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Wild Fire Tees: Bringing Colorado Together Through Design

October 1, 2012 / By AIGA Colorado

This past sum­mer, Colorado expe­ri­enced the most destruc­tive wild­fire sea­son ever. We wit­nessed the High Park Fire near Fort Collins, and if that wasn’t enough, the city of Colorado Springs was threat­ened by the Waldo Canyon Fire.

Inspired by AIRSHP, a Texas-based design com­pany that designed t-shirts and sold them to raise money for wild­fire relief in 2011, design­ers from all over Colorado teamed up to launch Wild Fire Tees in hopes of dupli­cat­ing AIRSHP’s suc­cess. Launched on Wednesday, June 27th, the site raised $50,000 in its first day. To date, more than $600,000 in sales has been grossed.

All prof­its go directly to wild­fire relief, dis­persed between the Colorado Red Cross, Care and Share Food Bank Colorado as well as other non-profit orga­ni­za­tions. And to show their admi­ra­tion and appre­ci­a­tion for the amaz­ing fire­fight­ers who worked tire­lessly and relent­lessly to bat­tle the blazes, peo­ple are buy­ing shirts for them, donat­ing to put the sig­na­ture “C Fire” design on their backs.

A call for open design sub­mis­sions was put out, and the response has been over­whelm­ing. The site has been flooded with designs from around the state and all over the coun­try. The team is col­lect­ing the best sub­mis­sions and ready­ing them for future batches of shirts.

The Wild Fire Tees story is just another exam­ple of the power and influ­ence of design and how impact­ful it can be on our lives. Read more about the inspir­ing tale here.

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