Hey
So whilst running down dead end roads the other day I got an idea that might help take the quizzical looks of peoples faces and help raise some funds for the sites maintenance. (Please ignore my rudimentary Photoshop skills, they’re just for an example).
So I have three t-shirt/hoodie ideas.
The classic - this would just be a plain t-shirt/hoodie with the CityStrides across the front but in the CS font (I couldn’t find this)
The Node Hunter (these would ideally be printed onto a technical t-shirt so we could wear them while out hunting nodes!)
I haven’t come up with a title for this one but its basically 2 but it would say ‘I’ve completed every street in the city’ I was thinking it would be cool if this was only available in one colour (a colour you couldn’t buy number 2 in) and you could only ‘unlock’ it once you have actually run 100% of a city.
I was imagining these t-shirts/hoodies would be made on a per order basis using a company like Print Buddy an example of the ‘store’ can be seen here
I was also imagining that say $5 per sale would go towards the maintenance of CityStrides.
This is a good idea! I’m also considering the idea of a poster that can be purchased, displaying a styled view of your city running. I’m going to post about that soon, with photo examples…
I would be totally down with this. Much of my travel involves running, seeing my running route in a city I visited would be a neat souvenir. It would also be fun to get a printout of a city on a year by year basis to see the progress over time.
This might be a great memento thing for marathon runners who would like to see their marathon route for a race.
Anyway, at the very least being able to print a large format screen of a city or area would be fantastic.
I think about how great this would be when running in random people’s cul-de-sacs or quiet streets. Especially the quiet, wealthy neighbourhoods… I always get the sense I’m being suspected of ‘scoping out’ nice houses
Nothing stopping us from making our own custom ones, but it would be a cool to have a unified style as well as another way to support you & the site.
Obviously setting up merch with orders, manufacturing, shipping, payment is a big tangent from the site itself and understandable if not worth the time.
It would be worth putting together phrases that resonate with us like “Node Hunter”, “Every Single Street”, etc. I don’t know if this is the best way to go about it, but if it turns out to be a bad way to plan this out I can move it somewhere else I set up this Merchandise Planning doc.
There are services out there that can handle all/some of this, digging into more/less of the profit margin. There’s also a place (The Print Shop) in my hometown that would allow me to go a DIY approach.
I’d wear a purple tech shirt with the CS logo, or “Node Hunter” or a some sort of big “Lifemap” button.
Maybe something that parodies a Pokemon t-shirt but instead of CATCH 'em all, it says RUN 'em all
With the poke-ball replaced by a CS-specific icon of some sort. There are other examples of shirts with that phrase out there, just use your favorite search engine (is there more than one anymore?)
I’m not a designer either, but brainstorming doesn’t require it
My two cents on a design would be the CS logo “street” (only) on front, URL and some text on the back, maybe “Can you run them all?” or “How many have you run?” I suspect most people will see more of the back, than the front, as one whizzes by.
Depending on how you feel about outsourcing, I have a friend who has outsourced jobs to a website, and the website (I think in China), comes back with several ideas… And if you like one, you pay.
I’ll track down some more info on this. I think he used it for logo ideas.
It was great, you have to define the deliverables and then choose from providers. I think they bid once you spec your projects. Can’t recall exactly the procedure.
I ended up getting some girl in Pakistan who did some business card design and another south asian who did logo design.
It was $10-$20. I think I paid a little more to get some different digital formats.
One of the most important aspects that went into coming up with this list is that they offer athletic wear. I don’t want to only provide cotton shirts. Also, ideally, there’s actual gendered clothing and not that “unisex” that’s really just “mens, deal with it”. Finally, it’d be nice to also be able to provide other types of items like stickers etc.
I fear creating something that everyone reacts to like:
I set up this 
can’t read that without singing…
gotta run 'em all! 
that’s really just “mens, deal with it”. Finally, it’d be nice to also be able to provide other types of items like stickers etc.