Spring is officially here and it’s time for some fresh new tees. Today we’re introducing 3 new designs which we’ve coined the Line Series. Hope you like em!

Horizon

Where the earth meets the sky.
Heather red 50/50 blend shirt with white print.

Wireframe

Hierarchy, flow, function, space. How ideas take shape.
White 100% ringspun cotton with softhand black print.

Rise and Fall

What goes up must come down.
Purple 100% ringspun cotton shirt with white print.

Less than a week into the campaign and we’re over 80% funded! We’ve been blown away by the great response and can’t thank you enough for all of the pledges and helping us spread the word. OpenFrame has even been featured on some great sites like Uncrate, SwissMiss, Geekadelphia and DesignWorkLife.

If you’re like us, you have dozens of posters that are just lying around in tubes or drawers. They never made it onto the wall because we never got around to framing them. We collaborated with fellow designer Matthew Smith (@whale) to design OpenFrame as a simple, flexible way to hang posters, prints, and photos of various sizes and configurations.

To help us raise the funding needed to manufacturer our first production run of OpenFrames, we’ve launched a Kickstarter Campaign. We need to raise $40,000 to make it happen. For your support as a backer, you can be one of the first to receive your very own OpenFrame. We and all the lonely posters out there appreciate your interest and support!

You can easily swap artwork out as often as you like by removing the small, but strong, rare earth magnets that hold your artwork to OpenFrame with minimal obstruction. OpenFrame is built in the USA with high-quality, natural materials that give it a warm aesthetic and complement artwork of any kind.

Features

• The “open” frame can accomodate multiple sizes and configurations of prints unlike custom frames which only hold one size.
• Small strong rare earth magnets allow for prints to be easily swapped (no more hassling with undoing the back of a frame).
• Special oversized slots on the back of the frame allow for easy hanging and positioning on the wall.
• Made in the USA.

Specs

OpenFrame is constructed from a combination of birch plywood, birch veneer, and stainless steel. Each frame is carefully finished with a clear lacquer to protect the wood surface and requires almost zero maintenance. To clean, the wood can simply be wiped with a dry cloth to remove dust.

3 Sizes

1. Square - Size: 10″ x 10″ - Perfect for your favorite solo Instagram print or 5″x7″s.

2. Medium - Size: 18″ x 24″ - Fits a traditional medium poster beautifully or arrange it with several smaller pieces.

3. Large - Size: 24″ x 30″- Show off those handsomely large prints or combine several pieces of various sizes.

Thickness - Each of the frames are 3/4″ thickness, hollow, but well built for durability.

How to hang:

Each OpenFrame has special routed slots in the back that allow it to be hung in portrait or landscape orientation. Rather than tiny holes, the slots were designed to allow the frame to easily be positioned on the wall over a screw or hook.

***Since different wall materials (drywall, brick, plaster) require different types of screws, we do not include hanging hardware with OpenFrame. We recommend using the appropriate type of anchors for your specific surface.

Prototyping

For the past few months, we’ve been working with a local shop here in PA to produce and refine the OpenFrame prototypes. We’ve designed a frame that not only functions great but also reduces the overall weight of the frame to make it easier to hang. Here are some photos from the prototyping process.

Help us make it happen

We are working with a local manufacturer here in the USA to manufacture OpenFrame. We have done extensive prototyping and testing and feel confident in our design, but in order to reach the minimum production run we need to raise $40,000.

We are using the Kickstarter platform to raise these funds. For your support as a backer, you can be one of the first to receive your very own OpenFrame and help us make it happen!

People often ask if I ever run out of new ideas. Honestly ideas are the easy part, executing them is much harder. I have a long list of products that I’d like to produce for Ugmonk someday, but until I perfect the design, materials, and manufacturing I won’t release a new product.

For the past couple years I’ve wanted to design custom messenger bags but couldn’t find a source that could produce what I was envisioning. There are plenty of places that sell stock bags and can slap a logo on them, but I wanted to design bags from the ground up and have control of every little detail. A bag is a very personal thing and the way that it feels and functions is just as important as the way it looks. I’m working on creating a bag that not only looks awesome, but will also last a lifetime.

Now for the good news. I finally found a place that fit the bill and we’re currently in the prototyping phase of making the first ever Ugmonk messenger bags. Though it can be tempting to rush into releasing something, in my opinion it’s worth it to wait until it’s perfect.

