Compete-tee-tion

I have a confession to make. I love tee design contests (obviously). And yet, I haven’t been in the habit of regularly scoring submissions in years. Every once in awhile, I’ll get back on the horse and be a dedicated scorer at a specific site for as long as a month or so. But it never takes long for my enthusiasm to fade, because there’s just SO MUCH to sort through, even at the smaller sites. The upside of this is that my current habit of only scoring rarely seems to work well for this blog, as it ensures that I’m looking at new releases with fresh eyes rather than judging them by what failed to make the cut.

Of course, there’s also a downside to opting out of the voting process- I’m not as on top of new developments in that venue as I could be, so I’m a few days late on reporting Threadless‘s newest innovation: visible scores. Initially scores were visible to all users, which led to rumors that some ruthless folks were intentionally downvoting their high-scoring competition (and indeed, many designers reported falling scores). But a compromise may have both made voting more interesting and solved that little dilemma- now scores are only visible after you lock in a vote. As skaw notes, “it’s like a game to see how your score compared to the general score…” Which is definitely an interesting development.

Will you score more designs now that you can instantly see how they’re faring? It will also be interesting to see how this new information changes design promotion, as artists can now see the direct effects of their promotions as they happen.

The example image pictured above is Marie Antoinette by buko, currently being scored.

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Shirt.Woot‘s Derbies have produced some pretty great shirts, but the best looking designs don’t always win. This was further exaggerated by the fact that Wooters often added and subtracted votes at the last minute (with the goal of causing a tie, leading to a 2 shirts for $10 sale), possibly leading to winners that didn’t reflect the true preference of most voters.

Both of these issues have been corrected by a rules change: as of this week, vote totals for the top four are hidden. And, even better, the top three will all be printed and sold (Friday, Saturday and Sunday at midnight).

And really, this couldn’t have happened at a better time- currently, three of the top four are well-drawn and well-suited to a shirt (which is much better than the competition’s average). As the new voting system attracts new artists, I expect the quality level to rise even higher in future weeks.

As always, derby winners (and those who submit work without entering the derby) will receive $200 for the first day of sales. Every sale after that point will earn the artist an additional $2 per shirt, which is typically a substantial windfall.

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Shirt A Day has updated the potential shirt area of their web pages, now allowing visitors to vote on shirts quickly and easily. Good news for both slogan submitters and people looking to bring back the rat tail.

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The deadline has passed for the Allmightys Big City Life competition and submissions are now being scored by site visitors. There’s some really nice work in the running- my favorites are pictured above.

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A recent article about Threadless in the New York Times is raising all sorts of questions for loyal voters. According to the article, Threadless is considering a new method of choosing shirts (in addition to the current method)- “letting winning designers select a certain number of shirts to be printed every month, regardless of the voting results.”

While on the surface this may seem like a betrayal of the principles that made Threadless a household name, it may in fact be bringing the site closer to its roots. In the beginning Threadless was primarily well-known to design and art geeks, but as the site has grown there’s been a natural shift to include more and more types of voters. Strategies for scoring well have also evolved to capture that new audience, often leading to a never-ending parade of puns and adorable animals. These shirts aren’t terrible, but they’re awfully safe. By giving shirt creators a different (more design and arts oriented) audience to court, the variety of shirts submitted is sure to increase.

Still, a lot of people have concerns. After all, a winner could select nothing but their own friends, or even stoop to accepting bribes.

I’m optimistic about it (particularly since a lot of my favorite shirt submissions are eliminated on the first day of voting), but it’s definitely going to be interesting to see this new system evolve.

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