The Way to Travel

I hereby declare this design to be completely friggin' awesome. I didn't think it was that great at first glance, but at second glance it intrigued me. At third glance (okay, let's face it...if you get to three, it no longer qualifies as a "glance,") I was in love.

It's a guy, sitting on the back of a dragon, whom he is luring forward with a pineapple on a string. It's perfect. What other food (barring virgin princesses) could possibly lure a dragon forward? It's friendly, it's playful. It's fantastic. It's modern! It's got a pineapple on a string!

I love it on banana, and I love it on gold. The other colors are kind of blah, but those two blow me away.

Look at the dragon--he is so happy!

don't feed this t-shirt after midnight

This submission is pure joy, cleverly disguised as t-shirt and cotton candy. The way the demon-shirt is hunched over and craving cupcakes--it just speaks to me, ya know? As a general rule, I hate shirts that reference the wearer, the reader, or themselves (they're presumptious and generally annoying), but this? This I love.

green trend

I like this on the green. (What is it with green shirts lately?)

I love this because it reminds me of high school chemistry class. I loved high school chemistry class. Not really the class itself, or the teacher, or the material, but simply the idea of chemistry class. I sat in the back row, by the windows, and I'd often look out the window across the roof, across the parking lot, and over to the trees that lined the river at the back of our parking lot.

The linoleum in that room was a weird industrial green linoleum color (as it should be), and the walls were cinderblocks that had at some point in their existance been painted white. Everything was dusty, and the room smelled of pencils and chalkdust and old paper, and wafts of whatever chemicals had been last let loose in the lab next door. There was an ancient periodic table on one wall. It seemed like the epitome of the high school experience, something that students had experienced for generations, and will continue to experience for several more.

And that's why I like this shirt.

Reflection Nothing

Most of the commenters seem to like the bright green version, but I'm going for the pale, minty color. The whole thing sends me an Alice in wonderland vibe, which is pretty cool.

I also like this exchange from the comments:

commenter: I like it alot, but what is the significance of the rabbits?
artist: rabbits= cute

Yes. Yes, they are.

To Know Good & Evil

Another weird, green submission. This is a little off-the wall (not so much as the rabbit one), and I just like it. The style is super appealing to me--little things like the crown above her head, or the snake scarfing down the apple, or her tiny red toenails. I am also totally digging the way her hair is done.

This is just really cool.

The rabbit who...

"The rabbit who, while seeking its boomerang, found a carrot."

Okay, so this is awesome. Srsly.

I love the limey background color and the freakish one-eyed, sharp-toothed rabbit. The text is insane and delicious. I want to print this out and hang it on my wall.

This needs to be printed, because I need to wear it.

Defy//Destroy

This isn't my usual style, but I like the way it looks. I actually skipped over it, and had to hit the back button when I realised it had a helmet on it. I guess I like helmets.

"Rome has fallen" is probably my new favorite phrase. I can't figure out if it's foreboding or upbeat, but I like it.

~~ BIRTH ~~

This is probably my all-time favorite Threadless submission. Whenever I make a list or a mental note of my favorite submissions, this is the first that comes to mind. Not to say that there aren't others I like equally as much (is that redundant?), or even that if I were to choose a single design to be printed, I would choose this one (though the odds are good.)

I just think this is one of the most beautiful drawings I've ever seen. If I were to list the things I love about it, every possible feature of the image would be on the list. The soft brown colors. The tiny spot of blue. The short, sketchy lines. The expression on the girl's face. The way the hair is drawn, left undefined at the top of her head. Her large, careful hands. The fact that it is chilly--she is wearing long pants and a winter coat--but the insect has hatched and is alive. Her urban girl look, and the fact that she is so in touch with nature, with life. The contrast of her soft colors and sketchy lines and the insect's blue, mathematical look. The eggshells at her knees, and the question of the as-yet-unbroken ones. (Will they hatch? Is it too late? Is this blue creature the only one to survive?)

It's beautiful. I don't have any other word for it.

