Threadless.com is website that where designers submit t-shirt designs, the community votes on the designs and the winning t-shirts are then printed and sold on the site. Threadless is one of my favorite website out there. Why you may ask. Well, for two reasons : the concept is great and I love the shirts and the design is very nicely done.
The design was recently redone by the great people of skinnyCorp, those are the same people that created, run and own the site. I particulary enjoy the navigation because of its fun look and feel.
The entire concept of the site is really brilliant. Allowing designers to create the t-shirts and building a community around voting on which t-shirts are printed and sold is wonderful. They even a 12 month club where you pay 200 dollars and receive a new limited edition t-shirt each month. Every month I look forward to certain magazines that I read. But to be able to look forward to a new t-shirt that you can wear every month is quite an attractive model. They also have a street team, blog forums, and user profiles.
I have gotten four shirts from the site including Highway Robbery, Ask Me How I Became a Pirate, Who F*cking Cares, and Fast Supper. Now for some bad news. I submitted two designs, but they were rejected before people could even vote. I guess maybe sometime in the future.
Threadless is quite an amazing site and I encourage all of you to go check it out.
The music video indusrty is pretty big. I mean afterall you do have MTV, VH1 and Fuse. Normally bands will make two or three music videos per album. However, this was not the case for Death Cab for Cutie newest album entitled “Plans”. Instead they invited directors to develop a music video for each song. They gave the directors complete creative freedom. And because of that freedom the outcome was awesome. We saw animations, actual people, and different concepts and ideas that you normally wouldn’t see in a music video. The result was a DVD entitled DVD entitled Plans and was refered by one of the band memebers as a visual companion to the album. My favorite is “I Will Follow You into the Dark”, where a hand flips through a sketchbook and the drawings tell the story.
This is the kind of creative experiments that the world needs to see more of. Instead of the labels controlling the artists the artists should have more creative freedom. Because without freedom life wouldn’t be like it is today.
Also, Check out the latest edition of Wired (The rebirth of Music) for even more examples.
The 9rulesnetwork has just started a new project called 9charities. To sum it up according to their website, “9charities is a new project — led by 9rules Network members — that picks nine charitable organizations per year and provides web consulting and design free of charge.”
I think that this is a wonderful project and one that is worth while. Many Charities are most likely not taking advantage of the internet at all. And the ones that are can always use free design. Good luck to you guys over at 9rules with this project.
I found Coudal Partners a while ago and have been reading their site ever since. Their links provide so many interesting sites for me to visit along with all their other unique projects. I find that it is great that they don’t only do client work but do other projects that interest their readers online. The advertising platform that they created called “The Deck” and “Photoshop Tennis” are examples of those projects.
They currently are working on a project called 72 degrees. Its a short movie that takes place in an old computer room. They have been blogging about it from the start and have provided some interesting insight in to the process.
One of their projects I was actually lucky enough to purchase. They created a short film titled “Copy Goes Here”. This is ingenous short film that takes place in their studio about a copy writer that they hire. I dont want to spoil it so I won’t go any farther. You can watch it for free here and buy it here.
As I was watching 24 one night a little while ago, I remembered something that I had wondered about. How did they make all those computer screeens come to life with a graphic user interfaces and data? We can see these in movies and on television shows. And I thought to myself what a unique job to design all those around the story that is being told.
I am assuming that they are done in Flash since the actresses and actors have to interact with them. If any of you have done any work like this or know someone who does let me know.
The iPod that I had gotten for my 15th birthday had been a part of my life for a little more than the past year. This little more than a year is where all the trouble is at. As you know the iPod comes with a one year limited warranty. However this little piece of information I forgot.
You see it all happened one day when I turned on my iPod. The only problem was it did not turn on. I attempted all the procedures found online under the support section of Apple website. None of them worked. The next logical step was to make a trip to the Apple retail store which was only 40 minutes away. Finally, having found a time when my mom could drive me there, we were on our way. I scheduled an appointment at the Guiness Bar through a nicely designed piece of software found on the computers in the store. They called my name quite quickly and I handed my iPod over to the man behind the counter for inspection. He concluded in saying that the hard drive was busted. He then asked for some information to check the warranty and found that it was around a month or two over. After attempting to negoitate with him, I left the Apple Store with my broken iPod in hand.
There is however a positive side to this story. You see I never turn off my iBook, even over
night. The iBook has this light that tells you its sleeping by going from being dim to getting brighter and back down again. I already know that my iBook is sleeping but I also know that I want to be too. So the broken iPod serves the purspose of standing up on it’s side in front of the light. At least I was able to solve this one problem.
Hey, it is good to see you here. Im Ethan Bodnar, a 16 year old, who is blogging about the internet, design, ideas, the arts, life, and more. Here is my story…
A year and a half ago I discovered blogs and the new internet. Since that day, I have read many blogs and have explored the new internet made up of web application, communities, and people. For a year I have dreamed of starting a blog that I could call my own. This place would be where I could share my stories, thoughts, and ideas with people. Well, here it is. Thanks for coming.
Learn more about me, click here.
