We’ve wanted to do a flip on the old DARE tees for a while now. I’m sure for many of you those bold red slanted letters bring back memories from school or summer camp seminars by the DARE programs. DARE is a great organization that seeks to prevent use of controlled drugs, membership in gangs, and violent behavior.
Growing up in the 90’s, DARE was a prominent fixture just about everywhere in New York. No matter where you went, the DARE curriculum was somehow always there to remind you to stay on the right track. After completing the program, kids would get a free DARE t-shirt, but no one ever really wore theirs except for the slackers who probably thought wearing such a shirt would ‘be like, totally ironic or whatever’.
The problem with all the DARE tees of the world nowadays is that most of them are ill-fitting, overpriced, and hard to find. We wanted to take the style of the classic design and flip it into an obvious parody that anyone would know wasn’t a DARE tee, but still retained enough of the original vibe to make people do a double take, and had a witty enough slogan to force a couple smiles.
Every season we try do one graphic tee with a little touch of tongue in cheek humor. In the past, some of those graphics, like go love your own city, our Ramones parody, and our Bored Of Education tee have been popular. Often times however the humorous ideas don’t really fit in with the vibe we’re going for that season or the references are totally esoteric and they get cut before production… but every once in a while we come up with a design that’s a perfect mix of humor, parody, and playfulness that has the potential to be a big hit, and this might be one:
Available online here
