A classic guide to creative entrepreneurship, helping creative people combine their creative talents with smart business thinking.
T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity was written specifically for entrepreneurs and businesses in the creative and cultural industries.
First published in the UK in 2005, the book has since been translated and published in 14 countries, across Europe, Asia and Latin America. It is used by creative entrepreneurs, universities, creative hubs, cultural organisations and creative industries support agencies around the world.
The English-language eBook is available free of charge under a Creative Commons licence.
You can download it, read it, share it with colleagues, distribute it to your community or offer it as a free resource from your own website.
Please use it. Please share it.
And if you would like to make T-Shirts and Suits available in another language, let’s talk.
Creativity and Business — Together
The title T-Shirts and Suits represents the central idea behind the book.
The T-Shirts are creative people — artists, designers, makers, musicians, filmmakers, architects, digital creatives and other creative entrepreneurs.
The Suits represent smart business thinking.
Successful creative enterprises need both.
The challenge is not to compromise creativity for the sake of business, or to bolt conventional business techniques onto a creative enterprise. It is to bring creativity and business together intelligently, so that each supports the other.
T-Shirts and Suits combines creative passion with practical business thinking about strategy, marketing, finance, intellectual property, customers, competition and collaboration.
But it doesn’t prescribe one formula for success.
Creative entrepreneurs have different talents, ambitions, values and circumstances. The purpose of the book is to provide ideas and practical tools that people can adapt to their own circumstances and ethos — designing a creative enterprise that works on their own terms.
That philosophy has been at the heart of David Parrish’s work with creative entrepreneurs around the world ever since.
Helping Creative Entrepreneurs Worldwide
T-Shirts and Suits grew out of practical experience.
Before writing the book, David had been involved in creative enterprises, cooperatives and social enterprises himself, as well as advising hundreds of creative entrepreneurs.
The book brought together lessons from that experience with business-school thinking — translating conventional business concepts into practical ideas that make sense in the particular world of the creative and cultural industries.
First published by Merseyside ACME, the creative industries development agency in Liverpool, England, T-Shirts and Suits soon travelled much further.
It has now been translated and published in:
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Chile, China, Colombia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Moldova, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and Ukraine.
The publishers have been just as varied as the countries.
They include commercial and specialist publishers, universities, creative industries organisations, government cultural agencies and creative hubs.
Some editions have been conventional paperbacks. Others have been sponsored by partner organisations or made freely available as eBooks.
This variety is part of the T-Shirts and Suits story.
The objective has always been bigger than selling individual copies of a book.
It is about getting useful business ideas into the hands of creative entrepreneurs.
The book continues to be used as a reference to the field as well as a practical guide for entrepreneurs. T-Shirts and Suits is cited as a reference in Wikipedia’s article on the Creative Industries, which links directly to the free eBook.
Read T-Shirts and Suits Free
The complete English-language edition of T-Shirts and Suits is available as a free eBook.
Not a sample.
Not a shortened version.
The whole book.
It is a practical enterprise guide covering subjects including:
You are welcome to download the book and use it as a resource for yourself, your students, colleagues, members or community.
Download the free T-Shirts and Suits eBook
The book is also available in other digital formats, as a paperback and as an audiobook.
Please Share It
Yes, really.
The free eBook edition of T-Shirts and Suits is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 UK: England & Wales licence (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 UK).
In common-sense English, this means you are welcome to copy and redistribute the eBook, provided that you give appropriate attribution, don’t use it commercially and don’t distribute a changed version.
So please feel free to:
– email it to colleagues and contacts;
– offer it as a free download from your website;
– add it to an online toolkit or resource library;
– share it with members of your creative hub or network;
– give it to students or participants in a creative entrepreneurship programme;
– include it as a resource for a conference, workshop or training programme.
You don’t need to ask David for special permission to do these things, provided you comply with the Creative Commons licence.
In fact, we’d like you to.
The purpose of making the eBook freely available is simple: to help more creative entrepreneurs become more successful by combining their creative talents with smart business thinking.
Read the Creative Commons licence
Tell me where you’re using it
You don’t need to tell David before sharing the book — but he’d love to hear about it.
If you’re using T-Shirts and Suits with students, entrepreneurs, members of a creative hub, participants in a business programme or another creative community, please get in touch.
It’s always fascinating to discover where the book travels next.
Tell David how you’re using T-Shirts and Suits
Make T-Shirts and Suits Part of Your Creative Community
If you run a creative hub, university programme, incubator, accelerator, NGO, government initiative or other organisation supporting creative entrepreneurs, T-Shirts and Suits is available as a resource for your community.
The simplest option costs nothing.
Make the free eBook available to the people you support.
You can link to it from your resources page, host and distribute the eBook in accordance with its Creative Commons licence, email it to your community or include it in an online toolkit.
Printed copies can also be supplied in quantity for organisations, workshops, conferences and training programmes.
David frequently uses T-Shirts and Suits as part of his own creative entrepreneurship workshops. The book can become a resource participants take away and continue using after the workshop has finished.
For organisations commissioning a wider programme, a workshop can also be combined with books, one-to-one advice, meetings, visits, presentations and other activities.
