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?

So here’s a story of a t-shirt hunt with an almost-perfect ending. The other day I got an email from Liz, check this out:

Hello!
Stumbled across your blog, loved it, realized I had found a shirt a week ago that I loved but, unfortunately, it was too small (I was thrift-store hopping, they only had one). So I was wondering if you couldn’t hunt it down seeing as you seem to enjoy that sort of thing.

I looked for it online because the brand of the shirt itself was on the tag but it turned out that someone had simply silk screened it after buying plain shirts in bulk from that company.

Anyways, the shirt was black and it had an outline of Texas on it with the words, “Let’s Mess With Texas” written over top. It was pretty funny at the time.

Thanks in advance if you can find it. If you can’t, no worries, just thought I’d give it a shot.

Liz

This sounded like a tall order simply because of the sheer number of items you can buy with “Don’t Mess With Texas” plastered all over them. I also wanted to weed out as many print on demand (POD) items as possible, since Liz indicated in her email that the had been silk-screened by someone.

I got lucky, and I think I found the shirt:

Hopefully that’s the shirt you were talking about, Liz. I found it on Storyville Times, from a post dated Oct 1, 2007. The post tells me that the shirt was designed by a group called “Metro Three.” Some Googling brought me what looks to be their homepage and Twitter account:

Metro Three Homepage

Metro Three Twitter

I half-expect a tumbleweed to roll across that Twitter profile, it’s been deserted for so long. Nevertheless, Metro Three seems to be active, though that shirt doesn’t appear to be for sale right now. I’m thinking your best bet, Liz, is to contact them and see if they can’t make one appear in your mailbox one way or another.

If they can’t, here are some alternatives:

That’s Mess With Texas from Threadless, currently sold out but you can request an email notification for a reprint.

Here’s "Please Mess With Texas" from Protoculture Apparel. It’s a bit pricy IMO for the amount of print that’s on it, but it’s available in blue and green.

I also found this one on Cotton Factory, "I Messed With Texas." This one’s more reasonably priced at $16.

Hopefully you found something here you can run with with, Liz! Thanks for shooting me a message about this shirt you’re looking for. If anyone else has a shirt they’d like to see, hit the submit button up there on the right and let me know about it!

If there’s one thing we should all know by now, it’s to shop around. The first place you find what you want is rarely the best place to get it, and with a little legwork you can comparison-shop your way to t-shirt nirvana.

While this has always applied for those looking to buy shirts, what about those looking to print? I think there’s been considerably less attention on the idea of shopping around when you’re looking to make your own shirts. There’s certainly a lot of selection out there, so which one do you choose? How do you know which print on demand (POD) company is right for your shirts?

Tees in a Pod has put together a comprehensive guide to the major print on demand services and breaks down everything from print area and cost to print methods, shop customization and affiliate commissions. It’s really a fantastic read.

While you’re there, check out their podcasts and hit subscribe, it’s good stuff!

Just wanted to give you all a heads-up, you can get 10% off at Design by Humans now through May 16 by using the coupon code WEHRTDBH. Zip over there and take a look, it’s been a particularly good week for new designs.

You may have heard that authorities in Colorado spent the better part of the day tracking down a 6 year old boy they thought floated away in a homemade hot air balloon that looked like a flying saucer. I can’t make this stuff up, folks. After rescue teams tethered the balloon to the ground and pitchforked it like a…uh, like a thing you stab with a pitchfork, they opened the hatch to find (gasp!) no boy inside.

Eventually they locate the boy in the house at home, safe and sound. At least there’s a happy ending. People wasted no time drafting up t-shirts, so I just thought I’d point them out. Found via Mashable.

Read the Mashable article on Balloon Boy tees and stuff
Make yourself cooler than everyone by being first on the meme bandwagon for once

]]> http://www.tshirtreviewblog.com/other-t-shirt-stuff/ballon-boy-t-shirts-already/feed/ 1 http://www.tshirtreviewblog.com/other-t-shirt-stuff/usb-port-t-shirt-on-conan/ http://www.tshirtreviewblog.com/other-t-shirt-stuff/usb-port-t-shirt-on-conan/#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:16:19 +0000 Brad http://www.tshirtreviewblog.com/?p=566

Conan O’Brien recently talked with the co-creator of the USB port on The Tonight Show. It’s a hilarious interview and Ajay Bhatt is a great sport through the whole thing. There’s a t-shirt in the final minute of the video that had me cracking up. I wonder how long until we see this one online?

]]> http://www.tshirtreviewblog.com/other-t-shirt-stuff/usb-port-t-shirt-on-conan/feed/ 0 http://www.tshirtreviewblog.com/other-t-shirt-stuff/odds-owning-tshirts/ http://www.tshirtreviewblog.com/other-t-shirt-stuff/odds-owning-tshirts/#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:35:18 +0000 Brad http://www.tshirtreviewblog.com/?p=554

As a reader here there is little doubt that you own at the very least, a single t-shirt. It sort of goes without saying, really…as common as our classic tee has become. How many people out there don’t own a t-shirt though? I mean not even one; not even a plain white tee? There’s an answer for that (and thousands of other probability questions) at Book of Odds.

Book of Odds is a really interesting read and is probably an insurance estimator’s dream. As I starting fumbling around the site, I of course thought I’d see what came up for “t-shirt.” Hmmm…nothing. This isn’t very promising. A search for “shirt” yields what I’m looking for though! Have a peek:

See the little icon at the right of each odds statement, that looks like a little list? It turns out that you can hover over that and have any odds statement printed on a t-shirt through Zazzle. Pretty sweet! The tees have the Book of Odds logo on the left breast and your odds statement of choice on the back. If you’re a trivia nut (I know I am) you’ll probably find some pretty interesting nuggets on this site.

Check out the Book of Odds search results for “shirt”
Have a peek at the rest of Book of Odds

]]> http://www.tshirtreviewblog.com/other-t-shirt-stuff/odds-owning-tshirts/feed/ 1 http://www.tshirtreviewblog.com/other-t-shirt-stuff/threadless-classics-sale/ http://www.tshirtreviewblog.com/other-t-shirt-stuff/threadless-classics-sale/#comments Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:53:54 +0000 Brad http://www.tshirtreviewblog.com/?p=502

What a great Monday this is! (I honestly never thought I’d say something like that)

Threadless has a ton of their best tees on sale for (get this) 12 bucks! That’s right, they’ve got 30 t-shirts for just 12 bones each. If you’re at all familiar with Threadless, you know that the quality of their shirts is second to none.

All of these shirts have been a huge hit for Threadless, so if you were on the fence about picking one of these up, now is the time. At $12 it’s hard to go wrong, it’s a steal. If you’re new to Threadless, this is your chance to dip your toes in the pool. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

The sale only lasts until this Friday (October 9) at 10 AM Central though, so you’ve gotta be fast. Like, Quick Draw McGraw fast!

Head over to Threadless and check out their Classics Sale

I’m sure many of the regular readers here also read Hide Your Arms. In case you don’t though, I wanted to point out the exhaustive list of t-shirt blogs recently posted there. The original list was 133 (!!!) and has since grown to 149 through reader submissions.

The list must have taken forever to compile, and a round of applause is certainly due to Andy for his efforts. I was happy to see that this site was included, despite the recent lack of updates.

Be sure to check it out if you haven’t already.

BustedTees is having a 24 hour sale today, ending at midnight. All tees are on sale for $12. Head on over there and pick out a few you like, they’re regularly priced at $18. That’s roughly 33% off, for those of you counting on your fingers! Go, go go!