On August 12, 2026, a solar eclipse will appear over Greenland, Iceland, and Spain. Many shady vendors will sell incredibly tacky shirts to commemorate the occasion. Instead, order something a little more classy. Available on Cotton Bureau.
Merch
Thanks to Cotton Bureau for featuring my new “Happy Frank” shirt design in their T-Shirt Tuesday email. (And yes, I know his full name is Frankenstein’s Monster, but he just goes by Frank these days.)
Blade Wing
4/19/26 • 3 min read
For one year, I wrote a blog post about a random topic and designed a shirt inspired by the blog post.1 Lately, I’m giving myself some projects so I can learn to be more proficient in Canva Affinity and decided to design a t-shirt about my favorite Star Wars spaceship.
I was the perfect age when Return of the Jedi came out. And while I know that the Empire Strikes Back is the better movie, I have fond memories of seeing Return of the Jedi in theaters. And that’s probably why the B-Wing fighter is my favorite Star Wars ship.
If you haven’t seen a B-Wing, it’s a strange vehicle. It has a pilot capsule, and then the rest of the ship consists of one long wing, with a cross-shaped pair of wings that fold out. The whole ship spins around the pilot capsule like a gyroscope. When it lands, the wings fold up and it lays on its side. The B-Wing looked completely different than the other fighters… the X-Wing, the Y-Wing and the A-Wing. Plus it looked nothing like the letter B.
The B-Wing gets very little screen time in Return of the Jedi. Apparently, the wings of the ship were too thin with the special effects of the early 1980s and they would just disappear against the blue screen. But the B-Wing toy was amazing and I’ve long held a place in my heart for this odd little ship.
Since the original series, the B-Wing shows up in a few places. Star Wars Rebels gives the B-Wing an origin story in S2 E7 Wings of the Master. Designed in secret by a Mon Calamari ship designer, Quarrie, Hera convinces him to let the Rebel Alliance develop his “Blade Wing” fighter. The Alphabet Squadron book series includes a B-Wing. The B-Wing shows up a little in the Rise of Skywalker, but every ship shows up in the Rise of Skywalker.
At the end of Skeleton Crew, a couple of B-Wings show up in the final battle over At Attin and deliver the final blow to destroy the pirate mothership. Notably, this was the first time a B-Wing has been shown firing its main weapon in live action.
I decided that I needed some B-Wing merch so I created a new shirt on Cotton Bureau — Blade Wing. It features an abstract illustration of the B-wing in its landed configuration. You can get it in a couple of different colors. If you are also a fan of the most distinct fighter in the Star Wars universe, head on over to Cotton Bureau and grab a shirt.
Bob Wertz is a type designer, Ph.D. student and researcher living in Columbia, South Carolina. He’s been blogging since 2008.
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My 52 Shirts project is over at Sketchbook B. I haven’t had a chance to move them all here yet. ↩︎
I just added another retro tech shirt on Cotton Bureau: 1.2 MB: The 5.25 in floppy disk.
On April 8, a solar eclipse will occur over the middle of the United States. If you are going to be near it this time and want to celebrate the occasion, I updated my shirt from the 2017 eclipse and you can buy it on Cotton Bureau. But order soon to make sure it gets to you before the big day.
Unleash the unicorn. My daughter Jill and I designed this adorable unicorn for my shirt-a-week project. You can buy a Team Rainbow Unicorn shirt at sketchbookb.threadless.com.
