Coty Gonzales brought up a really interesting debate in a very thorough blog post he made recently about a book cover design competition Guy Kawasaki is putting on. The basic premise of the post focuses on highlighting the grey area between what is and is not spec work in the design world, specifically as it relates to Threadless.

Before I move on, let me clear some things up and make sure everyone is up to speed. Threadless does not design their own shirts. They use a crowdsourcing model where thousands of designers create t-shirt artwork and then submit it to the Threadless site. Visitors to the site (which include other designers AND regular schmucks like me) then vote which designs get printed.

One more thing to clear up; lets go over what spec work is. Here’s how it’s defined by no-spec.com, an issue-position website that seems to be the most thorough resource for anti-spec designers out there.

What is ‘working on speculation?’ By Elisabetta Bruno of ThinkCreation

What is “spec?”

“Spec” has become the short form for any work done on a speculative basis. In other words, any requested work for which a fair and reasonable fee has not been agreed upon, preferably in writing.

What’s so wrong with that?

In a nutshell, spec requires the designer to invest time and resources with no guarantee of payment.

So as I understand it, spec work occurs anytime a client requires the designer to essentially deliver a final or near-final version of the work in question so that the client can see the work before committing to pay for it. The designer is speculating, or betting, that the client will accept the work, and it understood on both sides that the client may walk.

So here’s the big question:

Is Threadless Spec Work?

Of course it is. An artist can’t get their t-shirt printed by submitting a proposal, a paragraph on what their shirt would look like….they have to actually do the work, and they have to do it first with no guarantee of payment.

• Just to get consideration for acceptance of a design, the designer has to perform the exact same work that would have to be performed had they been guaranteed a print and paid up front.
   
• There is no guarantee of payment or acceptance of the design. Having performed the work to design the tee doesn’t assure any level of compensation or printing for the shirt. Some intangibles like name and style recognition within the group of people that voted to print a losing design could be present. This isn’t available in situations where designs are all submitted directly to a client for internal review, but is something publicly visible crowdsourcing models like Threadless can offer.
   
• If the client chooses not to accept a specific piece of artwork, the designer is still out the time and effort it took to create that artwork. By creating and submitting artwork to Threadless, the designer is essentially betting, speculating, that the design will be printed.
   

Designers, as far as I can tell, seem to hate spec work. I don’t blame them. What if after a day of work at my day job, my employer says “Look, it was pretty cool the way you completed XYZ, but we’re going to go with the way Dave did it, so that’s for your time, but we’re not paying you.” Hell, I would be livid, so I can see how a designer doesn’t want to do spec work generally.

So as far as I can see, Threadless is definitely spec work. The difference, is that it’s spec work worth doing, and it’s spec work that designers are glad to do.

There’s a HUGE difference between designing a tee for Threadless and designing a logo or website or whatever for some brand. When you design a logo, there’s really nothing else you can use that for. You can’t go offer that to someone else or anything.

When you design a t-shirt, if it doesn’t get printed at Threadless, you’re NOT out all the time it took you to design it because you can take that shirt somewhere else. You can hold onto it in your “completed” folder and wait for the right time to sell it yourself. You can take the artwork off the t-shirt medium and instead offer it on your website as an art print. You still own it, you can still USE it.

Let’s use another analogy here. You tell me and 2 other people that if we bake you a cake, you’ll check it out and might buy it. I bake you a chocolate cake, someone else bakes you a carrot cake, and the third person goes with vanilla. You take a look at all 3 and decide the carrot cake looks delicious, so you pay the guy that made you the carrot cake.

What about me? What about captain vanilla? Are we out a couple hours of time and effort? Definitely not, because we can still enjoy the fruits of our labor. I can take my chocolate cake next door and offer it to your neighbor, who might pay me for it. I could give it away, donate it to a charity bake sale or I could even eat it myself.

The risk-reward ratio of designing for Threadless is just…stupidly awesome. This is especially true for artists that aren’t established. You design a t-shirt (which is something you’re going to do anyway, and if it doesn’t sell at Threadless you’ll do something else with it) and you get to parade it around in front of prospective buyers. If you’re chosen, you get a shitload of money and a feather in your cap. You’re not just a t-shirt designer anymore, you won at Threadless, you’re good and you can take that to any brand you may design for in the future.

One could argue that it’s not spec work if it’s something you’d do anyways, without Threadless. I mean, if you sit at home and just kick out dozens of t-shirt designs without knowing where they’ll go, Threadless probably isn’t spec work to you. After all, you’re deciding after the fact to send it to them and the work’s already done at that point.

But if you sit down and say “today I’m going to design a shirt and try to get it printed at Threadless” then yeah, it’s definitely spec work. It’s the kind of spec work you ought to be doing because the risk is practically zero (you can get paid for that design, if not at Threadless, then somewhere else) and the reward potential is so high.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

There is no drink that screams summer more than iced tea. OK, maybe lemonade if that’s your thing, but iced tea is where it’s at!

Now, being from Michigan, I grew up drinking iced tea and sun tea as-is. That is, it’s chilled, but there’s nothing else in it. It’s good. It’s got a little bit of an aftertaste, but I couldn’t imagine adding sugar to it.

