This t-shirt did not start as a part of my project but as a group urge among my close friends. We decided that we needed to make something that felt inherently like us.

We decided to make a t-shirt but not just any t-shirt, a t-shirt layered with references, inside jokes and aesthetic codes that we’ve collectively harboured throughout the years of creating our own digital spaces, via our group chats or weekly group calls. My friends asked me to design it since they wanted it in my collage-style memes.

The visuals on the shirt are loud and lo-fi (the employees at the print shop kept asking if we were sure we didn’t want to send in a clearer image). The shirt is a moodboard of our collective jokes, visuals and things we relate to as a group.

The most interesting part is that this was not created for my research, but rather, it justifies my research. It takes a niche meme language and turns it into something wearable and tactile. The aesthetic is purposely illegible to most people as it is not meant for mass consumption/satisfaction but rather a visual language shared between my friends and me.

In my wider project, I’ve been exploring how these memes, the lo-fi, absurd, referential kind, operate on shared experiences and a sense of community. This t-shirt might confuse people; however, to me and my friends, it’s a shorthand inside joke, a visual code for who we are.

Without meaning to, this exercise accidentally turned out to be an intervention in disguise. Possibly my most honest one yet.