I need t-shirt ideas...SCHNELL SCHNELL!

June 21, 2008 2:24 PM

I have a family reunion coming up soon and I thought it would be fun to make some t-shirts. I am going for humorous, possibly incorporating our last name somehow (long German name). I could maybe play off the fact that I have six brothers and sisters. Maybe the fact that the reunion is taking place in South Dakota and most of us don't live anywhere near there. I dunno...anyone have any ideas?
posted by superduperfly to grab bag (7 comments total)

You haven't given us much to work with here. The obvious design that comes to mind has a cartoon of a stout gentleman wearing lederhosen and holding a giant stein of beer, with a great big Blackletter title reading "LONGGERMANNAMEFEST 2008." Perhaps you could tell us what the name actually is, or the name of the reunion site, so we have something to pun?
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:30 PM on June 21

I would go for a fake family band shirt, myself, with the reunion date being their "tour date" in South Dakota, and perhaps the other tour dates being the other places your siblings live?

The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players were my immediate inspiration for this idea. Some other odd name that incorporated your German surname, coupled with a few miscellaneous nouns and adjectives, perhaps? The Katzenbrot All-Horn and Sousaphone Choir, etc.
posted by redsparkler at 5:38 PM on June 21 [1 favorite]

My family loved shirts for which someone had traced the outline of a pictures of the family gathered together at a previous reunion. It was a single-color design but the outlines gave a flavor of the people, and they also handed out a bunch of copies of the photo it was based on. Another year there was poster with a simple graphic of an oak tree or similar with leaves for each person laying out the lineages.

Another idea: a map with arrows coming towards SD from all your various homes.
posted by olecranon at 6:36 PM on June 21

I have no specific ideas, but my goal would be to come up with a shirt that was great for the reunion, but could also be worn year-round.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 8:18 PM on June 21

Is your family big into The Simpsons? You might go with a variation of the Rainier Wolfcastle bratwurst song.
posted by Kattullus at 9:16 PM on June 21

I'm thinking that leaving SD is a major deal for this shirt. Spreading the faith in your gene pool far and wide. I keep picturing the mud fish climbing out of the water and up on the sand for the first time.
posted by ptm at 9:29 PM on June 21

My mother is very big into this idea and has had shirts made for several family vacations. (We all good-naturedly humor her and wear them on whatever is designated the appropriate day on the trip.)

Most recently, for a trip to Vegas, there were 10 of us -- 11, if you counted my not-yet-born nephew. So she had "[LastName]'s 11" put on the back of the shirts, and we made sure to get a picture of all of our backs as we lined up facing the fountain at the Bellagio. Corny but cute. Harder to come up with a theme for South Dakota, though, other than the obvious Mt Rushmore.

A couple years ago, we went to Italy. My brother was getting married just a few months after the trip, and his fiancée was still getting used to the idea that she was joining a large family. So all of the shirts had (in Italian) our relationship to her: fiancé of Jess, future mother-in-law of Jess, future sister-in-law of Jess, etc. Jess's shirt, of course, just said "Jess." This was a big hit in Florence, where we split up to wander the San Lorenzo market -- many murmurings and direct questions ("What is a 'Jess'?"), lots of laughs, people wanting to get their picture taken with us. (And free limoncello for the whole group from our waiter at lunch!) So if you have one person that you could make the center of the group, that might be amusing. Or you could make things really confusing by having each person's shirt reference someone different. (Mary's shirt says "sister of Bob," Bob's shirt says "brother of John," etc.)
posted by alyxstarr at 6:42 AM on June 22 [1 favorite]