U2Fanz.com T-Shirts?

Along with the new U2FANZ.com button-badges, I'm also very keen to get a U2FANZ.com t-shirt into production ASAP (in time for the upcoming tour).  T-shirts would probably be the best form of visual identification of U2FANZ.com members.  They'd also be a fantastic way to promote this website.

Over the last few weeks, I've had various discussions about how best to approach the production of U2FANZ.com t-shirts to (A) keep costs to a minimum and (B) make sure that we're not infringing any copyrights to do with any of U2's artwork and/or the tour itself.

The best way to avoid issues with the latter is to simply avoid using words and/or phrases that might suggest any affiliation with the tour.  Basically, as long as we don't print "U2 360" / "360" / "tour" (or any combination of) on the shirts, there won't be any problems.

As far as artwork is concerned, it's a bit of a grey area (pardon the pun!).  I'd love to try and push the boundaries a bit and see what we can get away with but, at the end of the day,  I simply can't afford to go into battle with Universal and/or even the  band themselves (we don't want to upset Larry, now do we?!).

Right up until today, I was hoping to use exactly the same design as our button badges and have it printed on the back of the shirts... which would have looked something like this:

However, after doing a bit of research on copyright and licencing, I've decided that it would be too risky to use that particular design.  Shame, really, cos I'd ideally want to use the U2 FANZ logo as it appears in the header of this website (one could perhaps argue that the layout has been altered enough from the original to make it more like our own but, as I say, I don't want to deal with the repercussions of upsetting the record company!)

Therefore, I've somewhat simplified the overall design and come up with this:

It's not nearly as interesting as the previous version (IMHO) but it will suffice.  I dropped out the little icons not because of any potential copyright issues (they're our own images) but because there's simply not enough room for them any more.  That said, they'll now be visible on the front of the shirt, along with the URL of the site!  Here's the design I'd like to use across the chest of the shirt:

So, what does everyone think?  Like it, or hate it?  Would you be interested in purchasing a U2FANZ.com t-shirt as per this design?  Let us know by answering the attached poll!

As far as costs are concerned, I have no idea at this stage but I would see $35 NZD per shirt as the upper limit of what I would ask people to pay (especially given that it's not an official U2 shirt!).  Ideally, I'd like to keep it to under $30 NZD (and a slight discount available to Premium members) but that depends on who would print the shirts, how much the set-up costs are, and how many shirts we have printed.  If we get them screen-printed, the more shirts we have made, the lower the costs will be.  We're also looking at options with online digital printing services.

Will update the situation with these shirts ASAP!  Time is running out!!