WikiLeaks T-shirt, Help!

mandelum31 Mar 2011

WikiLeaks is having a t-shirt design competition over at 99designs. And could really like WikiLeaks to get an appropriate and effective t-shirt, I have tried and it is fun, but the competition holder seems to mostly appreciate geeky or in my opinion some very bad designs. I got so desperate I even tried to do Star Wars and Matrix series to please the hackers... But we really seem to have different tastes...

However I still think WikiLeaks deserves the best, so I would like to find the middle ground between us.

Please help me and WikiLeaks, either tell me what I should do or what I have been doing wrong or contribute your own better designs to this competition! Any advice and opinion would be greatly appreciated!

I think WikiLeaks needs a typographically strong t-shirt since it is about freedom of mostly verbal information and a very serious matter indeed. Graphics and gimmicks are very subjective and may or may not appeal to certain demographics, strong typography is more universal hence more appropriate imho. But I think any t-shirt needs to be very clean and simple, since there are limitations in the printing techniques and also because people will look at your face and not your shirt so the shirt needs to be very simple in order to even get noticed!

Thanks.

oldnick31 Mar 2011#

You are requesting that we go on a fool's errand. As Thomas Aquinas so aptly noted, de gustibus non est disputandum; matters of taste cannot be argued, and trying to convince someone else that their tastes suck is not apt to get one very far...

mandelum31 Mar 2011#

So you basically agree that the competition holder has bad taste.

JamesM31 Mar 2011#

Mandelum, since you are new here you may not know that many of us are opposed to design contests (also known as "spec work"), as we consider them to be bad for the design profession. You can read more about the reasons at www.no-spec.com/faq/.

But even if we put that issue aside, in this particular contest you are competing against over 700 other entries (so far), you're designing for a client you've never met or talked to, and who has provided only brief and vague instructions, and the client appears to have bad taste in design. Not a good situation for a designer.

mandelum31 Mar 2011#

No, and I totally agree, but since I am not a professional designer it is a very good way to do some practice. And since I care for WikiLeaks, I did over 40 designs for this thing. But you do get dissapointed, and I do nnot think it makes economical sense to make the t-shirt only attractive to certain hackers.

But I really appreciate the kind welcome!

mandelum31 Mar 2011#

Of course it would also be nice to know what you think about the designs I made, but maybe it is not appropriate because this is not in the critique forum. And I guess I should not publish it there either.

JamesM31 Mar 2011#

Mandelum, just to be clear, I didn't mean any of my comments to be taken as a criticism of you or your question. I was just discussing some of the issues with these types of contests.

mandelum31 Mar 2011#

I have no educated myself even more on the issue, thanks for the link. And this is truly a great concern for the profession in general.

mandelum1 Apr 2011#

Now you will soon be able to vote on the designs. I still think spec work is wrong but for an organization like WikiLeaks it a very understandable practice.

oldnick1 Apr 2011#

So you basically agree that the competition holder has bad taste.

A great many of this kind of competitions' buyers have bad taste, which is evidenced by their using these competitions in the first place...

Jens Kutilek1 Apr 2011#

for an organization like WikiLeaks it a very understandable practice.

Why do you think so?

I mean, Wikileaks received 1 million Euros in donations in 2010, but they can't afford to hire a designer to make them a proper T-shirt? Come on ...

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