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!

There have been a bunch of pretty schweet tees brought to my attention lately, so here’s a handful of them plus some extra stuff that cropped up around the shirtosphere in the last week.

Fantastic Bonanza designed the t-shirt for ROFLCon 2008 and had a booth set up. They’ve got some neat photos and a rundown of the conference. Well done!

Andy at Hide Your Arms posted a couple items that caught my eye. The first is a t-shirt giveaway at tenbills.com. Spend $30, tell them your favorite animal in the comments section and get a free t-shirt with your order. Supplies are limited, so check them out.

Hide Your Arms also featured a tee called Gasmasks from We Are Industry that sort of reminds me of Toxic by VanRockn (review, t-shirt). By remind, I mean they both have people in gasmasks. Pretty cool t-shirt.

Shirtlog posted another cool tee with a message. Vince Lombardi would be proud of this one.

Karl at tcritic posted some photos from Mission Indie Mart. That’s some t-shirt related goodness for sure. Check it out.

TeeLovers posted about another Helvetica shirt. You can check out the Graniph Helvetica shirt I wrote about a while back to compare. I’m starting to wonder how long before there’s a store full of nothing but typography tees!

tshirtreview.com (again, not to be confused with this site) posted a little rant about some of the latest tees at Threadless. I do have to admit I didn’t see anything too remarkable on the shirts he mentioned, but the people have spoken I suppose.

I Love Your T-shirt wrote about a few clothing lines that caught my eye. Their post on Ucon Acrobatics has some awesome photos to promote their new threads. I’m not terribly interested in the clothes themselves, but the pictures are definitely worth seeing. Here’s a taste:

I Love Your T-shirt also dropped a post yesterday about a new label called Bloodgold. They’ve got a handful of pretty neat designs, worth looking into.

T-Shirt Island posted about Urban Humanity, a nature-themed clothing label. Before you go all tree-hugger on me, check them out. They’ve actually got some pretty interesting designs that snagged my attention.

The Daily Tee featured this really neat shirt using text to build an image. It’s a pun, you remember “We Built This City (On Rock and Roll)” don’t you? There are the names of a bunch of classic rock and metal bands, and I think it’s executed well.

That’s all for this week big list o’ links, enjoy!

There are a handful of sweet new tees at Threadless, so I wanted to mention a couple that caught my eye. We know from Track and Field in school that you need to lean as you cross the finish line. The lean can make the difference between winning by a head or losing.

You don’t have to worry so much when you’re a giraffe, however. An Outstanding Win pits one rider on a giraffe against a handful of others on horses to cleverly show that it isn’t always the fastest one that wins.

An Outstanding Win is $20 at Threadless.

Every animal has its Achilles’ Heel, and that apparently includes balloon and origami creatures. In battle it is certainly wise to consider your opponent’s weaknesses, and this tee demonstrates that. So is this baby blue tee a lesson in warfare techniques or just a funny shirt with a couple crafty dogs?

You can pick up Dog Fight from Threadless for $17.

This is a reprint that’s back in stock this week. While metaphor tees are always fun, what really attracted me to this shirt was the level of detail. Your glass is always half full or half empty, but before you decide how you feel today, you might want to see what’s awaiting you on each side on the coin. The details are awesome, and it was done with very few colors. Really sweet.

Pessimistic or Optimistic? is $15 at Threadless.

Eric Diaz has had some pretty cool designs in the past, but I’ve always missed the voting over at Threadless. Eric’s latest design really reminds me of a children’s book illustration. At first glance I completely missed the boy on the windmill, but I got a smile when I did catch him. Head on over and check it out at Threadless, there are still a few days left to vote.