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated on the bag progress.

We’ve been working on a special new project with Matthew Smith that we’re excited to launch on Kickstarter soon. I won’t give away all the details yet, but let’s just say that your neglected posters and photos will soon have a new home. Stay tuned for more info.

If you have ever shipped physical products, you know how much work packing and shipping orders can be. When I started Ugmonk, I wasn’t sure if I’d sell a few shirts a month let alone hundreds in a day. As with almost everything, we’ve just figured out things along the way, but finding the right tools can make a big difference. Shipstation has been a lifesaver.

For a while we used the shipping feature in PayPal to print USPS postage labels for domestic orders and paid for international postage at the post office. This also involved filling out a customs forms by hand for each international order. Doing this for a handful of orders was tedious, but it worked. As things started to pickup this became very time consuming and just plain annoying.

We then tried out Stamps.com which allows you to ship international orders with integrated customs forms all online. While this was a step up from doing them by hand, it was still a pretty painful process. Copying and pasting addresses from Paypal, manually entering each item in the customs menu, and printing the labels one at a time all made for a lot of headaches. On top of that, Stamps.com is super slow and the interface looks like it hasn’t been updated in 10 years.

We recently switched our shop platform from Big Cartel to Shopify (more on that soon) and one of the main reasons was that we needed better integration with shipping apps to streamline our fulfillment. As Ugmonk has grown we have gone from shipping a few orders to as many as hundreds each week and we needed a better solution to handle this type of volume.

Enter Shipstation. We were considering writing our own shipping app but once we discovered Shipstation it was like a dream come true. It had almost every feature we were looking for and integrated perfectly with Shopify.

Some of our favorite features include:

• Automation rules so we can assign appropriate shipping settings and flag orders that may need special attention
• The ability to design and print custom packing slips
• The ability to batch process orders for both packing and shipping (including customs forms)
• The option to use multiple postage and shipping providers at no extra cost
• Fast and easy searching
• Splitting and merging orders
• Tight integration with Shopify (including pulling in item weights)

All of these make handling the shipment of tens or hundreds of orders a lot simpler and a lot faster. As with any software there is always room for improvement, but we’ve found ShipStation support to be responsive and we believe they will continue to improve their already stellar offering.

We discovered ShipStation as part of our move to Shopify, but we later discovered that ShipStation also integrates with many other ecommerce platforms including Paypal, ebay, Etsy, Amazon, and more. If you sell any quantity of physical goods online you should check them out at www.shipstation.com.

(We were not paid to write this review, just happy to spread the word about good products that we use every day. If you do sign up you can use our referral link and give us a little kickback)

We’re excited to introduce the new Ampersand Baseball Caps. Each vintage style baseball cap is carefully crafted by Ebbets Field Flannels in Seattle. Made from a lightweight wool with adjustable leather strap, these hats are great for all-season wear. Features include:

• Light gray cap with red or navy visor
• Felt ampersand applique
• Black under visor and sweatband
• Adjustable leather strap with nickel clasp
• White satin taping
• Handcrafted in the USA by Ebbets Field Flannels
• One size fits most

(Big thanks to Bethany Olsen and Cory Staudacher for the photos!)

Just received these thank-you photos from one of the Rice Bowls orphanages in Honduras. Thanks again for super successful charity drive and helping provide meals for these kids and many more!

Update: Just got this photo form one of the orphanages in India.

Pretty awesome to see two of our prints featured in this Fab TV spot at the 0:48 mark. Love the concept and execution of the ad as well. Thanks to everyone who spotted them and let us know.

You can get the prints over in the shop.

2012 was a huge year for Ugmonk, definitely our best year yet. From new products to events to features to special sales it was a busy year for sure. I can’t thank you guys enough for your ongoing support and allowing me to continue designing new products and growing the brand. I have a bunch of really cool things up my sleeve for 2013 and can’t wait to show you what’s next. Here are some highlights from 2012:

Product highlights:

Leather Mousepads
Premium Clothing
Overlap Series
Limited Edition 4th Anniversary Set

Interviews & Features:

The Great Discontent
Visual Supply Co.
Uncrate
Fab.com
The East Wing

Events:

Renegade
ValioCon
Echo Conference

Misc:

Ampersand Table Giveaway
New Lookbook
Charity Drive