The Story Behind the Nozomi Tee
Each New Year, my friend Nozomi carves a new hanga by hand to make her own nengajo, the traditional New Year cards exchanged across Japan. The design changes every year and usually comes from something personal.
The 2023 print shows her daughter, Hanna-chan, wearing a kimono. I pinned it to the office wall and kept looking at it long after New Year had passed. Eventually, I asked Nozomi if we could use it on a Jokes Aside tee. She agreed and even scanned the original for us.
That became the Nozomi Tee, our first graphic T-shirt.
Hanga is a Japanese woodblock printing process, so the texture, carved lines and small irregularities are part of the work. We kept those details rather than cleaning the image up into something overly polished.
The tee is named after Nozomi and uses her original 2023 print on a white AS Colour Box Tee. It felt like the right place to start: a real piece of artwork, made by someone we know, given a little more time in the world.
