Today I had to jet off across the county to meet with one of my design clients CTA Fire, and owing to how groggy I was feeling (do excuse the photo), the morning rush to leave the house was a bit of a blur. I grabbed the first T-shirt from the pile without giving a moment’s thought as to which one it was. This was a potentially risky decision, especially as some of the donated tees still to feature are a little, shall we say, ‘unsavoury’.
Fortunately the article I’d selected was this My Chemical Romance tee which is entirely inoffensive, unless you take exception to mild punk undertones of anarchy.
The design comes straight from their merchandise line released for their third studio album The Black Parade and features an illustrated conception taken from the video of the album’s lead single of the same title.
The entire album is a celebration of the death of a cancer patient, presented as a ‘rock opera’, and the metaphor of a Black Parade is used to signify the approaching hour of expiration. The Black Parade is depicted in the video as a cast of marching band ghouls, similar to those parading across the chest of today’s T-shirt. The illustrative style matches that of the My Chemical Romance logo; pretty scratched, abused, ruined and raw. A stippled screen-print effect has been used to simulate shading on what is essentially a two-tone block colour garment – very impressive.
It’s fair to say that this is one of my more favoured band tees, and my client obviously loved it as well.
**UPDATE**
So, erm, this is kind of weird. About 18 seconds after publishing the above, a notification wriggled onto my Facebook Newsfeed informing me that My Chemical Romance have just announced that they are splitting up.
I am really sorry if I just caused that…
