Best Band Aids

Blue Collar Press is the contact if you want to make your band look cool. BCP designs shirts, pins, patches, posters and hoodies for the likes of the Get Up Kids, Mac Lethal and a lot of other local musicians whose merch tables rock. We have seen musicians collect their orders of T-shirts, pins and whatnot from the Blue Collar Press office in Eudora, tear open the boxes and just stare. In a good way. BCP President Sean Ingram says the company has been known under its current name for a year but started as the Bear Press in a basement in Lawrence. "The business began as my brainstorm to stay involved in the music industry doing something creative, something bands need," Ingram says. A skeleton crew of full-time, part-time and freelance artists customizes logos and designs for bands that match whatever sound and vision they're going for, unless they already know exactly what they want. And when they're not creating stuff for clients, they're making up designs of their own (like the signature "Vinyl Nerd" T-shirts), riding around on the office mini-bike, flying model planes or playing with Transformers. That's so punk.