records' legacy and example of outrageous creativity and the spontaneity of its artists was finally dissipated by the late 70's. By the 80's The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Bob Marley, and a whole raft of great American bands had come and gone.

Looking back it is natural to be troubled by the thought that the apparent lack of anything really compelling now is a generational thing - that people older than about 25 do not understand you have to be on something to get off on a continuous, metronome accurate, computer generated beat that goes on and on and on and on. But there can be no doubt quality is permanent and trends in music are temporary, and in my view marketing led. Or as Ray Charles put it there really are only two types of music...

Express your admiration and celebrate Chess Records and some of the artists who made the label what it was. Buy our Chess Records t shirts by Ben Turner.

William & Kate t shirt by Stephen Whatley

Until we met Stephen B Whatley we were not going to have a William & Kate shirt. Everything I had seen to that point that might have made a t shirt had been mundane or straightforwardly exploitative and obvious.

I first came across Stephen B Whatley's work decorating the walls of the pedestrian underpass between Hill Underground Station and the Tower of London. There his work is reproduced in enamel on steel panels that form liners for the walls of the tunnel and generally transform it from dreary subway to a pleasant place to be.

If you do not use Tower Bridge Station you might recognise the art commissioned by London Underground to publicise the opening of Buckingham Palace or perhaps you are an Elvis fan and have come across Stephen's take on King. Failing that try his Obama.This is art that is skilful and passionate, it has something to say. We are very pleased to be able to make some of it available on our t shirts.

Buy a William and Kate by Stephen B Whatley now and celebrate the future Monarchs.

Cyrus The Great Cylinder t shirt

WeAdmire t shirts are consistently topical. Last week, you could celebrate the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's first flight in space with as many as four of our t shirts and this week you can celebrate the fact that the curator of The British Museum has been the de facto British Ambassador to Iran for the last year or so because he agreed to lend the Iranians the Cyrus The Great Cylinder. Cyrus The Great came to be considered great because he was tolerant and his governments were commercially successful and governed for the benefit of the governed. Revolutionary stuff in 600BC and as effective then as it is now, when it happens. The Persian Empire Cyrus governed stretched from the River Indus in the east, to Macedonia in the west. So extensive and successful. The question remains why more governments don't take up his ideas.

The Cyrus Cylinder, not un-typically obtained by the British Museum in iffy colonial circumstances in 1879, is widely held to be the first declaration of Human Rights. In this regard it is vigorously promoted by the UN. If our Cyrus t shirt is not enough for you go and see his cylinder in room 55 of the British Museum. The Cyrus Cylinder was returned to London on 18 April, following a seven-month loan to Iran by the British Museum. The National Museum in Tehran claims it was seen by over 1m visitors. Many of these visitors would probably buy our Mousavi Where is My Vote t shirt if they were not to be persecuted for doing so. The Iranian Government would probably do well to see this. Best not to hold our breath while we wait for them to see the contradiction between the success of their past and the underperformance of their present administration.

Declare your support for tolerance buy and wear our Cyrus The Great t shirt.

Celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's first manned space flight with one of our Gagarin t shirts.

The Vostok Capsule was essentially a 2.5m diameter sphere. The Vostok Rocket that it sat on was fuelled by very powerful but seriously noxious propellants: ammonium perchlorate, aluminium powder, and a polymer of butadiene as well as liquid oxygen and kerosene and and oxidiser referred to as melange.  A bomb by any other measure. Although Gagarin is on record as saying in his brief report that he had complete faith in Russian engineers and scientists this strikes me as the equivalent of Tony Blair saying he was a straight/regular guy just after receiving what Bernie Eccelstone might have referred to as a “good drink”: about £1million or so for the Labour Party in exchange for extending the deadline for the ban on tobacco advertising/sponsorship of motor sport. If Gagarin really trusted the technology why did he mention it? Bear in mind Gagarin is likely to have been driven to the rocket in a Russian truck, the vast majority of which did not have opening windows, or perhaps a Lada. He must have been very familiar with the quality of Russian production engineering of the day. No one can say he was not brave.

Gagarin's written report of the mission - there are thought to have only been one original and four carbon copies of the report - describes the view he was the first human to see: that of the Earth from space. Since then only about 500 human beings have witnessed similar views. Fewer than you might guess.

