While I accept that this will probably get read by a small percentage of the people who really need to hear it, I hope that it will make enough of an impact on enough people that some change begins to occur.

For those of you who don't know, Threadless has recently added the "critique" feature to their website. This allows people who are unsure of the quality of their design to submit their design for feedback from the community, so that they can make changes and improvements before submitting it to the same community for voting. This feature is under-used and a lot of fairly poor designs make it to the voting community without first going through a critique process that, I believe, is quite healthy.

When a design is in for voting, there is a comment area in which many people enjoy tearing a design apart and informing the artist, and the rest of the community, how the design could be improved. Sadly, once a design has reached the vote level, there isn't much that can be changed, except that the artist can go back and re-work the design and resubmit as something else.

The resub has a very, very negative connotation. If an artist admits to resubmitting a design, it is not long before a member of the community points out that, among the reasons for declining a submission, threadless takes a general, "If it didn't work the first time, try something new" approach. This doesn't mean that all resubmissions are bad, whatever some people think. If a design has evolved far enough from the original, it is perfectly acceptable to resubmit it, preferably under a different title and without the disclaimer, "this is a resub..."

That said, one of the best ways to keep people from having to resubmit designs is to simply provide useful, preferably polite, and constructive criticism in the critiques section of the blog forum. This allows people to make changes to their designs and to submit only their best work for voting.

If more people would utilize the critiques forum, fewer poor designs would ever be submitted for voting.

In a critique, there is some standard of etiquitte that should be respected:

1.) Be Polite!
Seriously, guys. How difficult is it to not say that you think that this design should be trampled by rabit elephants? Criticism is always appreciated when it is provided in a kind, helpful manner. It does nothing but cut down an artist to say that you think that their design is worthless and that they should drop art and take up cricket as their hobby.

2.) Say What You Actually Think.
Some of you might say, "but if I say what I actually think, then it's not going to be polite." So, I will modify 2.) to read, "Say what you actually think within the confines of being polite." Criticism is extremely helpful, but you don't have to agree with everyone. As an artist, it is frustrating to have 5 people tell you that the same thing should be done in 17 different ways, but it's better to have their views in critique and to be able to take their views and execute some of them (and make reasonable decisions regarding your own style/concept/work/etc.) than it is to have to go through the miserable process of a resub, which will then be voted against due entirely and only to the fact that it is a resub.

3.) Don't Arbitrarily Tell People Their Design Needs Work.
One of the most frustrating things in a critique is to have people come through and click that their design needs work, or, for that matter, that they shouldn't submit, without them providing some sort of clarification as to what they think should be changed. If you don't like the design, don't be rude, but do provide what you think could be improved. If you don't have time to write a short critique (one or two sentences is enough, generally), don't click the "needs work" or "don't submit" button. Instead, bookmark the page and come back later with some helpful advice.

Besides this, I would encourage more people to use the critique feature, as it would lower the number of poor submissions in the running, and it would give designers the ability to work out the kinks in their designs before submitting it to the vipers that are the voting community.

Sorry for being so long-winded. I hope that this helps some of you.
-L