My t-shirts suck (according to Threadless.com)

Is it the transatlantic cultural gap? Could it be that the British sense of humour doesn’t translate in the USA or perhaps more simply my t-shirt designs suck. I’ve had a lot of trouble with Threadless.com up to this point, call me a glutton for punishment, but I am still fascinated by the Threadless mindset.

Some of the junk I’ve seen their grabbing the votes for days on end makes me wonder what the hell is going on? There doesn’t seem to be a hard and fast rule except one, don’t crack jokes, don’t make puns, and more than likely don’t admit your British. So much for the special relationship lol. Whilst I’m at it if I’d been running the country I’d have told Bush where to stick it rather than dive headlong after them into the Iraq War.

What freaked me out was the fact that they’d given higher votes to ‘Ballbearers‘ than to ‘Face Book‘ - is it a herd mentality? Could it be a ‘kick them whilst they’re down syndrome?’ - I just don’t get it, for some reason (and I’m not including most of the winners), childish scribbles and meaningless abstracts are ranking higher than my works. I follow a tradition of many British designers, I do have my tongue firmly stuck in my cheek most of the time, I am being sarcastic, ironic, humorous in almost every work I put out there. The USA, or at least those Americans who happen to be voting on Threadless just don’t get it for the main part. They have a point to prove, and I am a great target. A British know-it-all with ideas above his station playing with Warhol techniques and iconography, and even daring to implant a message seems to really, really tick them off.

I could blame my background, I spent three years studying conceptual art and justifying every idea, and every final piece, no matter how insignificant, to the best of my ability, and with the back-up of as much art historical reference as possible. But that’s art, not t-shirt design, I’m expecting the general public to help me raise the intellectual merit of the t-shirt, I’m expecting people who’ve never been to an art gallery, or even left the farm for anything more than local supplies and some booze to reconsider their values, or the powers of those in authority, or the purpose of being, and what I seem to be getting back is, F.U limey. Fair enough.

I’ve tried to change tack at Threadless now, no more puns, and as abstract as I can possibly muster. Hitting the middle of the road in any market is both uninspiring and depressing, it undermines my reasons for entering the t-shirt world, and it certainly isn’t easy. It seems that Threadless voters are after craft first and foremost, show them enough complicated vectors and grunge effects and they will be swayed, have anything but the simplest message and be damned. So, what’s my plan of action now?

Okay after the debacle of the last few designs I’ve now submitted my latest design - simply called ‘Wave’. It was late, my eyes were blurring, but on the TV screen I could distinctly see a pair of hands immersed in water, shot from an unusual angle, the palms were outstretched and the fingers tapped the surface. I dragged myself from the sofa and at 4am this morning managed to make this work, a plain old uncomplicated abstract design.

This is definitely WYSIWYG t-shirt design if nothing else, I created the vector swirls in Adobe Illustrator and have to say that it didn’t come out to badly considering how little sleep I’d had (none to be exact). Who knows perhaps this will get the lowest mark ever, I’ve probably made plenty of enemies at Threadless already.

Besides being British and a smart ass, I think that being a t-shirt reviewer has increased the expectancy for me to create the t-shirt equivalent of the Venus de Milo , but it ‘ain’t gonna happen buddy’. They are t-shirts after all, you can only raise the bar so much before you find yourself lost in a world of pretty vectors and fantastic colour schemes, the fashion’s old guard certainly has its hold on the Threadless voters. They like pretty, or if they’re lucky beautiful images, they hardly award Glennz a prize these days, my all-time favourite Threadless designer is busy building up PR for his own independent store and I think he has a point, Threadless maybe big, but it certainly doesn’t represent the artistic views of the world.

I should have begun this whole disastrous affair with Threadless a few years ago, I was deep in web design doo doo at the time, working at knock-down prices on ugly web hosting and banking website designs, and I hated it. Back then the copyright restrictions weren’t as tight, these days I’m sure most corporate lawyers of the world do a quick scout around the site just to see if they can reap a slice of Threadless’ profits in the courts. The mystery of why they’d refused my submission for ‘Prosper’ is still not solve, I’m no copyright expert, but if their copyright rules have tightened up, how on earth can they still keep breaking it with older works? There are two Star Trek related t-shirts being sold at Threadless, they say they were submitted before the rule change, yet they still break Roddenberry’s strict new copyright laws? Threadless, you don’t make any sense, but fingers crossed you won’t find yourself in court soon, then again it would be quite hilarious if they did. For once they’d be ones to be judged.

So what next, well I’ve been neglecting my t-shirt reviews which is what most of you are probably after when you visit Buy Tees, so I’ll have a quick and condensed Sunday and get on with it in an hour :p

Be lucky.

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