Interview by Rachel Gottesman

Good evening Jan, welcome to another Threadless interview!

Your shirt "And How Are You Feeling Today" just won a Bestee award for "Groundbreaking Design of the Year". Pretty sweet, right? Did you have any idea when you created your design that it would become such an important shirt and a benchmark for other designers?

Super sweet! I had no idea this design would win so it was a great surprise to wake up to. When I was working on this design I wanted to focus on trying something new for myself so I guess I didn't really know what impact it would have in the future or if it would even go to print.



I had the idea for a while but hadn't really done anything to realize it until i got the motivation from the Revolution comp... That was a good one.

Now that you've created a groundbreaking design, what's next? Do you think there's any way to top it?

What's next is probably that burger party that Torasteve said he would help me plan. It's gonna have tiki torches and sharks and some other cool things. I don't know if there's any way to top that, it''ll be pretty amazing. Also, we are getting a Jesse and the Rippers cover band.

But design-wise, I think I'll keep pushing myself to try out new things that I haven't done. They'll probably be groundbreaking for me but old news to everyone else, which is alright by me.

You've been designing at Threadless for many years now. What's the biggest change for you since you started?

I think the biggest change still is trying to figure out the Threadless audience. I still don't really know what you guys want so I just began subbing designs that I'd like and stopped worrying about everything else. It's changed so much over the years with all the different trends that have come and gone. It's been an interesting ride.



Another big change that was awesome was when the meet-ups started. They always equal ridiculous funtimes.

Do you prefer to work digitally or to get messy and make things by hand? What's the strangest handmade project you've ever worked on?

Right now I'm leaning towards moving away from the computer. I've been getting into screen printing a lot and doodling more in my sketchbooks. I really want to get more into working with my hands and make things I can hold and feel. I guess the strangest handmade project I've worked on recently was this exploding records shelf chair thing I made with a friend. It's tall and awesome and holds records. It even has space for a cat bed.



What is "Smelly Little Bear" and why is he so smelly? What does Smelly Little Bear actually smell like?

Smelly Little Bear is what Josh Agerstrand and I call ourselves whenever we do work together. We're so smelly because we're little and we're little because we're bears? That makes no sense. I would like to imagine that Smelly Little Bear smells like camping and burgers and beers...and also sour keys. We should probably draw a smelly little bear sometime in the future.



Which is more fun to draw- Hairy monsters or hamburgers?

Drawing hairy monsters WHILE eating hamburgers. WIN!

If you could only work on one kind of project (posters, skate decks, t shirts, etc.) for the rest of eternity, what would it be?

Zines or posters because they could be whatever I want them to be and as big or small as I want AND i could screen print them all.



How many fingers am I holding up?

Two thumbs. Two thumbs waaaaay up Siskel and Ebert style. Thumbs are fingers right? If they're not then I'm going with both your index and middle fingers making air quotes.

Thanks for chatting!

Interview by Rachel Gottesman


Read more interviews!