Okay, so I got this idea in my head about psychology tee shirts a while back. I’m kinda into that stuff, you know, how people think, why we do the things we do. Thought it’d be cool to have a shirt that wasn’t just, like, a picture of Freud’s face or something super obvious.
So, first thing I did, I went online. Started searching around. And man, it was kinda disappointing. Lots of really generic shirts. Stuff like “Psych Major” or just the word “Psychology” in a fancy font. Some were okay, but nothing really grabbed me, nothing felt clever or, you know, unique to the weird little corners of psychology I find interesting.
After looking for ages, I figured, well, how hard can it be to make my own? I had some ideas floating around in my head. Maybe something about cognitive biases, or a little cartoon about Pavlov’s dog drooling over something silly. I thought I was pretty clever, honestly.
Getting Hands Dirty (Sort Of)
Right, so the next step was actually making a design. This is where things got tricky. See, I’m not exactly an artist. My drawing skills are… basic. Like, stick figures are pushing it. I tried sketching some things out, but they looked terrible. Really bad.
I looked at some of those online design tools. You know, the websites where you can upload images or use their clipart and text. Spent hours messing around with fonts and little graphics. Tried to make a cool visual pun about projection. Let’s just say it didn’t quite land. It looked messy, and honestly, probably only I would’ve gotten the joke.
Here’s a list of some ideas I kicked around:
- A maze with “Cognitive Dissonance” written inside.
- A lightbulb graphic with “Insight!”
- Something about Schrödinger’s Cat, but maybe related to perception? (Got complicated fast).
- A simple graph showing operant conditioning.
Yeah, most of them were either too nerdy or just didn’t look good when I tried putting them together visually.
Finding a Printer – The Next Hurdle
Okay, let’s say I actually managed a design I didn’t totally hate. Now what? I needed to get it printed on an actual shirt. I didn’t want like, 50 shirts. I just wanted one or two for myself. I looked into local print shops first. Some had minimum orders, others were kinda expensive for just a single custom print. Quality was also a big question mark.
Then I looked back at those online print-on-demand places. There are tons of them. You upload your design, pick a shirt, and they print and ship it. Sounds easy, right? Well, you gotta worry about the print quality, the shirt material, the cost. I read reviews, some people said the prints faded fast, others said the shirts felt cheap. It felt like a bit of a gamble.
So, What Happened?
In the end, I did manage to get one shirt printed using one of those online services. I went with a really simple text-based design I finally settled on, something about confirmation bias. Kept it basic. The quality? It’s… okay. It’s wearable. The print is decent, not amazing, but it hasn’t washed off yet.
Was it worth all the hassle? Eh, maybe. It was definitely more effort than I expected just for a t-shirt. Finding a good design I could actually create, then figuring out the printing part, it took time. But, I guess it’s kinda cool having this one specific shirt that’s just mine, born out of that whole process. Nobody else has one quite like it, even if the joke doesn’t always land. It’s a conversation starter sometimes, mostly with me explaining what it means. So yeah, that was my little adventure into making psychology tee shirts. Kinda fun, kinda frustrating, learned a bit.