In his short report Gagarin remarks on the speed of the switch from light to the complete shade of the earth and the switch back again as well as the extraordinary detail of the shadows of clouds and the the geological features of the ground he was passing over. Stunning and momentous stuff for everyone at the time.

Perhaps more incredible is that fact that eight short years later Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon. A demonstration of the power of competition.

Celebrate a life changing event and a brave human being, wear our Yuri Gagarin and Vostok Rocket or Capsule t shirts.

One of my favourite bits of sports commentary came during a 10,000m race being dominated Haile Gebrselassie. Brendan Foster was doing the commentary and John Walker, the World mile record breaker from New Zealand, was sort of backing him up.

Most sports broadcasters seem to consider 10km races as interesting for the opening couple of laps, interesting for the closing couple and otherwise boring. Personally I like the attritional stuff in the middle and on this occasion the whole race was being broadcast live, it wasn't being interrupted. We were probably at the tenth lap or so. Brendan Foster had been saying nothing much for a few laps and John Walker had been saying nothing. Haile seemed to have in mind lapping the whole field in the way of Dave Bedford in July '73.

Brendan Foster said at some point “You have to admire Gebrselassie's will to win John. The will to win is the most important thing” Foster blundered on not really giving Walker much time to reply. Foster did not seem to immediately pick up that he had been contradicted when Walker remarked “I wouldn't say the will to win was most important Brendan.” After a short delay and a few more words from Brendan came a slightly spluttered “What's more important than the will to win John?” “I'd say the will to prepare Brendan.” Welcome silence from Brendan for a lap or two followed. In sport and life in general it's the will to prepare that cuts it. 

The image and the following text for our Chris Boardman t shirt comes from Phil O'Connor's 21 Years of Cycling Photography:

In the week leading up to Chris's TdF debut I had been in touch with him and other people in his camp. Knowing him, as I did, if he was preparing for this one stage alone I felt a win was on the cards. I told a journalist at Cycling Weekly Chris was going to win and he looked at me incredulously. A veteran of many races he could not fathom it. “Have you seen the size of theses guys? I mean this is the Tour de France, he's not going to beat Miguel Indurain and Alex Zulle. They have come here to win this race.

Come the event I ignored all the other riders and stayed within photographic distance of Chris all day. He was completely focused. Later I learnt in the days before he had been riding through all the corners as fast as he could to see if it was possible to take them without braking. I took a number of pictures of Chris on the start ramp and an action shot and then ran through the streets of Lille to get to the finish before he did. I looked up at the clock to see the time he had to do. I then noticed Phil Liggett commentating for Channel 4 and realised by the look on his face that this was something really special.

One or two riders came into view and then Chris appeared I could see straightaway that he was going to be fastest. The picture caught him the moment he crossed the line with a semblance of a smile on his face. The heavyweights of world cycling came and went and each time I held my breath as they failed to beat his time. Finally Miguel Indurain came into view and amazingly it was apparent that not only had Chris beaten him but had trashed him by an incredible 15 seconds. Astonishing.

Celebrate a great athlete and the will to win as well as the will to prepare. Buy our Chris Boardman Tour de France Prologue 1994 t shirt.

We Admire Adrian Newey Addicted to Aero t shirt

“Give me a man of mediocre ability but burning desire I will give you a winner every time.” Henry Ford. Success equals capability multiplied by the cube of motivation. Arthur Andersen. Both Henry and Arthur were saying motivation is the key to success. Can anyone say Adrian Newey is not motivated by racing and the subtleties of fluid dynamics.

Adrian Newey was asked to leave his school aged just 16 - a build up of misdemeanours apparently. I wonder what his school says of him now. He went on to take an OND, something considered a rather second rate alternative to A levels, before going to Southampton University.

Now he is probably the most successful and highly paid race car designer and aerodynamicist ever. His cars have won the drivers and constructors championships for three teams - Williams, McLaren and Red Bull. This not to mention the work he did for March, known as Leyton House in F1. This year, with a dominant first win in Melbourne in the bag, it looks as if his cars will continue where they left off last year. Red Bull are not short of resources but they are not as well endowed as Ferrari and McLaren. Brains, wit, motivation will always trump capital. It seems most likely Red Bull will win the championships again this year.

