Interview: Insert Coin’s Dan Long

Push-Start was lucky enough to be able to interview one of the founding members of InsertCoin,  and also a partner in design, who has helped towards making beautiful game themed t-shirt’s and hoodies.  The man behind the magic is Dan Long. Dan and InsertCoin have decided help celebrate Push-Start’s 2nd birthday. InsertCoin are providing Push-Start with three £10 gift vouchers to give away  For the details to enter the competition, read through the interview as Dan reveals some interesting stuff about the website and inspirations.  If you haven’t already checked out there amazing products, you should do it now and enter the competition, which is linked at the bottom of this article.

Firstly could you introduce yourself to the lovely people of the internet: 
Hello! We’re Insert Coin – a company you might’ve heard a bit about. We’re a new gamer clothing company, just 18 months old, but we’ve already got a great community supporting us. We (Jon and Dan) started company in 2010 because we were so disappointed with the tees already out there and the rest is history.

We never expected anything really. We just wanted to try our bit and do our best. People just seem to love our ideas and our products though and it’s all been a bit mad. We’re really quite overwhelmed by the support people have given us from the word go.

We love all of them equally – they’re kind of like our kids! We all love the Cervantes tee at the moment though… it’s just a pretty dam epic design, don’t you think?

Well, we have some fairly big ideas we’re planning to unleash in 2012. All we can say is watch this space!

What gives you the inspiration for the designs, are you a big fan of the games that are placed on your Tee’s or are the designs inspired from different designers?

We love all the games we design tees for. That has to be the starting point. You need to know and love the game to get a feel for it. In terms of design, we tend to get inspiration from the game worlds and spin it out across the designs in real life that we love. It’s that meeting point of great games and great designs that makes it work we think.

Do you receive a lot of requests? If so what is the most bizarre request you have got? Or is there simply too many to list?

Oh man, we receive an awful lot of design requests. Some really great ideas and we always read and respond to every one we receive. There are far too many to list here, but we’re always impressed by what our fans want to see – normally it matches up with exactly what we’re planning, which is great!

If you had to choose one game of 2011, which one would you personally say was your game of the year?

2011 had some amazing games – Skyrim, Arkham City, Portal 2 to name just three. It’s almost impossible to choose one… it was a real vintage year for gaming.

Are there any games your looking forward to in 2012? 

Lots! Assassin’s Creed III, Resident Evil 6 and Halo 4 are high on the list… this looks set to be another bumper year!

Among the rest of your team, is there a lot of competition on certain designs? 

Is there competition from within the team over what designs go through? Not really, we all kind of have that ‘Insert Coin’ mindset and we know what would look great on a tee… we always spend ages with a few designs, tweaking them and whittling them down to get the perfect designs ready for production.

If you had to choose one game that best describes you? What would it be?

Ooh, that’s a toughie! I think if Insert Coin was a game then it would be Arkham City – great design, lots of character and something new and exciting every day!

 

 

To enter the competition click here.