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Sunday, February 26, 2012

Authentic PoNY Merchandise


Most of my railroad time has been constrained to the keyboard lately (it just works out that way sometimes), so to have some fun, I created an online merchandise store (see the sidebar to the right). New products will be added, but I already have some basic items up for your amusement. You might want to do this for your own model railroad! It is a great way to create the mise en scène of your layout and augment its identity, and it is just fun creating and wearing your own herald!

I've gotten the Olive color t-shirt so far, and it turned out pretty well. The graphic could be a little more vivid, but it probably would have more contrast on a lighter color shirt. Personally I like the softer presentation that this affords so that the graphic isn't too loud since it is large. After a couple of washings, the ink is holding up well and there was only slight shrinkage. The version with the smaller logo should be really nice and sharp on a white t-shirt.

The next order will be the Stone color distressed hats for my wife and me. I'll report back on those when they come in.






6 comments:

  1. Hi Riley,

    To my eye I think the colors of your logo look best on a black or dark charcoal colored shirt. The option isn't there but the large logo on a black or charcoal shirt I feel would look the best and the color combination would be a good contrast.

    BTW, maybe you covered this somewhere else in the blog but how did you come up with the logo? It's nicely done and seems appropriate.

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  2. Ted, you are right about the darker shirt - all I would have to do is modify the rings to white so they would show up. There is a black option, but not a charcoal gray (which I would like) at the moment. I think it would look good on a light gray as well.

    I drew up the logo one lazy afternoon, and it is inspired by my wife's interest in roosters (OK, I am blatantly pandering), and the style of 1950s logos. I found a copyright free rooster image, vectorized it, and modified it to stylize it a bit more. He is named Pony the Rooster.

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  3. Hi Riley, I like the idea of "official" merchandise......How did you set this up? I'd like to do the same thing, even if nobody ever buys anything!

    Thanks,

    Ralph

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  4. It was easy. Go to Zazzle.com and set up an account. Everything is prompted - just select type of merchandise and upload logos, add text, etc. You can use jpgs, pngs, etc. I'd be happy to help if you'd like!

    I, too, just like the idea of it even if I am the only one that buys anything. Using the terms 'official', 'authentic' and 'famous' cracks me up.

    My hats should show up tomorrow - I'll report on the quality.

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  5. Awesome, thanks Riley! I started to make up some t-shirts, but the embroidered hates want a special file type. I have Adobe PS, but I'm not what you'd call skilled in it's use, but maybe it's not too hard to figure out. I am very interested to see if the hats are really as cool as they look in the photos.

    Ralph

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  6. The embroidery was tricky. It took several attempts to get it approved because of the size of the stitching versus the detail in the image. It does cost several dollars to get an image converted to an embroidery pattern, but once that is done you can reuse it on other items. They do this conversion - you can't do it with Photoshop, and conversion programs are very expensive because they are geared towards manufacturers

    If you are having trouble generating the original image with Photoshop, I'd be happy to take a crack at it for you if you have a sketch or something to go by.

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