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When Ben Affleck wanted
to outfit the cast and crew of his latest movie in Boston Red Sox T-shirts, he
didn’t go to Fenway Park. He called Cambridge graphic designers—and fellow Sox
fans—Christopher Schmitt and Emily Simons (Bachelor of Fine Arts ’91 and ’93,
respectively). Proprietors of The Red Seat, an online shop, the husband-and-wife
team creates original merchandise that “explores the mythic, tragic, humorous,
and artistic sides of the Red Sox, and what it means
to be a member of The Nation that follows the team with fanatic devotion.”
Schmitt and Simons, who
also run the design firm Sofa Studios, were happy to create a special-edition
T-shirt for Affleck, but they were initially driven to make shirts out of
sorrow, after the Sox lost the 2003 American League Championship Series. The
demand for their first shirt, which featured a black cloud over Fenway Park and
the caption “God hates us,” made clear to Schmitt and Simons that Red Sox fans
needed something to wear besides the tired, overpriced shirts sold at Fenway
Park. The Red Seat was born, named after the seat in Fenway, painted red, where
Ted Williams landed a 1946 home run. These days Schmitt and Simons are filling
orders from as far away as as Sweden and Antarctica.
Schmitt, originally a
painter, and Simons, a photographer, met through mutual Museum School friends.
At the time, electronic desktop publishing was just taking off, and when “Emily
put one of my drawings through a scanner,” Schmitt says, “I was so amazed that I
felt I had to explore it.” After slogging through “fairly dry” design-industry
jobs for a short time, Schmitt and Simons launched Sofa Studios, which creates
marketing materials for such clients as Zipcar, Timberland, and Kaiser Permanente.
Schmitt and Simons
appear to balance it all—the high-concept graphic design firm, the T-shirt
venture, not to mention their two young children—with admirable good cheer. “We
have a business based on the Red Sox,” Simons points out. “That’s the most fun
thing in the world.”
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