Confession time: I try to stay away from Kickstarter because I like just about everything that hits the site. While I love encouraging and supporting entrepreneurship and innovation, I also like to eat and pay my electric bills (my laptop appreciates when I pay that bill too). So I tend to ignore a lot of the enticing emails Kickstarter sends my way–they’ve already pegged me as a soft touch. But when one of the guys at Litographs sent me an email saying they were starting another Kickstarter project earlier this spring, I opened it. And yes, I contributed (in about 0.5 seconds–told you I was a soft touch).

I already adore Litographs. The company takes the words from a published book and creates a picture on a t-shirt using just the words. I’ve loved this company for many reasons:

1. The shirts not only have great designs, but they’re high quality and very comfortable to wear.
2. I love wearing my favorite books (yes, the text is clear enough to read, though I usually just stick with the paper or Kindle versions for my nightly reading).
3. Every time Litographs sells a shirt (they also sell totes and posters) they give away a book to an under-served community. The exact wording on their website is: “We’re committed to promoting literacy all over the world — to make a direct impact, we proudly partner with the International Book Bank to send one new, high-quality book to a community in need for every order placed on Litographs.com.”
4. And my very selfish reason for loving Litographs is that their products help bolster my side in all the arguments I’ve had–okay, heated debates–with some rather egotistical graphic designers who’ve tried fruitlessly to convince me the picture or design is much more important than the words (y’all know I love visual art, but I’m not going to back down when someone disparages the written art of creativity). In the case of Litographs, it isn’t just that the words create the book that inspires the picture–yes, it does that–but more importantly The Words Are The Medium Used To Actually Create The Picture. So, from two different directions (or points of evidence if discussing this as a debate), the t-shirt (or tote or poster) could not Happen in its sell-able form without the words. The words don’t just come first, they are necessary to completely conclude the project. Okay, I’ll step down from my soapbox now.

Then there’s the new Kickstart project they launched and I contributed to. The offer? I could not only use of my own books for my “reward” for helping in the effort, but I could choose between either a t-shirt or a scarf (long scarf or infinity scarf). Wow, Litographs is already one of my favorite “gotta buy this because” companies, but now I’m offered a brand new choice to showcase my own words.

The Kickstarter campaign ended–it was a success–and I’ve been waiting for my followup email to give my choice in what kind of wearable art I want them to use for my word art. I picked…The Infinity Scarf. I already have two of their t-shirts (Don Quixote and The Princess Bride, and I want many more) and I don’t need another tote (yes, I have several from VistaPrint with my book covers printed on the canvas). But I love the idea of throwing on a plain tee and jeans, then adding the infinity scarf to any outfit.

For the book of words to use, I chose Counterfeit Conspiracies, since it was my first published novel. And for the color I chose a light green to go with the lovely new book cover. I won’t receive my prototype until sometime in August (hurry faster, Litographs, faster), but here’s what the sample looks like–just envision my words in light green instead of this text in dark pink.

If you’d like to check out their products, the website is http://www.litographs.com/ I highly recommend them 🙂