Great careers are never planned and are nearly always patchy. It's probably something to do with being headstrong and spontaneous. Celebrate an iconoclast engineer wear our Adrian Newey t shirt

Brian Clough t shirt

Brian Clogh was born this day, 21 March, 1935. 

There is not much to be said about Brian Clough that has not been said already. Every so often life throws up real one offs with a vocation. The shame of human nature is that when they turn up authority does its best to crush them. In sport the crushing is generally handled by the farty pretentious no talents in blazers who have a natural tendency to believe they are superior to the people really cutting the mustard because they can f'k them about.

This is often expressed by the blazers with something like “no player is bigger than the game.” John - poor ball, good stroke, four runs - Arlott had a different view: “The players are the game”.

Celebrate an iconoclast and a real visionary, wear our Brian Clough t shirt

Authenticity is interesting. John Hiatt is the epitome of creative authenticity.

“What is uttered from the heart alone will win the hearts of others to your own.” The quote appears on our Goethe t shirt. It is the poetic part of the brief to our designers. In the context of briefing designers we are saying if the expression of admiration in the design is authentic it will be interesting regardless of the topic.

There is some dispute about my contention yesterday that John Hiatt will stand being compared with any singer songwriter you can think of. It's clear that a good part of the counter argument might be paraphrased by the question If he is any good why hasn't anyone heard of him?

To anyone who knows his work the fact he only has a relatively small following is a mystery. Hiatt's is a life well lived and well observed, this is clear from his lyrics. Love, life, up, down, booze, loss, sideways motion, dancing, desire, cars, his cluster, other people's clusters, sacrifice, generosity, artifice, spontaneity, pretension, and a lack of it, they are all there, all wittily expressed.

So why isn't he more successful? I will turn the question round. Why do witless boy bands for example (but no need to single them out there are plenty of others) who contrive to emote other people's observations while typically unable to write a note themselves, make bundles? Why does the music business spend so much money and so much time promoting people with very limited talent? I think it has to do with credit. If the artist is good and sells well where does the credit lie? With the artist. If the artist is basically rubbish but sells well where does the credit lie? With the seller. Too many people in the music business get their rocks off gulling the unwary. Good musicians will not sell their soul to or at the behest of some marketing farty so their work will have to work harder for attention. It must also be the case that the best musicians will primarily concerned with the music not the commerce, they are going to be commercially hard work. We should thank them for that.

I can't see any other explanation for the fact Hiatt is relatively unknown. You don't believe it. Buy the albums Slow Turning, Bring The Family, Stolen Moments, Slug Line, Riding with The King, Warming Up To The Ice Age, Master of Disaster, Little Head, Crossing Muddy Waters in no particular order. listen to them for a couple of years - don't worry you won't get tired of them - and then get back to me about the singer songwriters you think have covered more ground or showed greater skill and observation.

Otherwise let's hear about the class acts you think deserve more recognition and why...

The fabulous musician Ry Cooder was born today in 1947. We admire him but presently we do not have a t shirt to prove it. In the mid – late 70's I particularly admired Mr Cooder, everything he did musically was witty, perfect and visionary. For example I believe his album Bop Till You Drop was the first album to be recorded digitally. The sound rack he composed and played for Paris Texas was absolutely ground breaking, similarly that for Southern Comfort. His playing on the 1986 film Crossroads was extraordinary. Classy, dignified, talented, self effacing, modest. We certainly admire Mr Cooder.

For many months after I bought Bop Till You Drop I played it every day. I can recall feeling withdrawn and a little restless if I missed my fix. The next album Borderline brought him to the UK with a little known John Hiatt. The concerts were a revelation. Half way through the set I saw Ry Cooder declared the band as really being put together by John Hiatt and promptly handed Hiatt the initiative. This was real generosity. The following day I bought everything by Hiatt that was available.

Presently we do not have a Ry Cooder t shirt but we have a Hiatt t shirt. John Hiatt is an extraordinarily prolific poet, something like 25 original albums all lyrically driven. As a singer songwriter I would put him ahead of any that you might classify as the best: Dylan, Guthrie, Cohen, Springsteen, Newman just about anyone who has had their moment and strung 12 songs together for an album that has had some mass appeal. None of them has done it 25 times not to mention writing about subject matter that seems to know no bounds.

So it's Ry Cooder's Birthday but John Hiatt gets the t shirt