Marginal Designs is a scrappy, part-time, un-funded startup offering graphic design and wordpress customization services…and sweet t-shirts. Our mission is to make Pittsburgh a better place by raising the bar on website design and our vision is to be driven out of business someday by vastly more talented competitors. And when it comes down to it, that really shouldn’t be too hard — we’re not experts, we’re just a couple of people who like to tinker.

Environmental and Social Responsibility

We believe that we have a duty to be environmentally and socially responsible to our community. Yup, we’re bleeding-heart, politically-correct, tree-hugging liberals, and not afraid to say it. We’re certainly not perfect, but we try to live up to our ideals in our day to day lives and, by extension, in our business lives.

To achieve this, we set some goals for ourselves:

• The t-shirts we sell can’t have been made by modern-day slaves, i.e., people being exploited in sweatshops.
• Using t-shirts made as locally as possible. That means t-shirts that are made in the USA. If they’re made in Pennsylvania, that’s even better, and Pittsburgh-made t-shirts are the best of all. (Which makes sense, because Pittsburgh is the greatest city in the world.)
• The t-shirt manufacturer should engage in a responsible manufacturing process and use sustainable materials.
• The t-shirt manufacturers cannot be sexist assholes. (We’re looking at you, American Apparel.)

The reality is, most t-shirts are manufactured in impoverished, developing countries on a contract basis. We are certainly not demonizing the people who work in these places. We recognize that the choice between working in a sweatshop for five cents a day or your family members starving to death isn’t really a choice at all; it’s the failure of the world community to treat people as people with dignity and human rights. The people we are demonizing are the companies who sell t-shirts made in these places. True, they don’t have control over working conditions in factories, but they also don’t seem to really care. And as long as companies continue using these t-shirts, sweatshops will exist and human beings will suffer.

Sooo…..

What are we doing to live up to these goals?

• We are using a screen printer based in Pittsburgh, Commonwealth Press, whose ideas about the right way to do business mesh with our own. Among other things, they use eco-friendly water-based ink.
• We’re using Anvil t-shirts. Although Avil’s shirts are made in a number of places, they adhere to decent corporate responsibility standards. Our men’s t-shirts are made of recycled materials (PDF) and the women’s t-shirts are 100% organic cotton (PDF).
• We are featuring real people in the pictures of our t-shirts, not anorexic models.
• We are donating 5% of all profits to progressive causes in our community.

Obviously, no one’s perfect, including us. We are always looking for better solutions to meet these goals, so if you have any ideas or suggestions, please let us know at info AT marginaldesigns DOT com.