In 2023, I worked with Renee French to design and print Go gopher-themed Hawaiian shirts. (For more about the Go gopher, see this blog post or Renee's amazing GopherCon 2016 talk.)

I printed samples in a variety of background colors using two different Etsy sellers, and later I worked with a vendor to print shirts with a charcoal background color for the Go team. You may have seen me wearing those colored shirts at Go conferences or seen the Go team wearing theirs.

This repo contains the images we used, so that people can print their own shirts or other creations. (I know one person who has made pajama pants with the pattern. They could make fun socks too!) As usual, the Go gopher images are licensed under CC-BY-4.0.

The repo contains full-size 24120x18300-pixel PNG files gopher-shirt-$color.png, about 10 MB each. Each has an accompanying 410x410-pixel cropped and resized sample gopher-shirt-$color-preview.png, displayed below.

I ordered my one-off samples though two Etsy sellers https://www.etsy.com/shop/NoveltyCustomDesign and https://www.etsy.com/shop/DStoryGifts and they both turned out great. The instructions I sent both sellers were (replace $URL):

“Pattern at $URL (10 MB). That's a 400DPI image measuring 30" x 45" - the individual characters are intended to be 1.5" tall each.”

One seller printed the image at a bit more 400 DPI, and one at a bit less than 200 DPI. (That's why my yellow shirt has large gophers on it.) They both look great though.

If you do make something fun and are willing to share it, please send me a picture. Thanks!