Having a select design is kind of the and-all-be-all of “you made it”-ness on Threadless, and I was pretty certain I’d never get to do one being “just” the collab idea and slogan guy. So when I was the first funny sentence guy in Threadless history to get four type tee prints (Maltzmania and Larlar have since joined the quadruple printie-slogan club), I was just pleased to have had that many slogans Threadless saw fit to print on wearable torso fabric let alone a select invitation coming my way. After all, it made my “look I got printed!” box on the upper right of my profile perfectly symmetrical to ease my minor OCD tendencies. Soon after a couple sloganeers mentioned in the Official Slogan Club that I should get a type tee select, to which I appreciated the thought but knew it was just a pie in the sky dream, if that pie was stuffed with letters and punctuation marks.

A couple days later I booted up the ol’ Threadless talk around town section known as the blogs and saw that incredible sloganmeister Jesse Tatton aka Krokun had started a "Get Evan A Select Type Tee!" blog, one of the most touching altruistic gestures anyone has done for me. After profusely thanking Jesse for doing something so cool and promising that he would win the next five slogan club contests whether he submitted anything or not, I saw some of the OSC diehards jotting their name on the list and assumed the first day of the blog would be the last I’d see of it. But day after day and bump after bump by Jesse and others in Threadville, the most important petition list since the viewers of The Tom Green Show pleaded with MTV for just one more season kept growing, until Jesse had guilted over 100 people to sign their digital Hancock to his typographical mission statement.

Completely unknown to me once again, Jesse took the list and emailed it along with a little letter of intent to Dustin Hostetler, head of the Threadless select project. Lo and behold, within a couple of days he got a reply :

Hey Jesse
Sorry for the delay.. had to pass your email around the office and get some input.
I am in fact the person to talk to about this.. and in general I think its a good idea.

We are not looking to make 4 time type tee winners also Select artists, as at least in my eyes it's two completely different beasts.. but Im open to doing this as a one time thing.

Note: Threadless later informed me that the type tee select honor was also given to me for the four plus collaboration designs I have been involved in that have been printed.

Jesse then excitedly sent me the email and gave me all the info I needed to get in touch with Dustin and start the project, to which I was without speech (or words to type) to say thank you for a couple of minutes to Jesse for actually getting this redonkulous dream into a reality! I was also once again amazed at the power of the Threadless community to band together on something that was not at all on Threadless’s radar to holler and wave their hands around to get them to notice. Threadless also proved for the millionth time over that it is far and away the most amazing and thoughtful giant company in worldly existence. There was no reason for Threadless to give this a green light, yet with Jesse’s blogging grassroots petition and Threadless being so interconnected with its community’s members, basically treating us like we have a seat at their CEO board room meetings, this select type tee came together out of thin air.

After pitching a ton of more radical ideas regarding text and typography using belt printing and all kinds of other fancy-pants processes, Dustin kindly informed me that he really wanted more of an elaborate type tee idea than something that abstract. While I was a little disappointed since I thought the select tee would really let me go crazy, I understood his reasoning, sigh.

I really wanted do this type tee adventure with someone who was an expert typographic marksman as well as someone who didn’t have anything printed before so we could both have our Threadless dreams come true at once! I instantly put Andrew Gregory aka Lunchboxbrain in my crosshairs to do this project with me, even though since this project was completed the guy has had type tee funnies of his own printed! Way to spoil my plan by having an excess of hilarity and being prolific and stuff, man! Andrew hopped aboard right away for the select journey and I promised to keep Jesse up on the type tee happenings since I thought I kinda owed the guy that much, lol.

I had a couple thoughts on how to go with this design and Andrew had a ton of his own, so we produced some rough drafts for Dustin who gave us helpful feedback on the project. I tried to push Andrew harder and harder to get out of his typo safety zone and really cut looser and crazier with the design, and he came through in a monstrous way with every update being more impressive than the last! Here’s a bunch of the styles the design went through.














So there you have it, the power of the Threadless community as well as Threadless itself being the most responsive company there is, all rolled into one extremely long-winded story! Since this design wouldn’t have been possible without the help of everyone here, I gave nearly all the money for the project to Jesse and Andrew, as well as converting the select gift certificate into STP’s to use as prizes for the Official Slogan Club slogan contests (one is starting this week, check in on it!).

I also want to give away this tee to someone who has actually been bored enough at work or are working on their patience by reading this far into the blog, so whoever cut and pastes any slogan that they wanna see printed by anyone on Threadless (links to vote on it would be helpful too!) in this blog will be entered into a drawing for this shirt next Monday!

Viva la good slogans and thanks again everyone!