It's funny, I'm a couple of weeks from my 3 year anniversary of starting here. I didn't realize that until I started this blog, but it seems fitting that the timing should fall like that. You see, three years ago I was a very different designer than I've become, and I owe the progression I feel in my work largely to the community and staff here at threadless. When I started here I was a graphic designer working for a publishing firm doing brochures and ads and laying out magazine stories. I had always wanted to push my illustration but found my motivation and self-confidence seriously lacking. I would look through workbook or illustration annuals and always thought 'I'm never going to get there.' That was also the time I was looking at my sad sack clothing selection and wishing I had something that was more personal, that represented me better than some company logo or Hawaiian gift shop find. While looking at the site of a friend of a friend, I found a link to this place. From that moment on I was hooked.

At first I didn't take my designs seriously...and I only think of this stuff as designs, not art. My first five or six designs aren't up anymore. I asked that they be taken down, because I realized something after I'd done them—threadless was an opportunity for me to really test my illustration work, to clarify my own ideas and style and to really find the fun in doing my own work. So I started to do just that, and still do to this day. It's because of the feedback from the community that I saw weaknesses in my work, things I didn't realize on my own working in a vacuum as I was. My first print came as a shock because I had been trying to make a point with that design without thinking it'd actually get picked. After that I've pushed harder and harder to figure out what I like and why I've liked it, discovering in the process that it's just plain old fun to do this, to express and idea or mood with some color and cloth. I realized I don't exist in a vacuum anymore. I've made real friends from folks I'm met in the blogs, people whose design sense and honesty I trust and know I can ask an opinion and will get an truthful answer. And I've found this stuff I do really does resonate with other people, and as any artist out there will tell you, that is the most fulfilling thing in the world.

So it is with absolute sincerity that I thank the threadless staff and the community at large for all the feedback, all the response, all the acceptance. If you'd asked me three years ago what I had hoped to achieve from participating in this community it would have come nowhere near what has actually happened.