The Decemberists are an incredible sound. (Listen to “The Island”.) Their breed of post-modern folk, mashed with subdued rock organ and accordion undertones is a brilliantly executed exploration into what you can have with amazing sound. Plus, any band that uses “would” to mean “I wish” (“Would I could afford to buy my love a fine robe,” etc.) already has a leg up. Their lyrics tell a story. Their lyrics are true poetry, with meter and metonymy and so many other forms lost in modern music.

So many times when wearing certain Threadless designs, (notably “Flowers”) people ask me “what band is that for?” Fitting, then, that their newest album’s sweeping magnum opus play the part of the concert’s focus. A story is told, and you feel complete through it.

It’s inspired some incredible designs. Here are some of my favorites:

Squeeze Blood From Feathers : 3 This design is rather simple in its execution. It’s done very well, but I fear it doesn’t convey the depth deserving of a near-13-minute sojourn like The Island. It instead feels as a window into just a brief moment—“The curlews carve their Arabesques”, notably.
Falling Away : 3 Perhaps embodying a larger view, I appreciate her facelessness, and the harsh juxtaposition of her dress against the abyss beneath her. I really like the true sense of falling backwards evoked by the hair and the circles beneath.
Lost : 5 + $ Simply brilliant. Besides obviously engendering the entire piece through its subtleties, the design itself is just gorgeous. There’s no true meaning evident, but the feathers and the pistol evoke a proper confusion.
The Crane Wife : 3.5 “You’ll not feel the drowning…” plays itself nicely here. I enjoy the sea and the island. But I feel as if the guitar is almost unnecessary; an allusion that breaks the fourth wall. Why remind us that we’re in a dream, a song, a story and a tragedy? No need to abstract this from what it is, for it should engulf, surround and embrace, fully.
The Soldier Returns : 5 Huebucket and slaterock will really need to battle this one out. This design is captivating, unyielding in its overt, powerful complexity. The attention to detail is staggering, and the piece tells the story. A fiendishly sable feeling prevails, and I’m left only wondering what (perhaps) the soldier might look like with dimes upon his eyes.
Cry Mercy : 5 + $!!! The Island is a dark, tragic song. A woman begs against her rapist, with sorrowed futility. The metaphor of the Crane pulls this piece together. The gold and silver pieces falling helpless to the floor; the only sound heard before the bizarrely quixotic, sinister theft. My God, this is brilliant.

This competition is a wonderful example of how brilliant art begets brilliant art. Cross-medium or otherwise, great things inspire, and you can tell which artists truly listened to the piece, and gazed upon its soul, ridiculous as it may sound. (I’m on play through number 10 for today…) I appreciate the efforts especially of huebucket and slaterock, whom I believe really got it.

View the others.

Monday’s may be hard on the credit card, but it’s certainly nice seeing new tees on a weekly basis. It keeps things fresh and happenin’ which is the way us Threadless junkies like it.

Two worthy winners of the Wired Nextfest Loves Threadless competition have been announced. City Lights combines technology and childhood wonder, while Timmy Wished for Ray Gun Eyes will make you simultaneously cringe and laugh.

Samuel Lara brings Breaking The Sound of Music to the Threadless Select line much to the delight of music enthusiasts. Meanwhile, the latest Type Tee “I love movies, long walks on the beach, and clichés.” should satisfy your slogan cravings.

That leaves just two competition winners this time around, both of which are hot designs. I may be a bit biased towards Our Radio, however, as DeadPoetic_Underoath happens to be one of my favorite Threadless artists. On the other end of the color spectrum is Paper Tiger which is equally awesome yet totally trippy.

Last but certainly not least, are two classic reprints: What Would Macgyver Do? and Vegetarians are Eating the Rainforests. And for those of you who just ignored the last handful of paragraphs, here’s a linear recap….

Wired Nextfest Winners:
- City Lights
- Timmy Wished for Ray Gun Eyes

Threadless Select:
- Breaking The Sound of Music

Type Tee:
- I love movies, long walks on the beach, and clichés.

Competition Winners:
- Our Radio (also in Kids sizes)
- Paper Tiger

Reprints:
- Vegetarians are Eating the Rainforests
- What Would Macgyver Do?

Enjoy shopping and remember those coupon codes! HUPDAWG saves three bucks per order.

This is already going on at threadless, but just figured I could post it here as well. The total blog entry at threadless can be found here.

So what’s the deal? I’m handing out a $30 gift certificate to the best entry in the competition. The aim is to create some kind of image, be it a photo, collage, drawing, or something else, using either of my earlier designs, you’re wormfood or happy when it rains. You can do what you like, you don’t have to buy the shirt for this contest to work or anything.

If you want to join in, provide a link to the image in the competition blog (so not here), and make sure the image is not wider or higher than 500 pixels. That’s it!

NOTE: I have extended the deadline to August 6

I just wanted to remind everybody that today is the deadline for the Threadless Loves Threadless competition. If you still have something to submit, hurry while you’ve still got the chance. Otherwise, vote on the designs currently in the running.

If you’ve missed this competition, there are two more which Threadless recently announced. Wired NextFest Loves Threadless (running until August 7th with the theme of “Future Forward”) and Little Miss Sunshine Loves Threadless (also ending on August 7th, but with the theme of “Everyone Act Normal).

If neither of those tickle your fancy, visit Threadies.org which offers unofficial (but nonetheless cool) competitions to help get the creative juices flowing. For the artistically challenged, you can find non-design related contests frequently held right here on the blog.

As Chris mentioned, I’ve been in the midst of finals and over the last week I’ve accomplished an inhuman amount of writing. Today I turned in the last of it, thankfully, so I can finally relax and get back to blogging (not to mention also get reacquainted with the concept of sleep).

Meanwhile, the $10 Summer Sale has continued to rage on. There are still some guy sizes left in stock for the freshly printed Wandering Spirit, Bath, I Wanna Dance, and Final Flight. Don’t forget, the sale ends Monday at Midnight (CST) so take advantage of it now if you haven’t already.

Threadless also happened to announce the new Blik Loves Threadless competition the same day as the sale, so for those of you who missed it in the rush, you can check out the details here. The same tried-and-true Loves competition rules apply so your submission should be inspired by Blik and the theme “off the wall” yet also work as a stand-alone design. The grand prize is especially sweet this time around, because the winning image will be integrated into a Blik product line as a wall graphic.

If you have no idea what Blik is or need some inspiration to start the creative juices flowing, you can get the inside skinny from their website. I think the Blik products are simply amazing… hopefully we’ll see some great submissions in return. There isn’t much to speak of yet, but the contest runs until June 1st.

Submit Yours | Competition Details | Current Submissions

Hot on the heels of the closing of the Extra Tasty Loves Threadless Comp, Threadless has spat out a new Loves Threadless in conjunction with the American Red Cross.

The American Red Cross is an amazing organization that does amazing things for people, and so what better way to celebrate 125 years than with a Threadless-tested, Threadless-approved design? The theme to build around is “Hope, Humanity & Compassion,” but as always, they don’t want to see that on the design. Additionally, they don’t want to see any red cross on the design, either, due to strict brand standards.

I think this competition will produce a great deal more variety than the Extra Tasty-hey-let’s-show-a-glass-doing-something gold standard, which is good. Even better, for the winner, is the potential media opportunity prize with the Red Cross. There’s a good and plenty way to get some awesome publicity as a designer if you win this, so make sure you have a website ready that doesn’t suck. (And if you need someone to host that, let me know and I’ll hook you up with way cheap—think $10/month—and awesome hosting.) You also get some cash and Red Cross money, so you’ll be pretty damn prepared should the worst occur.

Take heed! This starts today and ends in three weeks on April 21st, so get cracking!

Submit Yours | Competition Details | Current Submissions

Staffell has posted the first round of Joy of Text submissions to make it into the Threadless voting stables. The Joy of Text contest was originally created by Staffell back in January as a way to prove that designs centered around text and built with text can, in fact, rock. Since the submission deadline has finally passed, the submissions are making forcing their way onto Threadless, leaving shimala weeping and trembling.

Now, Staffell has gone further and launched Threadies.org as a venue to quickly view all Joy of Text submissions and vote for that contest separately. (Remember, Joy of Text is separate from the submission voting.) Check it out and send your email-vote using their instructions.

In the meantime, check out some of the absolutely great text-based designs in the giant Staffell thread.

Threadless today launched their ExtraTasty Loves Threadless Competition. Check it out by clicking that last link, or by visiting http://extratasty.lovesthreadless.com, as I’ll be mirroring this and all new Loves Threadless competitions as a subdomain here.

ExtraTasty, for the uninitiated, is a SkinnyCorp project for the hollow-legged. It’s a user-populated compendium of drink recipes, complete with tagging, favorites, comments and the ability to list what ingredients you have in house, so you can see only recipes you can actually make. Add to that a dash of SMS (recipes texted to your cell) and a squeeze of fresh AJAX, and you have a pretty neat project, if you’re not a friend of Bill W. (Or, perhaps, especially if you’re a friend of Bill’s…)

The competition kicks off today and ends a month from now, on March 27th. They want an ExtraTasty themed (but not “branded”) design, just like previous Loves Threadless competitions. The prizes are pretty nifty, including a 4GB iPod nano, 2 ET shirts, “a bunch of other cool ExtraTasty stuff,” $1,250 cash and a $250 Threadless gift certificate.

Embrace the crazy hedonistic fun of alcoholism and create a design we can really drink down. If you’d like for us to feature/review your design and link to it, send me a quick email to seeme [ at ] lovesthreadless [ dot ] com. (You have to type the @ and ., kids. Don’t be dumb.)

What’re you waiting for? Submit Yours. Competition Details. Current Submissions.