I'm actually a bit put-off by those standard black-with-tourdates-on-back-shirts nowadays. So try to come up with something a bit more...dare I say it...fashional. Something that you can easily wear everyday without everybody thinking you are some dead metal freak...
I agree with Tom.
I know a metalhead and he always wears this metal T-shirt, with tourdates on back and (ugly) frontcover on front. The first thing that comes up in my mind is "Doesn't he wash this T-shirt? Or has he more than one of these?" But the second thought is always "You don't want to walk in public wearing THAT?"
I mean, it's cool to have it, and you can wear it at concerts, but you don't wear them at work, or in front of a class (I'm studying for teacher).
Something fashionable would be cool. No tourdates on back and no album cover on front. (at least not in a way that you can see the shape of a square.)
Ayreon has albumcover on front of T-shirts,
but in a good way It blends with the background, you don't see the square of the cover.
Here is another example of the front of one of these shirts, with just a logo (a small picture on the upper left of the shirt), which is nice, I think. But on the back it's too much text I think.
These are samples of how it also could be done.
Tour dates... tour dates... tour dates... please!
Why tour dates? You can't see them when it's on your back, and no one else in real life will want to read it anyway. The Kino T-shirt had a nice alternative: an explaination of the word "Kino", which is nice, funny and better than tour dates.
Big picture on the front!
Yeah, but it's always the front cover... and always badly done... Try a different shape instead of that square, and maybe try using something from the inside of the booklet instead of always that front cover...
Arena could try to put the comic strips on a shirt.
Just my thoughts.
-Paco