Threadless.com, Where T-Shirt Designers and Buyers Are One

Everyone loves a good t-shirt, especially if it has the power to grab others’ attention or label the wearer as a clever person. I happened upon the website Threadless.com months ago because of their shirts, which fit the characteristics above. Surprisingly, however, I found that this site wasn’t only an online store—it was also an online community of people who designed, critiqued, blogged about, voted on, and bought shirts.

The site sells many t-shirts that all have some unique quality, each striving to send a message that is unlike those found on the clichéd graphic tees that we may find in stores today. For example, there is a shirt with a design that looks like argyle, but upon closer look are really fighter jets streaking across in a triangular pattern. The best part about the shirts is that there is no single designer, not even a couple. The thousands of people of this online store community are all the designers, thus allowing the site creators to sit back and relax while their members create designs, weed out the unpopular ones through voting, and ultimately produce a design they will want to wear, and thus, buy.

Of course, there would be no wonderful designing if there weren’t any motivation. Threadless.com gives $1,500 to those artists who have won the regular ongoing design contest, and money and prizes to those who win special contests (an iPhone is up for grabs at the latest competition). Anyone who is anyone can be a t-shirt artist simply by fabricating a design on his or her computer (with Photoshop, etc.) and submitting it to the site. It is a painless and freeing process, allowing a group of individuals on the web to make what they want to wear. And even if they aren’t the original creator of a design, they are still part of the process because of the feedback they give through blogs and comments on the site.

All of this makes Threadless.com a unique virtual community. Its members share their desire to turn their creative visions into walking masterpieces and spend valuable hours at this task. And by being within a creative community, the site members are allowed to develop their own standards. This aspect of the community fascinates me, because, like in a real community, this one lets people negotiate the rules by which it will be governed. Also, the community actually gets to transcend the virtual and manifest itself into reality through the tangible t-shirts that are bought and worn.

On a more personal note, a couple of weeks ago I submitted a t-shirt design to be critiqued (an optional first step before submitting a design to the site for real). After a few weeks of feedback I altered my design and submitted it. Although it didn’t win a print, the process made me an in-member to the community. I interacted with other members through my design, making me feel like people were listening and helping, all wanting me to succeed. Now I log on often to vote on and critique other designs; it is how I contribute to the community. When myself and other members see a great design emerge I can feel our excitement build, through our comments, blogging, and campaigning. We even grow outside of the community to our friends and family, using E-Mails to urge them to log on and vote for what we like. Not only does Threadless.com’s virtual community provide support and creative freedom, but also the feeling of being part of a group of people who share a love of t-shirts and want to express themselves in this way, as a designer and/or as a wearer. It is immensely satisfying to wear what you helped create.

- Erin O.