you have NO control over teh 12 club shirts theyre chosen by staff not much taken into account about what gets picked

but as for teh voting .. I have actually been voting higher .. btu then I just dont vote on teh ones I dont liek

I completely disagree - I have increased my vote averages because so many great designs have been getting shitty scores.



Anyhow - you cannot really blame the voters for the prints, just the scores.

slow typer me - point gets made before I post everytime

yeah i'm with isaboa. i've been voting more generously because good designs are getting bad scores. it's not the fault of the subs or prints lately, it's your own. you've been here a couple of months and you've become bored. it happens to everybody and they post one of these "it's not as good as it used to be" blogs. it's a psychological phenomena.

ISABOA,

I see your point.

wullagaru,

is that true? I thought club 12 shirts were originally part of the general contest.



Another point,

What are people thinking about "select" tees? Today's is awful. When I look down the stock chart and see a shirt that isn't selling, it's usually a select tee. Sometimes I can see how it might do OK at the regular price, but I often think, "Who's gonna pay MORE for that?!" Some of those designs would never make it through the voting process.

d3d,

I thought about that, and that may be partially true. That's part of why I wanted to ask others their opinions.

This week wasn't that good. Oh well, hopefully next week will be better.

selects have attributes you will not find in mass marketed shirts perhaps a color scheme that is a little out on the limb or a different approach to a graphical representation.



basically closer to art than the tshirt. The fact is in order to market to wide audiences dilution must occur.

they are part of teh contest but their score doesnt matter anything can win for teh 12 club shirt as long as the staff likes it enough



also as to the select tees .... theyre actually a lot more like t-less's heyday so when you think about it the classic shirt would probly flop as well these days

ISABOA,

The score must influence the staff to some extent. They obviously don't even consider the ones that get dropped early due to the "1.5 rule". And something they personally may not like but got a great score is at least gonna get another round of consideration, right?

Growth for the Sake of Growth is an amazing select shirt though.

I like that the Select t's aren't ones that would necessarily get through the vote - that's kind of the point. The person has won the public vote enough times to be allowed free reign.



I really like this week's Select, though I wouldn't wear it myself.



And I am scoring the same as I ever have - though I think the standard is so incredibly low sometimes, I find myself struggling to bother rating some subs at all.

I vote according to my nifty little system:

5 - I would buy it. Perfect.

4 - Excellent. A quality shirt.

3 - Good but needs some work to make it great.

2 - Probably not. Maintenance required.

1 - Uh, no.

0 - Why did you bother?!



I only vote according to that. I try to avoid the defensive voting.

who knows what madness occurs in the threadless braintrust



I think they use the scores to narrow down the options only.

But they look for and cycle certain types of shirts. the artsy shirt, the cutesy shirt, the pun, the GGraphicc shirt, etc. then they leg wrestle each other to determine the winners

Dan,

I agree that G for the sake of G is interesting. It's not my style, but I understood why it was here. I'm not fond of ancaona, but I can see it's an experiment. However, Face Basics, Midwest, and Angels and Demons leave a lot to be desired. Also, the Heavy Metal slogan tee doesn't add anything over other slogan tees.

what about growth - prolly in my top 4 TL shirt list

Well, Thanks for your thoughts everyone. I'm off to eat dinner.

I give 3's if it doesnt really appeal to me or if its nothing really special



I give 0's to designs that look like there was no effort.



I give 4's to things that I like, but not love.



I give 5's to things I love.



And I actually give $ to ones i'd buy

Can I just say your playmobile icon is AMAZING! Long live those plastic figurines of my youth!!!

Everyone have their own favorite style of design, when you hit on the zero, doesn't mean all peoples should give a zero too. At the same time, other peoples also can't control you to vote for the design you like. Threadless store is not for 1 person.



This is just my own opinion.

^WHAT?

Nightshade88's voting breakdown pretty applies to how I approach it as well. I think Threadless takes the voting into account to a certain extent, but it's purpose is mainly to whittle down the subs to 100 or so top vote-getters each week. Then they pick the winners from there based on whatever they like best.

thechemster,

you should see how serious my playmobil addiction is. i'm probably a terminal case. did you see my cake? (see my profile and the cake blog.)



rolling,

I hope you didn't think I thought my vote was the controlling factor in anything. I believe in the one person, one vote system. I guess part of my complaint is that the final score is not the deciding factor.



Thanks to everyone for commenting. I just finished a voting session. I found myself giving higher scores to stuff I liked because I realised I agree with those who said good designs weren't getting good scores. I decided perfection is not required for a five, just that I like it. Most people are not going to resub to fix the squiggle in the corner (and we do NOT really want them to, do we?) so I have to have faith that the threadless staff will let the designer make those little changes that need to be made. (Sorry for the run-on sentences.)



Anyway, my point is I feel better about voting. Thanks for letting me blog.



Enough. Everybody go look at my cake and all the other cakes and make a cake yourself.

I think the Select Tees are sort of a clever market pitch to us designers that are more interested in the art of design and illustration than more of the "guilty pleasure" designs that get printed. I personally think that most of the Select tees are fabulous. Certainly more daring and involved than a vast majority of what makes it to general prints. Also, they're printed on AA shirts. They have better fabric and are made in the USA by people who get paid a wage they can live on.



One of these days when I have money I will spend a bunch on some Selects.