A household of animals, each at its own scale

Four stickers, angled slightly against each other the way stickers actually sit on a laptop lid. A tabby cat, a terrier, a lop rabbit, a St Bernard the size of a small horse. Each one has its name set in small bold capitals along its own base. The St Bernard's says SMALL DOG.

None of them are drawn to the same scale, and that's the whole solution.

Why do a household's animals as separate stickers instead of one group portrait?

Because a group portrait has to invent a scene that never happened.

A cat, a terrier, a rabbit and a St Bernard were never all sitting together in one frame at one moment — and forcing them into a single composition means picking one scale, which flattens the cat up or shrinks the St Bernard down until the drawing is lying about somebody's actual pets. Separate die-cuts sidestep the problem entirely: each animal gets its own size, its own pose, its own little rectangle of space, and the arrangement of several stickers at odd angles is what reads as "a household" rather than any one composed scene could.

Why does a household name work better than an accurate one?

Because the wrong name is the truer word for what the animal is in that house.

A dog the size of a small horse, labelled SMALL DOG, isn't a factual error — it's a joke that everyone in that house has already made more times than they can count, the way an enormous animal that thinks it's a lapdog earns a name like that from sheer repetition. Printing the accurate species name under each animal would be correct and forgettable. Printing what the household actually calls it — a nickname, a wrong name that stuck, a title used ironically — is the detail that makes the shirt belong to that specific kitchen and nobody else's.

The animal's real name still matters

Most of the four should carry their actual names — MOTH, BISCUIT, ODESSA — with the joke name reserved for the one animal that has one. A whole sheet of jokes cancels itself out; one true joke among true names is what lands.

How many animals is too many for one sheet?

There's a point where the sheet stops reading as a household and starts reading as a chart.

A handful of stickers and the composition has room to breathe, each shape distinct at a glance. Past a certain point, the individual poses start competing for the same space and the whole thing risks looking like a catalogue rather than a group of specific animals someone lives with. The practical limit isn't a fixed count so much as whether you can still tell each shape apart without reading the names first — once you can't, it's time to drop the animal that came and went, or split the household across two shirts instead of forcing all of them onto one chest.

What if two of the animals genuinely dislike each other?

The sticker sheet handles that better than a group portrait would.

Because nothing here implies they're standing next to each other, two animals that spend their actual lives on opposite ends of the house can share a garment without the drawing pretending otherwise. A composed scene would have to either show the tension or paper over it; separate die-cuts just place both animals in the same household without claiming anything about how they get on.

Does this work if one of the animals has since died?

Yes, and the sheet doesn't need to say which one.

A sticker sheet with no dates and no memorial language treats every animal on it the same way, whether it's currently curled up on the sofa or not — which means a household that's lost one animal doesn't have to build a shirt that's suddenly about loss. If that weight is the point rather than a side effect, there's a format built specifically for it instead.

Does this need permission from anyone?

No. There's nothing borrowed here — the animals, the names and the joke all belong to the household that owns them, and the sticker-sheet format itself isn't anybody's property. This is the rare occasion where the honest answer to the rights question is that there isn't one.

Does it print well?

Yes — flat colour and a hard die-cut edge are exactly what this format wants.

Each sticker is a simple filled shape with a bold outline, which survives fabric far better than a soft-shaded illustration would; the "sticker" look actually depends on flat colour and a crisp edge, so the constraint and the aesthetic point the same direction. Three or four colours across the whole sheet, one per animal, keeps each shape reading distinctly without turning the chest into a colour chart. Sand, oatmeal and light denim all let the flat colours sit forward.

How do I get one made?

Describe the household at JustOG — which animals, what each one is actually called, and how many. 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.

A dog the size of a horse called SMALL DOG, next to a rabbit drawn twice its actual size on the page.