Designed By Humans - A Legitimate Threadless Competitor? - at Tcritic The Daily T-Shirt Fasion and Design blog

Designed By Humans - A Legitimate Threadless Competitor?

Jul 11th 2007
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DesignedByHumans.com is a new t-shirt design competition which IMHO is one of the few services that has the potential to become legitimate competition to Threadless. Sure it’s a similar concept but these guys have focused on two key aspects of the business that are critical, first the prize money and second the printing technology.

The Prize Money

The way Threadless structures prize money is it’s Achilles heal, a one time payment of $1500 in cash, and $500 in store credit sounds OK but it really doesn’t add up for the very best designers whos designs get reprinted over and over.

Designed by Humans doesn’t solve the reprint issue, or provide any residual income but it does provide the ability to make $3500 cash for 1 design.

Each day of the week, Monday through Friday, a submitted design wins the Shirt of the Day (SOTD) prize of $750 ($500 cash & $250 store credit). Every week the five previous SOTD winners go head to head for the Shirt of the Week (SOTW) prize of $1000 cash. Then the four SOTW winners compete for the final prize of $1750 ($1500 cash & $250 store credit) and the coveted trophy and title of Shirt of the Month. All in all, a winning design that goes all the way can win up to $3500!

Printing Technology

It seems that DBH has put a hell of a lot of work into the various printing technologies designers will be able to utilize. I think this is one area that DBH has leapfrogged Threadless’s screenprinting set up.

8-Color Designs / Gradients / Half-tones - 8 colors per design (not including the t-shirt) and may contain gradients and half-tones
High Density Inks - used to give a design a dimensional appearance or texture
Flock - a technique that gives the design a fuzzy feel
Foil - used to give a design a shiny metallic look
Suede - Ink that as the name indicates, has the look and feel of suede
Metallic - used to give the design a metallic shimmer less intense than foil
Gel - can be applied over a print to give it a glass-like look
Water-based inks - used to give a design a soft-hand feel and almost no-hand feel after wash
Burnout - process removes the cotton fibers from a shirt, leaving only the synthetic fibers
Discharge - basically a bleaching agent that is used to take the color out of the shirt (they have to find a better name than that
Applique´ - a piece of fabric that is cut out and sewn onto the shirt

Those are some very cool options IMHO

So what’s the downside? not sure yet, although i’m not very keen on their licensing terms, considering this is a competition with a one time prize I think they are asking a lot in these terms

you hereby grant to DBH, its licensees and assignees, an exclusive, world-wide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensible (through multiple tiers) right to: (1) reproduce the Design or any parts, alterations or derivatives thereof, whether alone or in combination with or as a composite of other matter, including, but not limited to, text, data, images, photographs, illustrations, animation and graphics, video or audio segments of any nature, and embody such reproductions in any media or embodiment now known or hereafter to become known (the Products); and (2) publicly display, perform or exhibit, or distribute the Design, as part of the Products, in any way now known or hereafter to become known including without limitation by transmission, broadcast, or electronic communication.

I think the Threadless T&C’s are a little more… Human. In fact the ironic thing is that the whole of the Threadless site feels more human. If DesignedByHumans.com fails it won’t be a failure of technology it will be a failure to build and grow a culture online like threadless has.

hat tip to Mashable

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