Teetonic’s Six Cities Competition Results
I admit, my hopes for Teetonic‘s Six Cities competition may have been a bit high. But can you really blame me? The competition brief brags that the winner’s tee will be seen along side shirts by people like Stefan Sagmeister and Timourous Beasties (at least I think it did- that line of copy seems to have gone missing now that the competition is over). And the theme is ridiculously easy to work within, since it only requires that you show how design plays a part in your daily life.
Yet somehow, things went a bit… wrong. Even with this easy theme, most entrants seemed unable to conform to the brief (the announcement of the winner refers to this fact). Those that stayed within the theme mainly did so by… er, listing the six cities. Even the few designs that managed to use the theme appropriately failed to really capture anything interesting- it was all very familiar, with no freshness.
The eventual winner was a design called Omni Present. While I hated the corporate-looking treatment (Why the squiggles? This could have been marginally cool if the lines and dots had a more organic treatment, introducing some contrast into the piece…), I have to admit that compared to most of the other entries, this design is a revelation.
It’s not a bad shirt. It’s just not great. Sites like Threadless (and even newcomer Uneetee) are managing to release multiple shirts per week that are at a much higher level of creativity than this. Is the prize not up to par, leading talented designers to take their work elsewhere? Was the competition not properly advertised, shrinking its population of potential entrants? I’m genuinely curious.
