Artist: Manchester Orchestra
Title: Apple Tree
Designer: Jordan Noel

I’m usually not a fan of white t-shirts but for this design it works well.

From Jordan, who does Ginger Group Designs (read all of it, it’s interesting):

The tree shirt that you are interested in is one in a series of
designs that i was doing for Manchester to go with the first album,
“i’m like a virgin losing a child”. i designed the cover and all for
that record and it was all very organic. the focus was paper and tape
and all of these real tangible things. i wanted to take a step back
from that and show a bigger picture. so my mind went to trees. so my
t shirts and posters were very consciously shaped around wood and
leaves.

the first of these was an edition of hand printed (by me) posters and
shirts that were available in several colors but very low quantities
(i believe there were 50 shirts and maybe a hundred posters, all
signed and numbered). the posters came in cd release editions and
regular tour editions. this design features a bird made out of the
letters in “manchester orchestra” standing on an egg-filled nest
resting on a branch. i will attach pictures of these.

next was another t shirt that has an ivy kind of logo on it. this ivy
design is lifted from the fabric pattern that is on the back of the lp
cover. there have been 2 editions of this shirt. the first was a
bright grass green and the second was more of an olive. on the first
edition (the grass green one) there is a little bit of text on the
back that has not been included on later printings. photos of the
first edition are attached.

the third design in the series was a poster for the Brand New/Kevin
Devine/Manchester tour in March&April. the poster has a line of trees
on it. these were designed and printed by me and were limited to
about 60 or so i think. they came in 4 colors and were totally
awesome. they are all gone now. i’m attaching that design.

while on that tour i designed the shirt that you are talking about. I
was working merch for Manchester at the time and was doing design work
for them while on the road. it would be the second to last in the
tree series. i knew it was nearing the end so i wanted to chop the
tree down. its that simple really. i wanted to cut it clean so its
on a white shirt with crisp colors. just red, brown and green. i
love this shirt. its definitely one of my favorites that i’ve done
for them.

the last in the series was a slight tangent but still was fun. its a
poster design featuring twin popsicles for the Manchester Orchestra /
Colour Revolt summer tour.