Sex and Death at Threadless

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That title should pull in the punters… I’ve just submitted my first design to Threadless.com – gawd knows if I have got it right, their submissions process seems to be the most complicated yet, no wonder the prizes are so high! I’m not in it for the money, but as I was saying to a fellow t-shirt nutter today, it has to be worth it just for PR alone, I’m talking publicity here, no Google rankings, although the two go hand-in-hand I suppose.

I received an email from Threadless.com describing their latest competition and I was pulled in head first. The theme is Sex and Death and the competition is on behalf of Fray.com – a true stories site – I’ll probably need a true story for my submission as I just went ahead and drew the first thing that came into my mind, and here it is…

Who knows, I might be one of the lucky few accepted at this site, but even if I did make it through the submission process the competition is fierce, and besides I’ve probably ruined my chances from the outset. Firstly it’s supposed to be based upon a true story, I could lie and say these guys are real and were on their way to a Hen Party, or I could just tell the truth and say, why bother asking for true stories? Don’t you just want great art? Who knows. Besides that is the nightmarish submission process.

First of all you have to download a submission kit which includes a .pdf explaining all the reasons your work will probably be rejected, plus a few templates in different formats and a long guide to their different print processes. Yet I couldn’t find a clear and concise guide, as SpreadShirt.com seem to have a few rolling around the net I was surprised there was so little help from the Threadless pack or site. Besides those of you who’ve been keeping up-to-date with all my submission woes will know that even with a lot of help I still had trouble with some submissions at SpreadShirt.com.

This time I can save up all those problems for when and if my submission is accepted, but even now I’m wondering if I’d messed up an part of their detailed requirements just to get a look-in, I mean, even if you’re accepted their voting system is renowned for being notoriously harsh, very few make it to the top, and only the elite of the elite actually make a great deal of cash.

So what’s the idea behind Ballbearers? It’s essentially a comment on the fraught relationship between sex and death. The egg is a symbol of birth and renewal. The funeral marches on, taking the vibrating love egg to the grave. The future is bleak, where relationships and emotions are bound by an environment of artificiality and essentially sterility. Romance is dead, and sex is on a life-support machine, the amount of women who’ll turn to a piece of technology to satisfy themselves rather than go through the rigmarole of relying on a man to do the job must say something about society, relationships, and the whole mess humanity is in right now.

I know I’m always mentioning the religious cult I accidentally worked for, (perhaps the programming has finally kicked), but the crazy man who ran the whole thing did give me one good piece of advice. If you want to keep your woman, take her to bed, keep her satisfied, if you’re arguing jump her bones, if she’s bored or fed up with life do her, if she’s sick of the mess and can’t believe you didn’t at least wash the dishes and take the trash out, bonk her silly. And so on… it’s kind of simplistic, sexist even, but essentially it does work, you just have to stick at it, if you don’t the Love Eggs and Rabbits will make their way back into the bedroom and before you know it you’re sleeping in a Soho sex shop full of all kinds of scary devices. So, if you’re male, be warned, you can easily be replaced unless you’re a great conversationalist, but then again, all talk and no action makes Jill a dull girl.

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