I did a thing: Expressive t-shirts for makers and hackers

I’m the great-grandson of a haberdasher, as I keep telling my wife. And my mother is an obsessive maker – she used to have her own children’s clothing line and has quilted, crocheted, knitted, and sewed her way thru the past many decades (and still at it daily at 91!).

Only in the past few years, tho, have I started paying attention to what folks wear and had a hankering to design some clothing.

Start small
I have a plan, but wanted to start small. So I brainstormed at bit (thank you. Claude) and came up with a focus on famous quotes twisted for makers. And the ability to use Print on Demand (I use Printify) and sell thru Etsy lets me experiment with design, delivery, and various product types.

I’m starting with shirts. While the t-shirt market is saturated to no end, I don’t see many maker-focused t-shirts. I could be wrong, but certainly my niche is special.

Here’s the link to the store on Etsy: https://greyandlslate.com.

Again, starting small, so right now the website goes just to the Etsy store. I already have four designs up, and many more ready designs in line. But I have a huge backlog of quotes, design ideas, and variations, so they’ll keep coming for a long time.

You can follow me @greyandslate on Instagram, were I will be announcing new designs.

Of course, I’ll need to see what works, what resonates, and if there’s any any any interest. Haha. Then I can expand to other products with the same theme.

Build notes
The past few months have been me going thru the design process – from idea to sketches to layouts to listing.

My wife uses an iPad Pro for work, so I borrowed it for some designing. The Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro is lovely. I use Adobe Fresco for the pencil styles and ability to do layers and SVG.

I use InkScape on my ancient MacBook. And have used a bunch of cool fonts from Google Fonts (what a great resource).

Printify makes it easy to layout my design on a shirt. And I am currently using just what they have for mockups.

Interestingly, the whole listing process has so many steps and things to pay attention to. Rather than wait for all my designs to be up to announce this, I figured I’d start already now and, when I can, add the other designs.

GenAI claimer
You might be asking: “Are you using genAI?”.

[added 02jul25] I had a few designs with genAI elements and asked for some feedback from makers I respect. The response was strongly negative (“With love, no”), so I removed all genAI containing graphical elements. I did not feel that my designs were slop, tho just hinting at it made everyone feel uncomfortable. And not even getting into the ethics of it all.

So now ALL my designs are, to riff off of Tank in The Matrix, “one hundred percent pure old fashion homegrown designs, born free right here in the real world.”

So, “No, my designs do not have genAI.”

Next steps
I’m excited to start on this journey. The idea has been burning in my head for a long time and good to see things progressing.

Now to promote the store, keep adding designs, and hopefully make at least one sale. Haha.

I look forward, tho, to the feedback and guidance of customers and enthusiasts as I take this further. So feel free to comment here, below, or on my Etsy store, or hit me up on Instagram.