Literature has a pretty extreme effect on people. For instance, I’m willing to bet that 25-33% of people who read that first sentence thought of Harry Potter immediately afterward. It’s a perfect example of the relationship people can have with a character or a story.
Now, I’m all for repping your love for stuff through graphic t-shirts. Aside from white-text-on-black-tee styles, I’m good with just about any graphic t-shirt, as long as it’s creative. But the indie brand Litographs has taken book love and graphic t-shirts to the next level.
Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene
On The Road by Jack Kerouac
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronté
Taking a love of classic literature and making shirts to celebrate great books isn’t a new idea. In fact, we’ve written about book-themed t-shirts before, but never like this. Litographs takes the books you love and actually puts them onto a t-shirt.
The images are made up entirely of words! Both the positive and negative space is made up of thousands of tiny words from your favorite books. The front and the back of each shirt are totally covered with the actual text from these classic and historical works of literature.
T-shirts can hold up to 40,000 words – 40k words! That’s longer than Hamlet, but less than half of The Hobbit. It would only fit half of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and less than an eighth of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. You’d need seven and a half shirts to fit A Song of Ice and Fire, aka the first book of the series Game of Thrones is based on. How many shirts would you need for Les Miserables? 15.
I could go on forever.
T-shirt styles are unisex, women’s v-neck (above) and women’s crew neck. They also have children’s sizes! All shirts are $34 each.
You can select the color for your shirt, too, so don’t get turned off by the pics posted here. Typically, each style has 3-5 colors to choose from, and some shirts have as many as three different colors within their design.
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
With dozens (if not hundreds) of books to choose from, you’ll absolutely find your favorite classic novel or story within the walls of Litographs. Unless your favorite books are all Harry Potter books… Then you’re screwed. For now, anyway! You can sign up to be notified if they ever release a t-shirt based on your favorite book (like Harry Potter) by searching for the title on their website.
I’m going on about Harry Potter because I assume that three out of four adults are massive Harry Potter fans. That data comes from the fact that 75% of my girlfriends would readily get into a fist fight with someone (anyone!) in the name of defending the Harry Potter series. Either these are indisputable facts, or I have exceptionally violent friends.
Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
What’s even more fun is that any Litograph t-shirt you see is likely also available in a scarf ($39) and tote bag ($29). There are posters, too, but that’s less exciting (but still wonderful and gorgeous).
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Scarf
The Little Prince by Antoine Saint-Exupéry Tote Bag
Yes! The tote bags do look incredibly good with this style and design! How did you know!? It also helps that the scarves and totes are custom made with the colors and fonts of your choosing. Hell, you can even upload your own text to make a custom scarf with about 30,000 of your favorite words!
See the rest of the Litographs creations on their website!
Bonus! This isn’t t-shirt-related, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Litographs’ gorgeous temporary tattoos. (32 and proudly loving fake tattoos over here, thank you very much.) They make adorable temporary tattoos with great fonts featuring quotes from the same classic literature that they make graphic t-shirts out of.
The tattoos are incredibly cute and I want nearly all of them. They cost $5 and come in a set of two.