Wave T-Shirt at Threadless

July 18, 2008

(Reader slaps hand against forehead in disbelief) I’m at it again, at Threadless, doing my thing, and what appears to be an extremely unpopular thing at that. I’ve taken quite a few knocks at Threadless.com - I’ve hardly gathered any support and I doubt I’m making friends there. My partner Christina wants to convince me there’s some kind of conspiracy going on there, and it’s all down to writing this blog.

I know it’s far less complicated than that, my designs just aren’t good enough to compete on the world stage, which is fine, I can live with that, or rather I can work with that. Avoid all-out puns wherever possible is my first advice, they don’t seem to appreciate much of that at Threadless, and if at all possible be an expert illustrator, which will probably take another 20 years in my case. Threadless.com is becoming an addiction for me, I’ve got it bad man, have you got a few votes you can spare me buddy?

I’ve studied the winners at Threadless time and time again, and even my favourite designers barely scrape through there, some of the final scores are hardly worth writing home about, but they lasted the trial of fire, those five impossible days when all you can think is how long will this one last, and will it even scrape past 2 in the scores let alone 3. It’s like placing a bet, in fact it’s exactly that, you’re gambling on your own talent, your own ideas, and your own ability to conceive the design to your utmost ability. The rest seems to be up in the air as far as I can see.

I suspect there maybe a handful of haters out there who would rather this loud-mouthed know-it-all would give up the goose and retire from design for good, but I am sure that most just genuinely following their own personal tastes, and they’re nothing like mine.

For instance, two of my latest designs to fail miserably at Threadless were Ballbearers, which was not one of my greatest works and Face Book which as far as I could tell was a good concept and well executed, however it’s still a pun, of which I’m convinced Threadless voters have an aversion (to put it lightly). The irony is the corny one-liner Ballbearers faired far better than Face Book which leaves me stunned, nevertheless, I’m sure I can find a lesson in here somewhere. More sexy? More funny? Louder colours? Perhaps I can’t, this isn’t a science, it’s one great big artistic mystery of transatlantic proportions. Who knows, there’s not a system for predicting lottery numbers either, if I could tell you the formula for Threadless success I’d be using it myself by now.

Nope I have no magic answer, I’m sure past winners would tell us ‘persistence is the key’, well that and a truck full of talent. Al I can do is wrack my brains and grab a mouse (If I actually earned some Threadless bread I could buy a graphics tablet lol), and get cracking on my next highly derided design, whatever it maybe. Which is what I’ve been doing for weeks now, so here’s the latest instalment of failure in the saga that is my obsession with Threadless.