Attention Artists and Designers

[ErinAllenLamb]

Everyone should check out threds151.com

This is a great opportunity to make some decent cash and contribute to a retail apparel line!

Make up to $1000 dollars per design!

Let me know what you think.

[Frog]

I have seen similar offers before.
If I understand this. $100 if a design if chosen to be put into a presentation book. Another $100 if selected for printing, and a non-specific amount of royalties on pieces sold. Oh, and the rights are transferred as well.

I guess that this may be cool for those just starting out, but older artists may view this as exploitative.

[ErinAllenLamb]

I can understand where you are coming from with the last comment, but it isn't meant to exploitative.  Besides the money factor there is also getting your art out there to be seen by more people and brands and obviously the possibility of more beyond that. It is meant to be fun, creative and to take an organic direction with lots of possibilities. 

 

[Command-Z]

Well, as a very experienced designer in this field for over 20 years, I would never participate in something like this and I would discourage anyone from doing so, no matter their level of experience. As Frog said, maybe a good opportunity for someone new to break in to the market, but not a good long-term model for career-minded contractors.

Contests (as opposed to juried competitions), work on speculation (spec work) and crowdsourcing are bad for our industry. Our profession is like any other, and no work should begin until an assignment is given, terms are agreed upon, and price and payment schedule are negotiated and established. With spec work, possibly hundreds of billable hours are unpaid as many artists compete for jobs they were not hired to do, in hopes of "winning" the gig. This devalues the work of all designers in the industry and also devalues the work in the minds of the client, who is basically getting many hours of design time for a fraction of the actual cost.

Compared to crowdsourcing and bidding contests like 99designs.com, your model seems to be more to the advantage of the artist, with your offering of a royalty on acceptance, but it's still spec work... and no professional should do work on speculation.

Imagine taking this model to another industry... ordering several meals at several restaurants, eating them all and only paying for the best one would get you thrown in jail. You printers out there, I can't imagine any of you setting up and printing a customer's shirts without an order, in hopes of snagging the job while the client goes from shop to shop seeing which one they like best and only purchasing that one. This is the same thing.

While it's ultimately up to the artist to decide if they want to participate in a contest such as this, it does effect the entire industry and devalues our profession in the long run. I strongly suggest anyone considering participating in contests or crowdsourcing to visit these websites first:

http://www.no-spec.com/faq/

http://www.aiga.org/position-spec-work/

http://www.creativelatitude.com/articles/article_0804_habib.html

http://spyrestudios.com/6-reasons-crowdsourcing-and-spec-work-sucks/

[Dottonedan]

Let me first say, I LOVE that logo on the main page.

I'm in with CammandZ on this. I will say, the your model is very well done. It's a great idea for benefiting the company.
At the same time, it can also be an extreme headache. Imagine all of the new artist flooding your design choosers. I have had over 100 applicants submit links and samples for a project I advertised.  This was just for one post made for the ad and they still keep coming in. Out of that, I would say that 3 out of about 100 seem decent to work with and tons of new artist that have no clue what you need but will create designs just to get noticed (before you even tell them what you want). Young and naive. So, yeah, they will submit 3-30 designs (each) and that is jsut for this month. Now, you need to go through those, address issues and have revisions made (and explain what a sellable/marketable tee design is).

Now, from the artist standpoint, although most won't know much about this and will submit designs anyways, but you are supposedly selling these to Kohl's, Beall's, Stage/Peebles, Target, Bonton, TJ Maxx, Ross, Burlington, Wal-Mart, Buckle, Hot Topic, and Urban Outfitters. This to me is fruitless. While they are big well known names that sell tons of tees daily, they all have a predetermined product line (per Season or Quarter) that we on the outside are not a part of. Most close vendors do not get this (agenda) as they are results of trend research/show trips and and much money invested. You may provide your artist that participate with a wish list and they work from that, but it's still not going to be what these shops may have in mind. So again, much of this work may be fruitless.

I have been a part of this kind of work and you can submit 50 on up to as many as 300 designs and 5 of those company's may nott take ANY and one of those company's may take 3 of them. Mean while, you have over 700 designs submittted that you've waded through.  It's a great idea but I do'nt beleive that it's been totally thought out through the whole process yet. It's very risky in terms of time and money invested on your company's part and almost 100% too risky for any artist.

The "pool of talent" will be very hard to gather (that is suitable for those company's leve of trend realted, artistically savvy designs. Much work to be done on this one me thinks.  If you gather 100 semi good artist (that know little to nothing about retail apparel designs and trend forecasting)  that submit a total of 100 designs to show all of these shops, you may sink before getting off the ground with the program.

One good thing that seems to be in your favor is the history that this other guy has that scame on board with you. He may have the connections in place. If they are old connections, those people may not be there any longer. New buyers who don't know him may not be interested to talk to him. They call who they are interested in. I've heard this before from buyers in my own company I worked for and experienced this myself later on when I got out on my own. A few of them are included in your list. I have a friend who tried for 3 years to gt into Hot Topic. It didn't happen...until, they wanted him. He's in with them now, but now he's at a point where they wait on him.

Next issue I see, is that all of the product you want to submit to them is non licensed product. So this is unproven product in the marketplace. Buyers want to see proof that customers will be interested in it. Rarely to retailers take risk and put product out on the floor that they have no clue as to any sales history from any other store.  Who will be first with the few designs that a store does purchase? maybe the sales history will need to come from these smaller unknown specialty shops.  It's a tricky business and much to lose.

[tpitman]

I worked in an ad agency that got suckered into a deal like this by a local boat manufacturer. Of course, the owner of the agency didn't care, because we all were on salary, and we had to come in on a friggin' SATURDAY to work up the comps. I don't know what the "consolation" prizes were, if any, but I know we didn't get the account. It's bull$h!t. Look at our book and pay us to design your crap or not, but don't dangle a job to every shop in town, especially when we work for a woman who thought it was a good idea to present so many choices the clients didn't know up from down.
Obviously, others took the bait, since we didn't place. Our stuff wasn't that bad.

[Dottonedan]

@ ErinAllenLamb

I don't want you to get the wrong Idea. We are not knocking you, or your Company.  It's just that for those more seasoned, we have seen bad deal after bad deal come out of stuff like this. In one way it's good business to be creative on your Company's part in how you get a large amount of work and send to great customers. On the other hand, It's just not for most artist.