RELOCATED

People throw a party when someone moves away. There are speeches, occasionally a card, and then that person gets in a car.

It's one of the larger events in a life and there's no object attached to it at all.

Why the tour-shirt format?

Because moving cities is structurally a tour: two venues, a date, and a crowd who won't see you for a while.

The bootleg register — arched distressed capitals, a coarse halftone image, a bowed second line — carries exactly the right amount of self-mockery. RELOCATED over a halftone skyline with EAST TO WEST underneath treats a life change as a press release, which is funnier and truer than anything sincere would be.

Same reason it works for a wedding: the format's grandiosity is the joke, and the affection underneath it is real.

What are the two places?

The one being left and the one being arrived at, in that order.

Order matters. EAST TO WEST, MANCHESTER TO LISBON, the old area code to the new one — the sequence tells the story and the direction is the content. A shirt with only the destination reads as a travel souvenir; a shirt with both reads as a departure.

The more specific the naming, the better. Neighbourhoods beat cities; a road name beats a neighbourhood.

Who's it for?

Both sides, and the two versions are different.

The person leaving wears it in the new place, where nobody knows what it means. That's the good version — it's a private marker among strangers, and the year on it does something to them later.

The friends staying wear it as a joke about being abandoned, which is the funnier version and the one that usually gets ordered in a small batch at the party.

There's no minimum, so both can exist without anybody committing to a print run.

Is a skyline the right image?

It's the default, and usually the weakest part.

Skylines are generic — most people's relationship to a city isn't its downtown. The stronger version swaps it for something local: the shape of the coastline, a specific building, the transit map, the bridge, the hill everyone walks up.

That's the same principle as drawing the route rather than the destination. A skyline belongs to a city; a specific corner belongs to the people who lived near it.

What about the date?

The moving date, small, at the bottom.

It's the detail that converts a joke into a record. Ten years later, the joke has faded and the date is the reason the shirt is still in the drawer — which is what happened to every tour shirt that survived.

Does it work for a smaller move?

Across a country, definitely. Across town, it becomes a different joke and a better one.

RELOCATED / TWO MILES is funnier than any long-distance version, and it's exactly the sort of thing a group of friends would make about somebody moving to the next neighbourhood and acting like it's an expedition.

The format is robust in both directions — grandiose about something big, or grandiose about something trivial. It only fails if it's sincere.

Should the friends' names be on it?

On the back, small, or not at all.

A list of names turns a garment into a leaving card, which is the thing this format exists to replace. If the group wants to be on it, a small back print keeps the front usable.

The front should stay a joke about a move, not a memorial to a friendship group.

How do I get one made?

Give the two places at JustOG, the date, and what image belongs to the place being left. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.

Designs other people have published are in the shop.

They threw you a party and gave you nothing to take. This is the thing to take.