Design By Humans - Comments by Jerks

I know you must be thinking what the hell am I doing? If today hadn’t gone so badly, what with an Internet Explorer incompatibility with Lightbox.js (a fancy photo widget for Wordpress) and a bout of sickness from three cats (yes all over the place it is), I’d probably have held my horses. However the final straw was one idiot at DesignByHumans.com - I won’t point you to his account because I really don’t want to give guys like this any more promotion than they deserve (which in all truth is just about zero). There are two ways to make it in like, rise above or push every one else face down and climb over them. I prefer the first option, and maybe I’m losing my faith in human nature, but it seems a lot more fall into the second.

He began by slating my work (fair enough) and then proceeded to push his biased world view on me, which basically entails not understanding any culture that doesn’t belong to the same landmass that he inhabits. He pointed out that Amsterdamned looks like a Mayan Calendar, which is fine, it’s all relevant - although in fact it was based upon a selection of Indian Mandalas (To the idiot at DBH: That’s India, the Sub-Continent - look it up on a map), a Ouija board, and a skull motif. He then proceeded to advise me to remove the “boat” - yep that’s a Dutch Barge lol. He wouldn’t admit it but he’s never even left his hometown let alone visited Amsterdam. Besides the barge I’m even sure he was confused by the “XXX” symbol which is are 3 crosses that form the core of Amsterdam’s city crest. These are St. Andrew’s crosses, named after the apostle St. Andrew who is said to have been martyred on such a cross. (Yes I was trying to be ironic - that one definitely flew over his head, sure there are prostitutes there, and I’m sure if he’d visited the place he would find the first “massage parlour” available and skulk there till dawn. Amsterdam is wild but it’s not just sex and rock and roll. I have a genuine feeling of warmth for the place and the people. It’s the European centre of animation, it’s an incredible diverse place for creative types, it’s fun. Next he advised I add a bunch of hookers, plenty of drugs and so on. Funny guy. I was getting irked. I asked him if he could find any other designs at DBH that showed explicit reference to sex or drugs and all I received were more wisecracks, including how he was “killing my @ss” at the votes and that was it, I’d had enough, and I’ll tell you why.

This guy’s work really sucks, it is as predictable as you can get, a wishy-washy collection of shapes, mainly feathers for some reason. I sat stunned, why on earth would someone with so little talent have such an enormous ego, that they could confidently slate every designer (although I suspect it is the new ones mainly), and then after a quick ciggie (terrible habit) and a cup of tea I think I’ve worked it out.

I once worked, unbeknownst to me, for a religious cult. It was a hippy jewellery company that imported cheap crystals from Eastern Europe and attached them to gaudy pre-cut steel templates, mostly of pixies and the Moon, they were called “sun-catchers”, and I hated them. I couldn’t stand their products at all, but what made me even more unbearable to work with was the whole “push down the little guy” attitude there. Let me clarify, there are two kinds of people, those who find success through their own merit, and those who try to destroy anyone who might be competition in the future, just in case they are their better. I am convinced that this ungainly fellow falls into the second camp, he crushes his competition via snide comments rather than through the quality of his work.

I began to imagine how many people who’d read them clicked to see his work, it’s probably the cheapest way ever to promote your work, but from a Karmic perspective it’s really screwed up. I’m obviously no businessman, I don’t play the hard and fast rules that some do, I want to learn, I want to share, I’m sure there’s far more future in that. In the main I write about what I understand and appreciate, there are cultural divides I can point out but rarely traverse, I suppose it’s naive of me to expect the same from others.

DBH are no better in this aspect, you have no control over the comments you receive, and you can’t remove a work easily either, I mailed support and got an auto-response “Please allow 72 hours for us to contact you” blah blah, I love some of the top designs at DBH, but if the rest of the humans there are as jaded as ********* and his finger-painted view on life, I’d rather knock this one on the head.

So, in short, DesignByHumans.com - great for buying t-shirts and awful for selling them. Until they fix this so they provide the traffic for each work (how about featuring new submissions on the homepage? Until they fix the ridiculous comments system. Until they give more control to the artist, I’m giving them a wide berth. You better have a lot of friends at DBH - be warned, if you do put your work up there, any jerk with a handful of MySpace pals can make sure your designs never see the light of day again….

NB:- Seems like DesignByHumans.com have been reading the blog - still no control over the comments but at least they removed the offensive items. Who knows maybe this will work out after all lol! Okay one more try - everyone deserves a second chance…