I wouldn't do it. I don't see how any good can come of it. just stick around and build up a presence on the blogs.

Well, it's what I'm trying to do...

Nevertheless, I posted a blog to promote my design and there are only 5 comments on it....and four of them were written by me :D (I take this occasion to thank Chipmnk for having written the 5th one ;) )

If your design is good people will come. Oh people will come Ray people will most definitely come.

OK, then I will stop that.

Is it still OK to put a link to your WIP in the critique sction? just to get advices?

I don't ever follow a link that anyone puts in either the crit or sub section. You'll notice that none of the winners ever do. The only way to build up a good presence is to say some nice or funny things to people, and have some interesting work to show.



I only came into this blog because I recognized your avatar from a crit you made on one of my pieces. It was a good crit.

Well, thank you for the advices...it's quite useful.

I didn't mean to do anything wrong, but it appears I did without knowing.

Sorry for that.

It's no big deal, dude. No-one's gonna bust you up over it. It's just like some one treading on your toe in a busy train.

Honestly I think the best way to attract attention to a design is by doing a really good design! You don't even have to build a presence in the blogs or anything. Some of the top designers have almost invisible blog presence and just keep submitting incredible work which speaks for itself. Designers like Radiomode and ilovedoodle come to mind.



However Threadless is a great community and to be involved with it in other ways besides submitting designs can be really rewarding for it's own reasons.

Thus the answer is improve my design quality.

Let's go back to work then!

I agree with igo2egypt about some of the great designers who don't blog at all. But I think it wouldn't hurt to establish yourself through the blogs too.

being told not to link in critiques is a new one to me, i've always thought it was pretty acceptable and I do it often myself. If someone gives me decent feedback and leaves a link I always try to respond as well.

so personally i don't have a problem with it

there are so many critiques that it's hard to get people to look at yours - i think if you're willing to be helpful to someone (and i don't mean "hey thats cool check out mine", but actual help) then it's not rude to ask them to give an opinion back on yours.

This is the first time i've heard of someone having a problem with it.

Thank you for the answer Brightwood.

For Digsy, the thing is I didn't link to another critique of mine, but to one of my submitted design...that was what was not appreciated.



Anyhow, a good thing pointed by Brightwood is that I didn't do that to have 5's marks, but only to have people posting their advices on my design...knowing that if it is not a good design, it won't help me being printed by TL.

I never do guess and win. If your design is good, it will win, and if it stinks no amount of free stuff will bring up the score. That being said, I do often post a blog to let people know it's up and then bump it periodically, people will notice it's up and stop by. I usually just do this because not everyone votes on a regular basis and I'm just letting them know about it. It doesn't really affect my end score, though. Once again, if it's a good design, it will get a good score. I'd focus on making great designs first, because if it's great people will notice whether it's good or not.

also, critiques are useless. I never ever get helpful feedback in there. I usually post a blog here and ask people's opinions. Don't spam, it is just rude both here AND in the crit section.

@ Jillustration:

I don't pretend to be a good designer, that's not my job, just a hobby. I don't pretend I'm worthy to be printed by TL. I just want to have feedback on my work, know how people like it, things like that.

If one day I come with an idea people think is worthy to be printed, Wow, gret, I would be more than happy, but that's not the only thing I'm looking for when I submit a design.



As for the crit section, it helped me a lot...I agree it may be of no use to real designers though.

When I look at the first and final version of my distance love, I'm really happy I submitted this to the crit section first!!!

Pretty sure the general consensus is that you dont promote any other design in any way on a submission page that is not your own.

On critique pages is ok to link to your own critique to receive feedback but you should only do that if you are actually giving feedback.

Linking to your submission page from someones critique page though I would find to be in very poor form. Critique pages arent about promoting, they are for critiquing.

hmm, i thought about this before. it never really was a problem before. but i stopped linking my scoring designs to crits for a simple reason. it makes newcomers think it is ok to put links on scoring designs.



think about it this way, you can leave scoring links on crits, but they can't leave crit links on scoring designs. that just didn't seem right to me, so i stopped.



having said this, i must agree with BW that after i stopped leaving links my scores have all dropped significantly. But i take that to mean that my designs are really not up to par if i have to advertise so much to get a good score.

Hey all



First off Brightwood - If I ever need a new dissertation, I’m gonna steal your previous post! :-P Kidding!



This is a very interesting blog and I have been having different thoughts over posting links to my works. After reading other blogs and peoples views, I decided about 2 months ago not to post links to my work anymore. I tried to promote my work though posting a blog and I must say, my only design which went into the scoring rounds totally bombed (although I wasn’t even expecting to go though to that stage – my luck has been pretty crap recently).



I decided to try a different tactic. I chose designs which interested me, took the time to read ALL comments and posted an honest critique to the best of my ability (I’m no pro in comparison to some others out there) without referring to my own work. One thing that I would at least expect would be to gain some feedback from that person but I received very little back. The number of bumps I had in my recently submitted design was numerous.



To cut a long story short – the results were nowhere near as explosive as when I did post a link in the critique section. In this perspective, I’m curious, Brightwood, on what your findings will be.



Thanks for reading my lengthy blog (although not as lengthy as Brighty!!!!) :-P

i don't think putting your design into critique has such a big influence on it's score, brightwood. most of the multiple-printed designers don't even put their stuff into critique, they just post it in the blogs or don't request feedback beforehand at all.

i think the best way to get attention for your design is to have a guess-the-score blog which you bump several times a day and just being active around the blogs to get people to have a look at your profile where you should always display your latest designs. That's my 2 cents.

OK, thank you for your feedback!

I will try not to SPAM this time with a new design I submitted.

I will see how it works :) And let you know in there!

Coming back from this old subject with my last experience:

I submitted a design lately and did not promote it when I posted on other people critiques...

Well, I don't say that the score it gets is not the score it deserved off course...I just remark that it has a lower score than any of my other designs whereas it was not the "worse" I already submitted.



I don't know if the correct score is the one with or without promotion on critiques, but as far as I am concerned, I realised it bothers people when I link my design on their critique. So I think I will stop it for my future submissions.

As someone say before, if I submit a great design, it will be noticed wether I promote it or not :)

I'm so glad I stumbled upon this blog! I am very new to Threadless and have learned SO MUCH within the few weeks I've been here. Its a very fend-for-yourself type place at the beginning when you don't know the unwritten rules.



I honestly have no idea how my first sub is going to do but I agree with what Brightwood said about Threadless, "In the end, I find I care less and less about my score. I'm just using threadless to learn. I've learned so much. Keep learning. Maybe one day I'll learn enough to land a print. Who knows."



Reading that totally made me realize that more than anything I am learning so much about not only this site and its talented designers, but also my own artwork and style. The critique section, I agree, can be useless sometimes, but on a whole when I got feedback it was valuable. I especially like it because I am getting feedback from people I've never met, who don't know my personality, and who don't know anything about my other artwork yet. It's refreshing and daring and I think every artist should take that chance! It's like a reality check.



In the end, if our designs don't get printed, it doesn't mean we haven't created great artwork. It means that a panel of people have decided not to print it on a t-shirt. That's all! The learning we've gone through is reward enough! (cheesy teacher phrase..sorry)



Anyway keep up the blogging on this subject. Its really interesting to hear what other people have to say!!

you can promote your designs here :)