POP tART

It's weird seeing old idea turned into other people's projects. Whenever I see one of those Dragonology-esque "fact" books about mythical creatures, I want to throw a tantrum right there in the book store, screaming, "I was going to DO this!" (Yes, my childhood plans involved writing and illustrating field books on mythical creatures. You have no idea how peeved I am that so many have been published now. But, this is an extremely rare (and extremely violent) case.)

Anyway, I felt that way a bit (much less so) when I saw this. At some point in high school, I had to do a research project on Andy Warhol, and a pop(t)art screenprint thing was one of the ideas I took to and jotted down. I didn't have the means to screenprint at the time, though (it was a painting class, and in retrospect Andy Warhol was not the best artist to choose), and aside from a few frustrated sketches, the idea was put on the back burner. And here it is!

Not that it was a particularly groundbreaking idea, or course. And I never did anything with it (although I'll confess I'm inspired to, now), so one might argue that I ought to have given up my attachment to the idea, anyway. And I have, but it's something for me to post about, heh.

Just an odd sense of deja vu.

king of the nocturnal's

What I love about this shirt is what many of the commenters seem to dislike. the crazy (asymmetric!) swirls and details are awesome, but all the more so because of how simple the owl is. If the owl were more detailed, it would blend in with the linework, and the design would be ho-hum--just another swirly shirt.

But look at this. It's awesome. Bright yellow eyes, so bold that you don't notice anything else until you look harder. Then you see fancy, intricate linework all around, and in the middle, BAM. Nothing. Just barely there, an owl, staring with its huge empty eyes.

I think it's awesome. Very underrated submission.

motel

I love this. No, I love this.

Maybe it's the horror-movie vibe. Maybe it's the oranges and greys. Maybe it's total ambiguity of the text. I don't know.

But I love this shirt.

The Midnight Armada

I love the hugeness of this design. And the tall, narrow, remind-me-of-circus-tents-and-bowling-pins ships.

I like big designs. I think they're awesome. I don't know when I stopped thinking that everything ought to be smaller, but right now I am a fan of huge pictures on shirts.

The only probably with bottom placement designs is that my shirts tend to scrunch up around my waist, and that's kind of a bummer if there's actually stuff to be seen in the wrinkles. Hm.

Hug vs. I *Love* Anime

I don't know why it struck me that these two were in the running at the same time, but it did.

In a weird twist of fate, I would probably wear I *Love* Anime before I'd wear Hug. I can rock Chinese Peaches with the best of them, but I don't think I could pull off Bony Geisha Being Eaten By Octopus.

Assuming the odd blob of a tentacle in I *Love* Anime were changed to a tentacular heart, I could probably swing that. Tasteless? Yeah, but at least subtly tasteless.

Life is Music

Okay, so the title is kind of lame, but I think this is really pretty.

The way my monitor is tilted right now, it looks almost like the light pink (of some of the clouds, and also part of the girl's dress) is sort of a toothpaste green color, and honestly I like that even more.

The world needs more toothpaste-green designs, I think.

SPLASH

This is awesome, and my favorite Threadless Loves Threadless submission so far.

If you don't want some punk kid with a hot pink a watergun shooting everyone who looks at your shirt, I think you need to seriously reevaluate your priorities in life.

Mr. Tee

This made me grin. Nice presentation, too. =p

This brings up something that irks me about Threadless voters (well, commenters) sometimes. People sometimes complain that "no one outside of Threadless would get it. Well, no! And I'm oddly okay with that.

I don't know, maybe I'm just weird, but I generally buy clothes that I like... not clothes that I need other people to "get." If a shirt makes me happy, why would it matter if no one I know understands it? Yeah, there's the idea of "I'd have to explain it to everyone," but you don't actually have to explain anything. Someone asks what your shirt is about, you don't have to answer them if you can't be bothered to do so. I can think of a half-dozen responses to the question Who's that? about this shirt.

-He's the lead singer in an indie band. You haven't heard of him.
-It's my boyfriend
-Can't you read?
-He's running for President in 2008
-It's Dustin Diamond. You know, the guy who played Screech on Saved by the Bell?
-Okay, so that was only five, but you see where this is going.

I dunno, it just seems weird that people would only buy shirts that they knew their friends would like.