January 24, 2024
THE HISTORY OF THE FFB LUNAR NEW YEAR TEE
So I’m like in my 8th year of doing the annual FFB Lunar New Year Tee. How it came about was the typical way I come up with many of my designs - RANDOMLY AF.
Back in 2013, I designed a set of FFB designs based on Japanese pop-culture (FFB Series 9). I had designs inspired by Shin-Chan, Japanese clipart, Japanese robots, Japanese illustration / typography style, Japanese mascots, and of course Sanrio.
I created a design titled the ‘FFB Super #1 Friends T-shirt Brand in U.S.A.’ tee...
It was inspired by Sanrio characters...
I wanted to create FFB and my dog, Bear Mai as Sanrio characters, and surround them with simple accents like stars and motion lines. To fill in some of the empty space and have secondary interest outside of FFB and Bear Mai, I created these four t-shirt characters with different emotions that represented the usual moods I personally go through on a day to day basis...
• Up top sitting on the 'C' is my drunk / dazed personality
• to the left: my easily bored personality
• to the right: my stand-offish, leave-me-alone, I don’t wanna deal with it right now personality
• and at the bottom, hanging on kanji is my depressed and a bit suicidal personality (I don’t feel this way anymore, so everyone chill)
The four tshirt characters weighted and anchors the overall design perfectly.
This shirt has always been a fan favorite, so when it sold out I rereleased a few years later, sold out again, and rereleased it again last year when I brought FFB back to life from hibernation. Since I screen-printed shirts back then, I kept the colors minimal to 4 with a white underbase: Red, Brown, Yellow, and Black on a heather grey tee (the rarest colorway of these tee's - the first print). I love this design and it probably will go down as one of the top 3 FFB designs ever. And with the way the shirt kept selling out, and continues to sell today, the fans obviously LOVED it too.
In 2017 I was living and chill'n in San Diego, CA and wanting to somehow revitalize FFB. 2017 was the year of the rooster, which was my Asian Zodiac year. I thought back to the ‘FFB Super #1 Friends T-shirt Brand in U.S.A.’ tee and figured I bring it back, but replace my dog with a rooster, switch out the Japanese text (that says ‘Fur Face Boy’) with Chinese text that says ‘Happy New Year’, and replace the ‘Super #1 Friends T-shirt Brand in U.S.A.’ line with’2017 Year of the Rooster’.
I Kept the colors traditional to Chinese New Year colors of Yellow and black printed on a red shirt. Very simple. I think I printed and sold around 30 of these shirts. They also came delivered in their own ‘Red Envelope’ becasue I printed these cool mailer bags to mail the shirts out in too. The only year I did special mailer bags for a particular tee…
The following years, I just kept doing the same thing, but switching up the colorways. For 2018, it was the year of the dog, so it was super simple for me to rehash the original design that already had my dog, Bear Mai on in. I printed it on a gold-yellow tee with red and black…
For 2019, the year of the pig, I had two variations for sale. A red tee, and since black t-shirts are always such hot sellers, I created a black variant. What made 2019’s pig tee so special was that it was printed with gold foil ink...
In 2020, right before the pandemic, I created 3 different tees and a hoody to celebrate the Lunar new year, but as course had an animal zodiac tee too. It was the year of the rat, and since the rat is such a small animal, I figured I could make the shirt pop more by using totally different colors for it to be more attention grabbing. I had thoughts and feels of Chinese jade and porcelains in mind, that’s why I tried a mint-ish jade tshirt color and hit yall with navy and red accents…
For 2021, the year of the ox, I went back to black cause like I said earlier, people LOVE black tshirts. I kept jade in mind again, but coupled it with a shade of gold to rep that Chinese classiness, feel, and vibe…
Man, for 2022, the year of the tiger (my dad’s year) I skipped out because 2022 was the year I decided to move back to Texas. The whole year was dedicated to personal life planning, moving from San Diego back to Dallas, getting situated back at my soul-crushing, passion-killer corporate job (no worries, I quit that job! Yay!), planning a wedding AND getting married too. I don’t remember doing shit for FFB in 2022 and I’m kinda mad at myself for missing out on illustrating a tiger. Do yall think I should do one anyways? LMK at [email protected].
Last year for 2023, when I brought FFB back, I was late because I came back in April and the Lunar new year was already over. I didnt wanna skip out on this tee like I did in 2022, so I just released it late and since it was April, I dubbed it as my Easter/ Lunar New Year tee becasue it was the year of the rabbit. I had visions of White Rabbit candy in my mind when thinking of the colorway for that tee, hence the blue and reddish colors. This tee was also the first tee I released trying out my new time-sensitive releases. See, since I wasnt screen-printing low quantities anymore, I figure I could still keep things exclusive and in high-demand by giving designs here and there a limited-time to buy only offer and so far that idea has worked out PERFECTLY.
and of course we have the dragon for 2024. I had fun with illustrating the dragon, and since I print DTG now, I can use as many colors as I want. It’s SO great. I kept switching back and forth in my mind to make the dragon either red or teal, but since I have so much freedom with DTG and fulfiment, I was like..."fuck it", I’ll do both options on three different colorways...
I was getting requests for kids tee’s too, so again I was like..."fuck it", I’ma do that too...
I’m selling these up until Feb 10 - the actual first day of the Lunar New Year. So snag one before it’s too late! Happy 2024 Lunar New Year! Hope ya'll enjoyed this FFB history lesson.
- āļøā¤ļøš² FFB
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January 1, 2024
Happy new year. Let's make this a year to remember.
- FFB
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