Five or six years ago, while vacationing in Charleston, SC I had a glass at a friend’s house and ended up drinking sweetened tea at just about every meal for the rest of the week. I don’t even think you can get unsweetened iced tea down south without having to make it yourself. There were a few other delicious things I tried down there (like boiled peanuts!) but sweet tea’s the only one that’s stuck with me. To this day, it’s actually one of my favorite ways to relax after a day at work, sitting on the balcony with a glass.

There’s a t-shirt for everything, and sweet tea is no exception. Sweet Tea Junkie’s got a little over a dozen tees celebrating what may as well be the official drink of the south. There’s a pretty interesting story to the origins of this brand too.

Our story began with a group of four friends that would gather at IHOP for breakfast quite regularly. We almost always had the same server, and every time we went in each of us would drink 5-6 glasses of Sweet Tea. After a few visits our waitress began calling us “The Sweet Tea Junkies,” this got my entrepreneurial side running immediately.

I love that “grab opportunity by the balls” mentality. Someone getting an idea and actually acting on it, it’s great. Sweet Tea Junkie does have some shirts that feature their brand name pretty prominently, and that’s something I’m not too keen on. I’m generally a believer that good design will speak for itself, and I think that’s especially true for the text-based design you see here.

Here’s a bonus though. All the Sweet Tea Junkie shirts have a sweet tea recipe printed on the inside of the shirt. This is one of the first really clever uses of inside-printing that I’ve seen and wouldn’t be surprised if things like this catch on a bit more.

Most shirts are 17.50 at Sweet Tea Junkie

Use promo code “tsrb” at checkout to get 15% off all items!

So how’s t-shirt land been? I’ve been away a while and haven’t had the chance to keep tabs like I usually do, but I am still around. Real life’s got to come first, after all.

If you know me, you’ll know that when I’m not tending to my herd of unicorns or feeding small children to the alligators at the zoo I’m usually pretty active online. I’ve been pretty absent from Facebook, Twitter, and here.

I miss TRB the most though, so let me fill you in on what’s coming up. I’ve got a few more t-shirt sites that have been sort of sitting in the oven for a while, and I’m going to try to squirt those out this month. I’m pretty good at half-baking an idea and design, then not flipping the switch and making it a live site. It’s about time to change that.

I’ve also got a handful of Thread Notes TV episodes recorded and sitting on the hard drive. As soon as I can edit those, they’ll be up for you to enjoy. I enjoy shooting them, but the editing is crazy time-consuming.

Anyways, I appreciate you stopping by and those of you that have asked to make sure I’m alright, here’s to finally having the time to touch the PC again!

In this episode of Thread Notes TV I take you to the park (because it’s practically criminal to sit at home when it’s nice outside here) and tell you a little bit about a sweet t-shirt Patrick from Tilteed sent me. There are a lot of things that set Tilteed apart from other t-shirt design competition, so they’re definitely worth a look.

In this episode

Jungle Book – Tilteed (t-shirt details) – Price: $18

This intricate design from Tilteed delivers a classic 1-2 punch: it stuns you first with its attention to detail and the delicate lines on the book pages then knocks you out when you realize there’s really nothing random about it and the message is quite focused and clear.

It comes across like an illustration you’d expect to see on an old British children’s book, Danny or Christopher Robin perhaps?

It just really makes me think of all those times we had to read a book in school as child. I didn’t want to do it at first because it wasn’t a book that I picked out, but after a while I realize it’s a good story and there’s a reason the teacher picked that book.

Soon enough I’m engrossed in the story and don’t want to put it down. The imagination is in full gear and I’m filling in details and backstory on my own. Then, just as you’re knee-deep in it, somebody taps me on the shoulder and it’s like being startled out of a dream. All that smoke and color goes back into the page and you’ll left with just a bunch of words on a bunch of pieces of paper. It’s about that time that there can be a brief moment where you realize the imagination’s power to turn something so literal and concrete into such a vivid and vibrant experience.

Leave a comment down below and let me know what you think! If you’d like your t-shirt featured in a future episode of Thread Notes TV, check out my submit a t-shirt page.

Thanks again to Patrick at Tilteed for sending over Jungle Book and being so patient while the review was edited and put online. Zip over there and check out their latest designs.

I found this dramatic t-shirt while poking around Google images. It was a shirt that was available for purchase to participants of the 2007 Terry Fox Run in Kuala Lumpur. It’s got an incredible black and white photo of Terry during his Marathon of Hope run across Canada.

If you’re unfamiliar with Terry Fox, I encourage you to read his dramatic and inspiring story at Wikipedia. Terry ran the equivalent of a marathon every day for 143 days in a trek across Canada to raise money and awareness for cancer research. He did this all on a prosthetic limb after losing his right leg to bone cancer.

Terry wasn’t able to complete his journey as he lost his life to the disease at just 22 years of age. Around the world though, organizers host an annual run in the fall in Terry’s name to raise money for cancer research. The run has no winners or losers, and everyone is free to go at their own pace.

I haven’t seen anywhere to purchase this tee, and the Kuala Lumpur event seems to have a new t-shirt each year, with 2009′s tee being a closeup of Terry’s face on a black shirt.

Nevertheless, I thought it was a really interesting t-shirt with a cool story behind it and wanted to share it with you.