Profile for jahbooty - Corporate shilling...

jahbooty aka Dayan is a 38.71 year old boy, has been a member since May 17, 2005, has scored 10174 submissions, giving an average score of 1.52.

Jul 30 '05 by jahbooty

15 Comments

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Corporate shilling...

about Don't Shoot The Messenger!

At what point did the "Loves" competition shift its focus into actual branding? If you look at the first three competitions, the winning designs were clever, with a thematic link to the competition - but nowhere on "Maxim Vixen" (as far as I can tell) does it say "Maxim" like the original design. This was a good decision on the Threadless Team's part, and in my mind served to delineate between hipster synergy and outright corporate shilling.

So then the IFC designs were printed - and with the exception of the clever "Are you In? Or Out?" in which the logo is a seamless part of the design - these designs would have been far more wearable without the branding.

And yet -- people are buying them. Which just confuses the hell out of me. Sure they're attractive. Sure I like IFC. But my rule is unless I get it for free - a la "swag" - or am a paid employee - I ain't wearing no damn logos.

Maybe if along with the smaller prize amounts - these shirt were regularly marked at a $10 price point to differentiate them from the standard designs...

Am I alone in this?

secretly robots on Jul 30 '05 at 2:27pm

personally i dont have a problem with the logo, because i actually like IFC, but if you don't like it don't buy it.

xiv on Jul 30 '05 at 2:30pm

I agree.

I would love to purchase those shirts, but i dont like IFC. most "branding" is bad... but i would love to see some shirts printed up that say threadless on them in an artsy way...

jahbooty on Jul 30 '05 at 2:32pm

secretly - i don't like. I'm not buying it. But I wanted to share my thoughts with the Threadless folks because if a lot of other people agree it might affect future printings.

Daniel James Diggle on Jul 30 '05 at 2:36pm

Just look at it...

the image beautifull, linked with the subject...
then the logo, it's just stamped on, taking little part in the design which is a shame because it 'is' a damn good design illustration.
I totally agree that 'corporate branding' should take no part in any design for this site. Isnt 'Threadless' about design and not advertising????

MorganF195 on Jul 30 '05 at 3:05pm

well i think if it were up to threadless there wouldnt be a logo because most other competitions say they prefer there isn't one but the IFC wanted it on there or something

just a guess

MrDomino on Jul 30 '05 at 4:12pm

Yeah, I think that IFC made it mandatory. The Threadless staff has already stated that they don't recieve any money from the Loves competitions other than tee sales. You'll notice that the other competitions don't follow the IFC trend.

So why don't you wear logos?

jahbooty on Jul 30 '05 at 4:46pm

Mr.Domino - Actually a lot of the designs for the next five competitions have included the names of the bands, etc.

And it's not that I don't wear logos at all. Just very rarely. Sometimes I just feel like we're moving in the direction of Nascar drivers - where we're going to end up head to toe in signage without even noticing it.

Have you read William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition"? The protagonist actually goes so far as to have her clothing modified to have no branding. Right down to having the Levis logos sanded off the studs and buttons on her jeans.

MrDomino on Jul 30 '05 at 4:57pm

As far as your first point, the reason that most of the submissions for the new loves competitions have band names in them is because the majority of the people submitting have no imagination. They also don't read that little blurb on the submission page that says Threadless prefers that the names do not appear on the design at all.

I'm familiar with branding, meta-cognition and the like, I think if you read the majority of my postings you will probably see that I agree with you. The reason I asked the question is because I was curious as to what motivated that statement. I know a lot of people who are against big corporations that will still buy Fruit of the Loom blank tees or other clothing as long as it's not branding. The irony of that is those clothing companies still exploit people to make that clothing. For me I don't approve of that, which is why I don't buy men's tees here anymore.

Also, if you don't already know, check it out:
www.adbusters.org

Skipper6745 on Jul 30 '05 at 5:00pm

You say you see no branding in the last competitions? I wasn't present when Threadless was starting out, but looking back at past shirts, I recall that a few had "High Voltage Software" printed on them. And if you look into the retired designs there is branding on a few shirts, which I'm guessing were competitions.

jahbooty on Jul 30 '05 at 11:13pm

I would really love for Shimala or someone else from the T crew to weigh in on this...

Skipper6745 on Jul 30 '05 at 11:14pm

Isn't Shimala on vacation?

Mr Rocks on Jul 31 '05 at 4:13pm

I get your point that maybe this would be a more popular shirt did it NOT have the logo. I followed the brief 100%, and so the logo's in there, and I thought it was a good, original placement. If you don't like IFC, there's really nothing that would make you want this shirt then. I am flattered that you like my design, so thanks.

I agree with Domino, that the submissions with the band names etc included lack imagination. I can't believe the amount of submissions that have done this when it's stated so heavily by THREADLESS in the brief that they prefer it doesn't have the bands name, etc, in it.

Agency26 on Jul 31 '05 at 4:58pm

it's fairly simple to cover that logo with paint, plastisol, or even blood ... you have a great style Mr. Rocks

jahbooty on Aug 01 '05 at 3:10am

Mr. Rocks - Sorry to offend. The design is lovely and would only be made lovelier (and thus wearable) by the removal of the logo.

See I guess I just assumed that they would be removing signage (again, similar to what they did to "Maxim Vixen") and then when they didn't it just made me concerned that things were going to trend that way. Which would probably make me sigh, toss my hands in the air (and wave them like I just don't care) and then leave in a sad, little huff... never to return again.

pinkerton on Aug 01 '05 at 3:11am

Yeah remove the IFC logo even though it was REQUIRED that you had it on the design in order to win.

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