A Decade Comes With Some Celebration

Ten years and two weeks ago, on September 28th, 2000, my father bought me a domain in return for helping him with his construction contracts. A few weeks earlier when we made the deal, I had started looking around for names. It was the first time I ever had to come up with a name, so I was trying to be serious about the whole issue.

When it was time to make a decision, I knew I wanted star at the end of it (I was having a lot of fun in astronomy class at the time), but I was split between two names—avalon and alero—both with happened to be the names of cars at the time. Well, the choice I made is, as they say, history.

It's no surprise if you've been following me all of these years that I'm a sucker for nostalgia. The memories I have of the people I've met, the places I've been and the things I've experienced have been reemerging like a barrage of whiplash-inducing blows. The fact that this appeared and this place was revived haven't really helped the recovery process.

So is it party time?

Well, I had a party already, in my head.

Unfortunately and obviously, I didn't want what I wanted to get done for the 10th birthday in time. But that doesn't mean all is lost! A decade's celebration isn't something that a mere 24 hours can contain. So what follows is a plan that I've been hatching for the last few months. Since there's no nicely designed page to describe "the event," I'll try my best to outline it.

The "A Decade of Avalonstar" Celebration

If you remember, 5 years ago (woah), I held a birthday t-shirt competition. Kyle Jones ultimately won that contest and the first Avalonstar t-shirt was born. Because I wasn't attempting to make a profit from the shirts, I didn't make a profit off of the shirts. So ultimately, they became a limited edition set.

A few months ago, as I alluded to, I approached close friends of mine who have been avid followers of this place in the past and present to help me create something special for Avalonstar's 10th birthday. Rather than hold another competition and have only one shirt come out of it, I asked these 7 designers to help me create different shirts, each artistically connected to Avalonstar in their own way. But it didn't stop at shirts—a few of the designers will also be creating prints.

Prints are cool. T-shirts are awesome. But they all encompass one function that I hold dear—memory. This project is a celebration of memory. The memories I've had creating and curating and the memories you've had of egg rolls are just a two sizable examples.

So, when can we get our hands on these?

"As they come in."

The 7 people I asked to help me are extremely talented, but at the same time extremely busy creating awesome for the world to see. Rather than try and impose a hard due date, I wanted to lift that restriction so that they could create something awesome for you whenever the inspiration came to them.

I will also be attempting to create a shirt and a print to kick off the event—and if you've seen this Dribbble pass by your stream, you'll get an idea of what it'll look like.

8 shirts and 8 prints (possibly more if people are interested?) are a lot of items to handle, so there'll be a pre-order period before each is sent to the printer. While I don't mind keeping an inventory around, as was demonstrated by the sheer amount of girls size mediums I had left at the end of the first run, it's not the best case scenario. However, I'll let the demand drive everything, if a particular piece is particularly popular, I won't pull a TeeFury and not print it¹.

I hope you'll join me in the fun this coming year. We have a long way to go, but the 8 of us will come out with stuff that not only herald the memory of this place, but also be items that you can wear and display with pride.

That said, thank you from the bottom of my heart for following, supporting, critiquing and criticizing me over the past ten years. I wouldn't have wanted to repeat this experience in any other way. Also, thank you to the guys who agreed to help design the awesome—Luke, Dan, Rogie, Anand, Kyle, Greg and Anton.

See you on the flip side². :)