...and I'm mostly OK with it.

I try to score as much work as I can... usually this means everything that comes through here, though I'm sure I miss the occasional "early drop". The con to this is that there is a LOT of work that is approved by Threadless that deserves a one or lower. I have no shame in giving zeroes, because that's what they're there for: to be given. Still, it is unsettling to me that I have in essence given more zeroes than I've given 2-5 combined. It worries me from a general quality standpoint (I don't think I'm very unfair with my scoring), but also makes me wonder if I should take more time with my scoring in case I might be simply missing something. At the same time, I can't imagine having a vote-average above a 2... just as a 3 or higher score implies most of the voters felt OK or better about your work, a too-high average would, for me, make me feel less discerning, as if anything is good enough.

What do y'all think on the vote-average question. Does yours surprise you or fit what you believe it should? Are you more apt to disdain someone with a too-low average? distrust someone with a too-high one? Have you scored less or altered your habits based on seeing your average slip?

Hey guys!

As some of y'all know, I hail more from the world of woot than that of Threadless. While I'm mostly known over there for being curmudgeonly and reactionary, I've also been able to foster ties with some of their best and most promising artists, which to me makes the other unique woot issues more tolerable.

As part of this, I have been "co-sponsoring" an underground shirt contest for some of the wooters I feel have the most talent and will profit most from getting out of the woot box. The hope is that, with motivation to enter elsewhere, and get a feel for another site's expectations, it will help the designers escape the often tight limitations woot puts on them and really realize their full potential.

Right now, I am planning a collaborative effort for this group. I think working with someone else helps ideas develop even deeper and further than you originally imagined. But since our group is not a huge one, and I don't expect everyone to take part, I thought it might be even better if I could find some Threadless peeps who might be willing to join in and collaborate as part of the experiment.

The truth is, there's no huge benefit for you. You'd be collaborating with designers you don't know, some more polished than others, and any prize for this collaboration would be at the sole discretion of Threadless, where the final products would likely be submit. I know many of you are busy with real-world projects and personal design work. But I think that working with someone who has been there before, and who really believes in shirt design, could help some of these designers a lot, so if any of you alumni would be willing to take the time to participate, it would be hugely appreciated.

If you're interested in even considering this, feel free to contact me for more information, via IM, via the email on my blog, or via posting here. I feel that this is an opportunity that could help better the online tee-design world, and I'm excited just thinking about what could come of it. Thank you all for taking the time to read.

A question for the art sorts and art fans 'round here.

I have found myself getting VERY disillusioned with certain sites due to a persistence to shoehorn some sort of pop-culture reference into every single piece they produce. I'm really unsure from whence it stems, though it has even infiltrated into art communities like emptees. Maybe a month ago their shirt of the day was a parody free caricature of Home Improvement with a band's name slapped on it. It made me gawk and shake my head.

I've always felt parody exists to be built from the parody outward. Which is to say, if you take the concept, and take out the familiar piece, the design or concept is unable to stand. If you're going to use a licensed character, it should be a damn good reason. The design should be noticeably less strong with anything else.

What stirs this up right now is tonight's teefury shirt. It features a Sleestak Mary holding some sort of ape-creature Jesus. I don't know the ape creature. I never watched land of the lost. But I can't help but wonder: why are these creatures mary and jesus? Is there a reason I don't know, as a non LOTL fan? If they were selected totally at random, why wouldn't it be just as good, if not better, with an unrelated lizard creature and an unrelated homunculus in its arms? To me that makes just as much sense, while also making the piece accessible to more people.

But as an overall query, I'd like to ask you guys honestly: as designers and artists, why use someone else's work when your own will do? Does decent linework and nostalgia really equal great design no matter what? And am I wrong to think this sort of thing is a cop-out?

MeTee.com

Most of these are shirt.woot tees, but they're also selling a few Threadless designs.

Thought I'd let the justice squad have at it

Totally excited to finally see you score a print here! Congrats!

