Thursday, October 29, 2009

Holiday Shopping Guide - Three of Four Clothing



Three of Four Clothing is a hip, fun clothing shop ran by Alice and Stian.   Originating from Australia and Norway, they now live and work in Kristiansand, Norway.  Both Alice and Stian have degrees in graphic design, and found their calling after taking a screen printing course at Simon O’Halloran Design.  Fans of Woot.com t-shirts like myself will love Three of Four's witty and fun designs. 



How did you get started crafting?
While we were at university, studying Graphic Design, we did a one day screen printing course. After just the one day we were hooked and had a dream to, one day, start designing and printing our own t-shirts. It took us a few years to make it any more than a dream, but in May this year we decided to make the jump and we ordered all the equipment we needed from Sweden. We said good bye to our spare bedroom and hello to a life filled with ink in the shower and evenings spent ironing to heat treat t-shirts. But we love it and we've never looked back!

Why did you decide on Three of Four Clothing for your business?
Three of Four Clothing, has no particular story behind it. It's not a clever name, implying something subliminal or hard to grasp. We just really liked it. We spent weeks trying to think of a name for our company ended up with hundreds of possibilities. In the end we narrowed it down to about 10 and then posted the list on facebook and asked our friends for feedback on which ones they loved and which they hated. Three of Four was the run away
winner.


Do you have a muse?
I'm not sure we have one particular muse. We spend our whole lives surrounded by designer and artists through books, internet, galleries and the people we work with so I think we just draw inspiration from all of that. That being said, we have to take into consideration the fact that we are two designers, with very different takes on things. Such as music for instance. Late at night, you can hear anything from Lily Allen to Slayer bleeding through the sound system, depending on who is printing shirts at the time. :)

Do you take custom orders?
Yes we do, we have done a variety of custom orders for private people from around the world. We have also done a lot of large custom jobs for business here in Norway. At this stage custom jobs make up the majority of our income in screen printing.

What does a typical day look like for you?
I work from home as a freelance graphic designer while Stian works full time as a Graphic Designer at a digital printer. So there really is no typical day. If I have no freelance work on I'll get up a 8 am and usually spend the morning wandering the internet and hanging out on Etsy while I expose the screens for the days printing. Then, after lunch I'll print and heat-treat t-shirts and make any trips to the post office that need to be done. If I have freelance work to do then Three of Four becomes our evening job and we work flat out from 5pm until about 11pm. Weekends are spent doing anything we haven't had a chance to do during the week such as photographing t-shirts and coming up with new designs. The custom print jobs that we get are usually very quick turn around jobs so once they come in sleeping and eating takes a backseat. Hmmm, come to think of it, sleeping is pretty much 2nd priority every day... ;o)


Where would you like to go with your business?Ultimately we would like to be able to move our business out of our spare bedroom and be able to employ me full time. We would love to sell more of our designs printed on all different kinds of clothing. We plan to always take on custom jobs and to make small run custom printing avaliable to people at a reasonable price.

What is one strange or funny thing you'd like to share with us?
If t-shirts had feelings, we would probably be shipping out a lot of low self esteem garments. :) Swearing loud and violently is absolutely necessary at times, when being a screen printer. Thats more of a scientific fact, than a funny story, but... It really has to be said. And we still love it!

2 comments:

  1. Wow, cute products and I loved this feature! I also think your blog layout is really pretty :)

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