Zazzle engages African designers to create soccer designs

05 Jun '10

4 min read

Zazzle, the leader in on-demand retail manufacturing,announced that it has expanded its partnership with Edun Live, the sustainable t-shirt brand founded by Ali Hewson and her husband Bono. Edun Live and Zazzle are engaging artists to create a wide range of designs related to Africa and soccer/football. All designs will be submitted by African designers, and will be sold on only African Edun Live blank t-shirts. Proceeds will go to Invisible Children, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing financial resources to children by documenting their true, untold stories in a creative and relevant way, resulting in positive change.

The new designs, available online at http://www.zazzle.com/edunlive, will be printed on Edun Live's 100 percent certified organic cotton t-shirts, and each of the designers will receive income from each sale, consistent with Zazzle user terms. Ten percent of all proceeds will be donated to Invisible Children. The designers represented include:

• Zetuzakale Productions, a group of East African designers whose inception evolves a dream of design and creative perceptions from African themes. Zetu-za-kale is derived from Swahili words that mean "ours from the past" and it is from the past that we draw our inspiration.
• Bonk is a Kenyan clothing company that designs and makes tees and bags for the coolest Nairobi crowds. All designs are sketched-up, colored with funktitude and produced in Kenya by a sizzled ensemble of Kenyans: Ashi Kariuki, Aika-Grace Temu, and Fady Rostom.
• Jamburi Wear founder and designer Kimathi was raised in 1980s Nairobi, Kenya. He credits his Mum for piquing his sense of style, Leaders from elsewhere across cultures and disciplines also count as inspirations Fashion designers Ralph Lauren and Nigo (Bathing Ape), visual artist Yinka Shinobare, business maverick Richard Branson and perhaps most profoundly, Nigerian afro beat pioneer Fela Anikulapo Kuti. "Fela, to me was a style icon," muses Kimathi, "and he is probably our biggest icon. He was Africa cool before it was even cool to be African."
• G1 Media is a robust, design company based in Uganda with a unique perspective covering design, creativity, innovation, and consumer psychology. G1 Media believes effective design is somewhat like a composition written for a symphony orchestra, in that it requires several instruments working symbiotically in order to achieve the desired result.
• David Ssengendo is a fine Ugandan artist and graphic designer with a background in painting, printmaking, and illustration. He has shown his work in the All Artists Exhibition at the Nomo Gallery in Kampala and has done illustration for Macmillan Uganda.
• Paul Douglas Kihiko is a graffiti artist and designer who is currently working as an artist coordinator with the British Council in Kenya. In addition to doing commissioned artwork for various organizations in Nairobi, he has also done freelance graffiti and design for a wide range of clientele.

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