I first heard about the Yellow Bird Project from Quirk's Friday drinks DJ, Grant Mchlachlan. Basically it's a charity site which raises funds by selling t-shirts designed by ultra-cool bands.

In their words, “We are a Montreal-based nonprofit called Yellow Bird Project. We work with an amazing range of indie rock musicians to create unique t-shirt designs that benefit an array of charities, each chosen by the musicians.”

There are around 30 different t-shirt designs, which is not bad considering they convinced so many bands to contribute thus far. The bands who have contributed are some of my favourites, such as Bloc Party, Bon Iver, Broken Social Scene and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

The Shirts…

So what do these shirts look like? It's for charity, but hell, I want a cool shirt for my 25 bucks! There are some awesome designs in my opinion, which makes me feel a wee-bit inadequate as a designer. Not only are they talented and successful musicians, but they design cool stuff too.

Some of my favourites:

Click to enlarge.

And there are a few not-so-cool ones. (But don't worry, you will always have your music career!)

Site Design

The site is designed in a handwritten informal style which I love, even though it has been done many times before. The illustration is excellent and fits in well with the rough style of the design. The website was designed by Dynamo and illustration done by Emy Story.

I also love the attention to detail, such as the shopping cart and use of chunky text on the shopping page.

Other Cool Features

“Search by cause” is an excellent feature which allows you to search for the charity that you would like to support.

The project even got one of my favourite bands (The Tallest Man on Earth) to write them a theme song, which you can download and share with friends. Clearly these Yellow Bird dudes have some serious influence.

The sign up page has only a few fields to fill in, leaving your profile page incomplete. However, you can fill in the other information at a later stage, which is great if you hate long forms as much as I do.

There is also a gallery section where you can upload a photo of yourself looking cool and wearing a Yellow Bird shirt. On the team page you can download posters to print and stick up all over your neighbourhood. Animated gif and flash banners are available for you to add to your website if you want to support the project further.

Overall, I was really impressed with the graphical elements used on the site. It looks like a lot of love has been put into this project. Of course, an important part of the user experience would be payment and delivery of the shirts, but unfortunately I couldn’t secure the company credit card to test this. :)

Also check out:

• 5 Simple Steps Every Designer Should Consider
• 10 Fun, Inspirational and Creative Sites