If you struggle to figure out Christmas Presents for all of the white elephant gift exchanges you've got coming up, look no further. The PAL Campaign's got your back.
Those of you who know me, know that I grew up rocking Blink 182 albums in my beat-up old homeschool minivan on the way to some skate spot while I was playing hookey and killing time between rock shows. Needless to say, my Catholic retreat t's have mostly tended to serve as workout shirts, rags, and dust collectors. Thankfully, the Church has picked up it's t-shirt game since I was in high school. Joe Kim of the PAL Campaign (Peace and Love) has been on the front lines of this t-shirt design revival. Take a gander:
Joe's design is super fresh, minimalist, and worthy of wearing by any twenty one pilots fan. His shirt's range from the subtle "Peace" shown above, to more explicitly Catholic designs, but even those are so edgy that you almost put them in a totally different category.
I also love how attentive Joe is to his brand. All of the mockups show good looking artistic people sporting PAL merch the way you'd want it worn. It's quirky, fashionable, and interesting. When I asked Joe what inspired his design style, he had an interesting answer:
"Because I believe that this universal faith we call ours is the most attractive thing in the world, PAL Campaign's products never pander to fleeting trends or desperate attempts to stay relevant. That is the difference. Industry experts assert that the average t-shirt is read about 3,000 times before it gets discarded. Because of this, a core value behind the design process is to allow the t-shirts to solicit questions about their meaning. It's my prayer that the dialogue created from curiosity can lead one from beauty to goodness, and eventually to truth. "
It's not enough to me for faith based t-shirts to simply be designed according to the current trends. I really need any shirt that I wear say something about the faith that's interesting or different. I love the Verso Alto, Donna Nobis Pacem, and More than Flesh and Bone shirts for that reason.
PAL Campaign. Do it.
By Marcellino D'Ambrosio
Catholic Creatives Founder
While the business side of this acquisition makes sense, for the team at Catholic Ventures this is much more than an acquisition. Catholic Creatives provides not just the hope that God has a purpose in the work we are doing, it gives me hope that he is still up to something even bigger in the world through his Church.
The facial features cried out in agony from the plain background of my Instagram. “She’s this dancer doing this beautiful thing, but there’s agony in it. Kind of how people are going through this hard time because of coronavirus and everything, but at the same time there can be beauty brought out of it.”
It’s difficult to picture Katherine without an instrument in her hands because she’s a music therapist.
“There's so much that's not being told,” Katherine said. “We should enter into their chaos [to help them], instead of brushing their issues aside.”
Many, if not most, of us in the Catholic Creatives community are facing hardships that we have never before encountered: being at stuck at home for weeks on end, loss of income, worrying about the possibility of contracting a novel coronavirus or unknowingly passing it to someone else—and most difficult, being unable to receive the sacraments regularly.
For Amy Heyse, a Catholic watercolor artist and art instructor in Ft. Collins, CO, this time has provided an opportunity to revisit a painting that was born out of a difficult time in her life.