From the depths of the 90s, and at the request of Torakamikaze, a couple mixes for y'all. The first is almost a test... some oddities I have always wondered the spread of, because I've long felt I was the only fan. I love it all, but some of it is admittedly weirder than others. The second is intended to be much more familiar, and should therefore be much more enjoyable for all parties. Either way, here goes :

Oddities Beneath the Waves (63:56)
Download Here (74.6 MB)

1) God Lives Underwater - All Wrong
2) Sebadoh - Ocean
3) Imperial Drag - Boy or a Girl
4) Odds - Someone Who's Cool
5) Big Wreck - That Song
6) Marvelous 3 - Freak of the Week
7) Ammonia - Drugs
8) For Squirrels - Mighty KC
9) Self - Meg Ryan
10) Space - Female of the Species
11) Salt - Bluster
12) I Mother Earth - Another Sunday
13) Failure - Stuck on You
14) Catherine Wheel - Black Metallic
15) Fig Dish - Seeds

Memories Like Fingerprints (57:49)
Download Here (61.2 MB)

1) Cake - Frank Sinatra
2) The Rentals - Friends of P
3) Crash Test Dummies - Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
4) Elastica - Connection
5) Refreshments - Banditos
6) Letters to Cleo - Awake
7) The Lemonheads - Into Your Arms
8) Folk Implosion - Natural One
9) Frente! - Ordinary Angels
10) Geggy Tah - Whoever You Are
11) K's Choice - Not an Addict
12) Days of the New - Weapon and the Wound
13) Local H - Eddie Vedder
14) Fountains of Wayne - Radiation Vibe
15) Tripping Daisy - Piranha

Enjoy?

Hello, Threadlessites!

As some of you may know, I run a little blog by the name of Singularitee. And as many of you may know, I take a weekly look at contests, in which Threadless is regularly featured. What you may not know is that my blog is reaching two milestones... I've almost been at it for half a year, which is exciting, but my Contest Watch segment is creeping up on its 25th winner. Which is nice as a validation of taste, but also exciting in general because every time a good shirt gets printed, it's awesome.

In honor of the two milestones, I'm running a contest over there, and since Threadless is featured heavily at my blog, I felt you all should be informed. The basics are as follows: browse the contest watch segments, guess which shirt gets the illustrious 25th update, and sit back and win a prize. You're eligible just for guessing, but correct guessers will be in the running for an extra prize. This community has helped my blog grow, both with great art and viewership, so I wanted to make sure you got a chance to share the love.

For more details, Click Here!

So, I presume slogan promotion is kosher 'round here, so I thought I'd start my own slogan blog to join all the cool kids. However, I know I don't have the wearwithal to do a slogan a day, so I figured I'd move the decimal point. The decimal is for the one I stupidly mistyped earlier. Hopefully I won't do this again, or I'll have to delete another on purpose.

I've got a couple up already, to try and make up for January, that I'd personally appreciate a looksie at:

"The jungle has far more monkeys than fun and games."

"There's no I in Team. Unless it's Team Cyclops."

Please vote here if you like them. If you've got suggestions to improve future sloganizing, or other comments, please post them here. I can't do a slogan-a-day like some of you machines, but I'll be keeping this thread updated as new ones come up.

For a while now, I've been going through the Threadless subs to talk up my fav's in my personal blog, but today, I'd like to dedicate a Threadless blog to solely Threadless affairs, namely naming 15 underscored Threadless subs for 2008. These aren't my favorites necessarily, but they're all solid pieces, all ones I'd consider buying if printed, and all quite a bit lower-scored than I think they deserved.

Since I only really got dedicated with my voting in the fall, most of these are admittedly newer pieces... I imagine I'll have a more even spread to work with next year. I'll be listing these alphabetically, out of fairness, and displaying an "Adjusted Score" beside each... basically, an increased score weighed as a combination of my own enjoyment mixed with how I feel it should have averaged out in scoring. Feel free to discuss below, or add some of your own... lord knows I haven't seen everything there is to see.


One of the first shirts at Threadless I fell for, despite being pretty dramatically unlike the normal fare. It's simple and I love the textures (and being of Italian descent, I can't say no to anything that reminds me of prosciutto). Adjusted score: 2.7


Something about the colors, the size, the cleanliness of the overall piece and the charm of the various monsters. I can see the piece suffering a bit given some of the uncertainties of the design, but at the end of the day, I just can't figure out how these guys faltered quite as much as they did. Adjusted Score: 2.56


I love Von Monkey's lumpy hairy creatures... "I just called to say" is one of the tops on my "shirts I'd want to print if I had a store" list. Yes, I have one of those, and don't pretend none of you do too. So it comes as no surprise that I'd be just as drawn to three of them. They're just great characters, and against the nicely detailed mountains and with that halo of a moon behind them, it creates a wonderful little effect. Also like how the design looks against the shirt itself. I can understand the straight cropped bottom hurting this a little, but not that much. Adjusted Score: 2.77


