bapu
I print mugs in my t-shirt printing shop.
Well, there ya go, bapu - a business opportunity for you with a pre-established demand. Just write "cakewalk" with a small "c" to avoid trademark infringement.
I share the OP's disdain for using one's own body as an unpaid billboard and go out of my way to buy shirts that are free of corporate logos. But we shouldn't dismiss the social role of t-shirts.
I once worked at a company where the entire sales department was inexplicably enamored with the movie "Reservoir Dogs". They had t-shirts printed up with quotes from the movie, e.g. "why am I mister pink?". I talked them out of one and wore it to a music festival. It wasn't long before a passerby responded to it with a smile and a nod. Out of thousands of people, that one person got the reference.
That's when it occurred to me that the true purpose of printed t-shirts is to advertise affiliation and establish connections between people who would otherwise be anonymous strangers.
I have Cakewalk shirts (didn't buy them; I conned them out of CW marketing). Once I was packing out from a gig while wearing a SONAR shirt and a musician I'd only recently met asked if I was into SONAR. I said yes. He said, me too! He asked if I'd ever visited the forum. I said, almost every day. No sh*t, he says, what's your screen name? Bitflipper, I say. No way, he says. Way, says I. We've been friends ever since.
I had a similar encounter at the grocery store while wearing a Shure shirt, prompting a conversation about microphones in the cereal aisle. A bartender once took note of my NAMM shirt and told me how she used to enjoy attending the show, and that she was a musician. If not for the t-shirt the conversation would have ended at "black coffee, please".
Visiting a high school where my son-in-law did IT, I met a somber teenager who spoke to no one and who obviously lived on the social fringe. Dressed all in black, avoiding eye contact, and with the permanent look of a wary puppy who'd been kicked too many times. He had an Iron Maiden t-shirt (of course), which I used as a conversational opener. You like metal? Clearly his favorite topic, he lit up and began chatting enthusiastically about music. He turned me on to Nightwish, which became my favorite metal band.
bapu, there really are some potentially lucrative niche markets that someone could tap via the internet. I'm talking about
obtuse references that only someone with a particular interest would understand. Some ideas off the top of my head:
- "Why is there no CTL-Z for life?"
- "Life is an 1176 with all buttons in"
- "44.1 is Good Enough for Me"
- "12AX7...Harmonic goodness since 1947"
- "I'm an Expert on the Dunning-Kruger Effect"
- "The Beatles didn't have Protools"
- "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know which one bapu licked and put back in the box."(credit to forum poster Legion for that one)
- "Don't scoop the low mids, make 'em your ****!" (from Slipperman)
- "HPF at 300, LPF at 4K and your mix will be telephone ready"
- "What is the sound of one track clipping?" (credit to Jan for this one)
- "The room is the most important stop on the organ - J.S. Bach"
- "Turning goat piss into gasoline since 1980" (Blues Brothers quote)
- "Go ahead and play the blues if it'll make you happy" (Homer Simpson)
- "<0dBSPL is Golden"
All else is in doubt, so this is the truth I cling to.