exist1981.com
Sit back and relax and enjoy this all-flash site! You’ll have to sit back, of course, because of the tedious animations that mire the wonderful shirts in a cluttered bog 
of grungy shapes. Luckily exist1981 only has a limited number of shirts or it would be impossible to peruse their catalog in a single sitting. It also doesn’t help that I had to crank up the brightness on my monitor to find the “Shop” link on their main page. I’m sure they lose many, many potential orders from people becoming frustrated and clicking away.
Now, on to the positives…the shirts! While some of them they may be a little too mainstream artsy for tshaped, they do have varying degrees of intensity that even the most modest shirt enthusiast can find something to wear on casual Friday. My favorites are Juarez, Official, Beast, Collage, Saber Face (sorry no direct links to these shirts…damn Flash!). They also have other items but I have lost my patience with their slow website.
The order. The order went surprisingly smooth considering the choppiness of the website. I also liked the fact that my order was one of the first on the site…or so the confirmation page indicated. I think I just stumbled upon something…the more amateur the vendor’s website, the less likely others will risk their credit card info (or be able to successfully place an order), and the less shirts will make it into the hands of competing t-shirt enthusiasts. After all, aren’t we all after unique t-shirts that no-one else wears?
Another benefit of exist1981’s difficult website is that they have lots of time on their hands to spruce up their shirt packaging. The shirt I ordered (review coming soon) came in a sea-green and stenciled padded envelope stuffed with flyers, buttons and awesome black and gold tissue paper (I never thought I would ever describe tissue paper as “awesome”). I love well designed flyers and many of exist1981’s have made it into my collection of favorites.
In conclusion, I have been hard on exist1981’s website because it does everything wrong. Their shirts, however, are well designed and will be on my radar for the foreseable future.
