Five BP Oil Disaster Tees

The oil spill in the Gulf is tragic for so many reasons, so it’s great to see the t-shirt community rallying to support the clean-up effort.  Here are five great related shirts I spotted recently:

I’ll kick off with my favorite, Fullbleed‘s “Troubled Waters“.  The black-on-white color scheme is absolutely perfect in a metaphorical sense, with the black pool staining the clean white.  The swirly, oily texture is all it takes to convey the message, especially where it continues into the man’s bathwater.  There’s a bit of an oxymoron at work here: the oil texture is both aesthetically appealing, design-wise, and repulsive.  I probably won’t be able to explain this feeling with any level of competence, so I’ll just leave you readers with the fact that a portion of the profits from this tee will go to helping affected wildlife.

Printed on a white 50/50 poly-cotton American Apparel tee, and yours for $20!

Threadless joined the effort with their “peliCAN” shirt, released just this morning.  This tee is a superb representation of the photos of oil-drenched pelicans.  The design was created by Frederik Wepener and Ross Zeitz and donated to the cause, along with their artist rewards and the printing of the tees themselves.  Oh, and 100% of the profits are donated to the Gulf Restoration Network!  You can read more about Threadless’ effort here.

Although the site-wide $10 sale is over, this shirt is still available for that super-sweet price.

Print Liberation has a history of printing tees aimed at the liberal crowd here in the US, so I wasn’t surprised to see this “Oil Blows” shirt.  Like the two shirts above, it uses the effective black-on-white color palette.  The message is succinct and to-the-point — if you aren’t interested in bandying around this issue, then this shirt is great for making that known.

It’s yours for $18, and is printed on a white American Apparel tee.

The delightfully snarky “BP Cares” tee by Street Giant has become something of a viral phenomenon. (At the time of this writing, the Street Giant webstore is down for maintenance so I’ll be linking to their blog post instead.)  Like the Print Liberation tee, this shirt is very in-your-face with its message.  It might be a little plain for the more hardcore t-shirt aficionados (not to mention more expensive than any of the other shirts mentioned thus far), but take comfort in the fact that 100% of the proceeds are donated to healthygulf.org.

This tee is also available in a black-on-white colorway, but I thought I’d shake things up a bit with the green version.

Yours for $25 at Street Giant!

Finally, we have DespairWear, which comes to the fore with not just one, but two BP-related designs.  I can’t find anything about the profits going to help the cause, which is unfortunate, but if you don’t mind that little setback these are still pretty good designs.  The second one, especially, is quite nice — it’s kind of like the Street Giant design above, but more refined.

$15.95 and printed on white American Apparel tees.

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These are just the tip of the iceberg, though — people love to make an extra buck off major crises, particularly through the humble t-shirt.  Just Google “bp oil spill shirt” and you’ll come up with a plethora of results.  If I may be so bold, though, do consider buying a shirt where the profits are donated.  If you’re going to wear the message, you might as well put your money where your mouth is, so to speak.

Other great deals to checkout:

• T-Shirt Brands Pitch in to Help Japan, Pt. 3
• T-Shirt Brands Pitch in to Help Japan, Pt. 2
• T-Shirt Brands Pitch in to Help Japan
• Out of Print Clothing
• Storenvy pitches in with “Hope For Haiti”