This is the highest scoring shirt on this list, which could make the inclusion of it at all a bit arguable, but I stand behind it. Everything about this shirt, from the size and colors to the style and concept screams must-buy and must-print, so even though it's technically a "printable score," it's nonsense to me how this isn't just counting the days til an inevitable print. Adjusted Score: 3.13


While many of the Horror subs went toward the grotesque, I quite preferred this little number, partly because it had a far more subtle take on the theme, both in colors and details, and partly because of how starkly it stood out against the rest of the entries because of it. It's simply more everyday wearable, to me, taking the more abstract route, and even if it wasn't meant to win the contest, it certainly should never have ended up scored this low. My only guess would be a simple horror fatigue by the time this late entry hit scoring, which is really no excuse at all. Adjusted Score: 2.91


For some reason or other, Igo2cairo was one of my first consistent high-scored designers 'round these parts... I didn't even notice it until I went back to compile this list. This is still one of my favs from him, and certainly the one I feel is the furthest from where it should be scored. Once again, I see a totally Threadless concept, a well-executed realization of it, and a score that makes no sense to me. Adjusted Score: 3.03


Perhaps a vanity favorite more than anything, this design's sloppy simplicity really gets under my skin and camps out there. It really feels like the shirt equivalent of the lo-fi indie music that has been gaining a cultural foothold now more than ever... it's like the shirt has its roots in Pavement. Maybe my perception of Threadlessites is simply wrong, but for that alone, I'd have presumed more success. Adjusted Score: 2.61, a bit low still for my tastes, but one has to be at least vaguely reasonable.


Clearly I'm in need of a shirt proclaiming the love of pig-based products, and clearly Threadless wants to thwart me of this. Still, even a McCain-esque loathing of pork can't deny that the characters here are endearingly cute, and the style feels wonderfully vintage, which puts it on a pedestal above the generic stupid-man-joke it could have been. Not that my own bit of stupid-man doesn't appreciate it on that level too. Adjusted Score: 2.54


Simply put, the linework and characters and everything here make me baffled at such a middling score, especially when the designer's latest monochromatic linework piece scored dramatically higher. A better piece, sure, but this one still has enough that it should have squeaked in at least a bit closer. Adjusted Score: 2.88


I unabashedly think this is one of the best things I've ever seen. I don't know why, but I think part of it is how natural and fleshed-out the character seems, even despite those oppressively huge pearly whites. It shows a very unique mind at work, and a skilled hand as well, and while the pure weirdness may be something the site would balk at to some degree, the stylistic choices make me feel it deserves better. And by better, I ideally mean a print. Adjusted Score: 2.99


I absolutely love the whimsy here, the playful colors, the general sense of fantasy. This design is the sort of thing where you can lose that "adult" bull and get lost in a youthful sense of wonder. Besides that, it's done clean, and has a solid joke and theme, and I love the idea of wind-up buildings. Adjusted Score: 3.08


The colors here are what really blow me away, but I also quite dig the humor in this verbose homage to the Ed Sullivan era of teen idols. The style brings it back to that era, and the crowd is priceless (the fainter alone is easily enough to knock this up a couple decimals). With the lively palette and scene, I can't imagine it not rocketing to fame. Adjusted Score: 2.82


The concept here is a total winner, to me... the idea of a centaur cowboy with minotaur cows just seems like it's ready for primetime, and the art gives the whole proceedings a nice western flair. 'Course, I also love creme shirts, so that's another perk for me. Adjusted Score: 3.01


I've scored many Ginette designs over the year, but the fact is that while I might think they're underscored, I can understand how the masses might not grasp it. This one, however, deserved better no matter how you slice it. It's the sort of slogan shirt I love because there's something going on in it. The design fits the concept, the type needs the design to make sense, and it has a cynical snark to the message that I appreciate the hell out of. Adjusted Score: 2.67


Finally, we end here. I think what I appreciated most about this one is the absurdity of how daunting, how well guarded, and how lethal this island lair is, just for the sake of its simple prize. The concept would have probably been too simple for a massive payoff, but a higher one doesn't seem unreasonable. Adjusted Score: 2.78

So that's what I came up with. Anyone have anything to add?