Creative Business Training with David Parrish
But you don’t need to commission David to use the book.
It’s there for you to use.
Publish T-Shirts and Suits in Your Language
T-Shirts and Suits is already published in 14 countries — and David would like to see it reach many more.
If you work with creative entrepreneurs and think the book would be useful in your country or language, please get in touch.
And importantly:
You don’t have to be a traditional publisher.
Previous editions have been initiated and published by commercial publishers, specialist creative-industry publishers, universities, creative organisations, government agencies and creative hubs.
There is no single model.
An edition could be a commercially published paperback, a sponsored publication, a free translated eBook, or a combination of formats.
What matters is finding a model that works for your organisation and the creative community you want to support.
Ukraine: a recommendation David didn’t know about
A delegation from Ukraine visited Estonia to learn from organisations supporting the creative industries there.
During the visit, an Estonian organisation recommended that T-Shirts and Suits should be translated and published in Ukrainian.
David knew nothing about the conversation.
The first he heard about it was when the Ukrainian publisher Chernozem contacted him.
A Ukrainian edition followed.
Chile: adapting an existing translation
T-Shirts and Suits had already been translated into Spanish and published in Colombia by Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano.
When Chile’s National Council of Culture and the Arts wanted a Chilean edition, David helped the two organisations collaborate so that the existing translation and design files could be used rather than starting again.
The edition was then adapted for its new context, including a new introduction about the creative industries in Chile.
Even the title changed.
Camisetas y Corbatas became Poleras y Corbatas, using the familiar Chilean word poleras for T-shirts.
It was more than translation. It was localisation.
Taiwan: from free eBook to wider collaboration
A British Council delegation introduced T-Shirts and Suits to creative industries organisations in Taiwan.
David was subsequently approached about producing an edition in traditional Chinese, rather than the simplified Chinese used for an earlier mainland China edition.
With British Council support, the Taiwanese edition was published as a free eBook.
David was then invited to Taiwan for its launch, where he also spoke at a design conference and delivered a workshop for young creative entrepreneurs.
One book had become the starting point for a much wider collaboration.
Other international editions have developed through different combinations of publishers, universities, creative organisations, government agencies, sponsors and international cultural programmes.
If your organisation would like to explore a new translation or edition of T-Shirts and Suits, let’s start a conversation.
Contact David about a translation or publishing partnership
See all 14 international editions
Editions, Reviews and Resources
Other editions and formats
If you’d prefer something other than the free PDF, T-Shirts and Suits is also available as:
Paperback — for individual readers, organisations and bulk supply for workshops and programmes.
Audiobook — for people who prefer to listen.
Text eBook — for Kindle and other eBook readers.
What people have said about T-Shirts and Suits
“T-Shirts and Suits demystifies the ins and outs of building a business in the creative industries by providing a practical guide for creative entrepreneurs that uses case studies to illustrate best practice.”
– Alexander Schischlik. UNESCO.
“Owning this book is equivalent to having a professional adviser available to you…”
– Anne McInerney, UK Trade & Investment
“This common sense, accessible book is a comprehensive guide to establishing, growing and leading a creative business.”
– Paul Smith, Arts & Business
“It really helped me make the decision to go for it… I still keep dipping into mine whenever I am struggling with an aspect of the business — an answer usually lies within and helps me get back on track.”
– Susan Comer – Amazon review
“T-Shirts and Suits manages to combine ‘creativity’ and ‘business’ in a practical, easily digestible format… now I use it for quick reference all the time.”
– Alison Coward – Amazon review
“The advice given by David in this book is timeless…”
– Kevin McManus, Merseyside ACME, original publisher of T-Shirts and Suits
Read more reviews of T-Shirts and Suits
The book has been used by entrepreneurs, educators and creative industries support organisations internationally since its first publication in 2005.
About David Parrish
David Parrish is a British-Irish specialist in the creative industries and creative economy.
He works internationally as a speaker, trainer and business adviser, helping creative entrepreneurs combine their creative talents with smart business thinking.
David has worked professionally in more than 60 countries and has spoken at international events including at the United Nations in Geneva and the European Commission in Brussels.
His work focuses particularly on creative entrepreneurship, business strategy and marketing for creative enterprises.
T-Shirts and Suits grew out of David’s own experience in creative and social enterprises, his work with hundreds of creative entrepreneurs and his study of business strategy.
He is also the author of Chase One Rabbit: Strategic Marketing for Business Success.
David Parrish — International Keynote Speaker
Use It. Share It. Take It Further.
T-Shirts and Suits has travelled a long way since it was first published in Liverpool in 2005.
It has been translated, republished, downloaded, printed, taught from, given away, discussed in workshops and passed from one creative entrepreneur to another.
That’s exactly what David wants to continue.
So:
– If you’re a creative entrepreneur — read it.
– If you support creative entrepreneurs — share it with them.
– If you run a creative hub, university, NGO, agency or programme — make it part of your resources.
– If you’d like to bring T-Shirts and Suits to another country or language — let’s work together to make it happen.
And if the book starts a conversation that leads somewhere else — a workshop, conference, partnership or simply an exchange of ideas — so much the better.
Download T-Shirts and Suits free
Explore translations and international editions