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Rules of the Game

 Paper/ T-Shirts

            William Baumol once wrote a manifest explaining that in cultures, we derive our innovation based on what societal norms and the cultures depiction of wealth and prestige in a society. In Baumol’s words, it is the “Rules of the game”. In Ancient Chinese civilization, their “rules of the game” were based on what they valued in their culture. In Ancient China, wealth and prestige was associated with scholarship. For this reason, even though China was technologically ready for a variety of advancements, the innovation of paper was invented by Ts'ai Lunbecause their “rules of the game” encouraged it. Overtime the process became simplified and is now synonymous with all cultures. At times, I feel that I live by my own “rules of the game” and create things based on my demographic. For me that is Sorority T-shirts.  
            I never woke up one morning and thought, “I’m going to make T-Shirts today!” My abilliy and process to make T-shirt came to be when I had a need for a custom T-shirt for an event in my sorority and I did not want to pay for an altered version of my vision. I wanted my idea and I wanted the best quality. With that, I bought a heat press. I made my ideas a reality for not only myself but over thirty other girls in my sorority. Recently I just fulfilled an order of another 46 Sorority T-Shirts. Just like Ts’ai Lun, I fulfilled a need based on the culture around me and created my own game. 
            When watching the process of creating paper, I notice how the steps cannot be rushed any only with extreme care will the process succeed. Similar to T-Shirts, Heat mixed with transfer ink is permanent. The initial invention of graphic T-shirts and the inventor’s thought process behind the world-changing art relates to the way paper was developed in Ancient China. For China, the effect paper had on its culture relates to the way graphic T-Shirts set the world on fire. After printers understood the effect of an image printed on a tee, graphic t-shirt became synonymous with not only pop culture, but everyday fashion. 
                 No one knows when first T came out for sure, but the T that first came to fame was in 1939. It was spotted by behind the scenes workers of the Wizard of Oz. It was after these people understood the marketing potential of graphic tees. The earliest people remember graphic tees date back to the behind the scenes crew of the movie,” Wizard of Oz”.  One picture of their bright green tees with a white “OZ” on them got the world buzzing. The popularity grew in the 1950s
with band tees and pop culture. 
                 Both Inventions sparked revolutions. One probably could not develop the process for developing tees without utilizing the idea of a strict process to get the perfect replica each time. Additionally, both inventions helped to tie together cultures and helped to inspire and enhance every “rule of the game”.


Baumol, William J. “Entrepreneurship: Productive, Unproductive, and Destructive.” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 98, no. 5, 1990, pp. 893–921. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2937617.


http://www.melmarc.com/history-of-the-graphic-t-shirt/

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