CrustyRedXpress said:codrus (Forum Supporter) said:For a consistent style I really like KMFDM's covers (by Aidan Hughes, who also did a GRM t-shirt design!).
Wait, WHAT?
BRUTE! did a GRM T-shirt?!
Indeed. This one
The rest of our shirts for the last 20+ years have been done by Canadian artist Simon Paul, who has an amazing resumé including bands like Skinny Puppy and the Tragically Hip as well as like some major Canadian companies.
But the BRUTE shirt is a great story, too. Simon was in the middle of other projects one year and couldn't schedule us in, so we reached out to Hughes, since Simon's designs were always kind of artistically in the same family. He was really great to deal with and ended up using an existing piece of his art and reworking some parts for our shirt.
Then like... 12 years later? Maybe longer, Simon texts me one day and says "Hey man, you're getting lit up on Hughes social feed. You might want to check in."
(Some background. Hughes is a cool guy, but also a self admitted tempermental artist, prone to having an extra drink or two and getting worked up and going on the internet.)
So someone had found our shirt online, and noticed it looked a lot like his art, and basically accused us of ripping it off and sent it to him, and he was like "YEAH THOSE GUYS RIPPED ME OFF" and the next thing we know there's a multi-hundred post thread on Facebook and nasty emails and store rating bombing and the villagers are lighting the torches and coming for us.
So I very calmly hopped in the thread and said "Hi it's me we paid for the art and here's a copy of our emails and the receipt for the money we wired you from a Wetern Union in Publix because you didn't take PayPal and so on." That defused the situation pretty quickly and he was like "yeah sorry mate I had a couple drinks and they got me all worked up" and the community was really contrite about being dicks and I totally took the high road and was like "nah it's good that people stand up for artisits getting compensated for their art" and we had a big virtual hug and it all worked out.
To this day I've never regretted being such a slob and NEVER throwing away old emails. I have tens of thousands in my archives, but when they get me out of jams like this it's worth it.
In sticking with the theme of the thread, here's my fave KMFDM Hughes art:
