Well, it has been a while since I mentioned T-Post and even longer since I questioned the validity of calling it a t-shirt on a magazine but those nice Swedish folk sent me another tee to have a look at. It’s a nice enough tee but let me get back to this magazine thing once more. And I’ll put the points I brought up in previous posts behind me because I have a new issue, excuse the pun.

My criticism this time is about the writing. I remember I met one guy who said he liked reading and it didn’t matter what. He could read a novel, a magazine, a manual or the ingredient list on a cereal box and enjoy it. True story. I like reading but I am more particular. If something is badly written I get annoyed and lose (not loose) interest. I am not saying that everything that I read has to be beautiful prose because that is not the case. I read and enjoyed the English translation of the Millennium Trilogy earlier this year and enjoyed it despite the Plain Jane English.

My first thought is that it was written by a Swede and that perhaps English was a second language so I could hardly criticize the writer, just the publisher for not proofreading the article. But a quick check tells me that it was written by a Scottish journalism student. That’s disappointing, but hopefully he is a first year student because he certainly needs time to work on his craft if he wants to be successful.

Even forgetting the silly grammar mistakes such as using loose instead of lose and using it’s instead of its, it’s (it is) simply badly written. Here are a few examples:

These creatures of the night are no longer creatures, barely a shadow of the feared monsters they once were.

Are they creatures or not?

Retail figures may show that these adaptations to the classic tales is bringing them to the masses, as a simple novel becomes a franchise and as the franchise grows a fad, but the impact of a fad can become timeless, and this needs to be taken into consideration.

I don’t think I need to explain this one.

I could pick out a few more examples, which is bad for such a short piece, but I think I have made my point. I have written professionally so I know it is easy to make a mistake. I have even come across poor English in my own articles but nowhere near this extent and on much longer articles. Hey, check this blog and I’m sure you’ll find a ton but this is one short article for a print magazine. It looks like it was written in stream of consciousness style. And while that may have worked for William Burroughs (although some may disagree), I don’t think that Jules Johnston, the writer in question, has enough raw talent to pull it off. I have to wonder if he even reread his own work.

Rant over and out.

The t-shirt. I said the t-shirt was nice enough. It’s a white tee with a watercolor-style graphic featuring some classic ghouls such as the Wolfman, Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster. These creatures appear huge in the background compared to the image of the scared little girl in the foreground.Perhaps this is to symbolize the size of the danger or more likely the amount of fear in the girl. It could also be suggesting that these creatures only live in the imagination because they appear larger than life around the girls head and yet are partially formed . That’s just my interpretation of the image but I should be talking about the tee as a whole I guess.

I thought the tee was OK but my wife thought it was creepy. I base a lot of my opinions on coloring but after she said that I took another look and thought that this is the kind of shirt that you would wear at Halloween. That’s a limited time. That said, the artwork is topnotch. It would make a great Halloween poster or promotional poster for a fancy dress party. I don’t think the message of the article would be picked up.

In keeping with their magazine theme, T-Post is a subscription based t-shirt store. You subscribe and every time there is a new issue (every 5 weeks or so), it will be sent out to you and you will be charged 20 euro plus shipping. It’s a pretty cool way to get new tees.  And they have cooler mailers if you are thinking of sending it as a gift.

Link: T-Post