Every now and then, someone asks me: “Wait… what is this Ribafish?”
And that’s when I tell them about a classmate of mine who, some 35 years ago, was sweating it out at the chalkboard during math class, desperately trying to solve an equation and avoid a make-up exam.
That story deserves the full version, by the way. He filled the board. Erased it. Filled it again. Then did it a third time.
Finally, our math teacher looked at him and said: “You’re cooked, Ribafish.”
My classmate passed the year. The line, meanwhile, somehow stayed in my head for the next three and a half decades.
From a random classroom joke to a clothing brand
About two years ago, after spending more than two decades selling creative services, I started thinking it might be nice to make something of my own for a change.
An actual product.
Eventually, I narrowed the ideas down to a line of original graphic T-shirts built around simple illustrations and funny, slightly offbeat lines.
Not the kind of designs that scream at you from across the street. More like the kind that make someone lean in and ask: “Hey, what does your shirt say?”
That felt much more interesting.
And somewhere in the middle of one particularly intense brainstorming session, Ribafish popped back into my head.
Suddenly, it felt like the perfect name.
For one thing, at least half of it makes sense almost anywhere in the world. For another, nobody really knows what a Ribafish is.
Including me.
Which gives us plenty of room to work with.
First came the logo. Then came the creatures.
I grabbed a sketchbook and started working on a logo. My first Ribafish was a fish with big lips, sunglasses, and legs.
Groundbreaking? Not exactly. There are quite a few fish walking around on two legs already. So I kept sketching.
I tried typographic versions of the logo, combinations of lettering and fish silhouettes, even letters shaped like a fish skeleton.
Eventually, the winner was much simpler: Special Gothic Extended, paired with our own little “registered” symbol — an R inside a simplified round fish.
The walking fish survived, though. Instead of becoming the logo, he became a character.
Then a squid showed up. Followed by a starfish. A lobster. A seahorse. Some seaweed. A shark.
And there are a few more questionable individuals on the way.
T-shirts with character. Literally.
Each character gets paired with a line of its own, usually arched above the illustration, with the Ribafish logo sitting underneath.
That became our first collection: T-shirts with a character.
Literally, because there’s a character on every one. Figuratively, because that’s kind of the point.
They’re made for loud introverts, shy extroverts, and anyone who prefers saying something without making a speech about it.
Then there’s the second side of Ribafish. The shirts without characters. Just words.
Short thoughts, jokes, observations, and little statements that let the person wearing them introduce themselves — or tell the rest of the world something they probably weren’t going to say out loud.
Sometimes a T-shirt can say it for you
We currently seem to live in a world where empathy could use a little better PR.
So one of the shirts simply says: MAKE EMPATHY GREAT AGAIN.
It’s part joke, part statement, and part reminder that maybe caring about other people isn’t such a terrible character flaw after all.
Because people currently in power have serious problems with a lack of empathy (Elon even called it the fundamental weakness of Western civilization)…
I’ve never been particularly interested in clothes. But I’ve always loved T-shirts.
Maybe because a T-shirt can be more than something you put on in the morning.
It can be a joke. An introduction. A tiny billboard. An icebreaker.
A way of saying, “This is roughly the kind of person I am,” without having to put it in your bio.
And if someone has to come a little closer to get the joke?
Even better.
Have a look through the Ribafish T-shirts.
Maybe you’ll find one that says something to your friends. Or about you. Or, ideally, both.
And if there’s anything you want to ask, tell me, complain about, or suggest, write to me at info@ribafish.eu.
I do, in fact, read emails.