Why the French title? Well, I’m currently rocking out to Justice in my apartment, which tends to make me try and write bad French. BTW, have any of you seen their live/tour DVD, A Cross the Universe? It is INSANE.
Anyway, Threadless announced the winner of the people’s choice Bestee (along with the other winners) last week whilst I was still wandering around Philadelphia asking people where the hell I was and being told repeatedly that my little map wasn’t very good, despite it quite clearly being accurate when I’ve compared it to Google Maps. That meant, of course, I couldn’t mention the momentous occasion of the award in a timely fashion. Congratulations to Kneil Melicano on the win with RED, a design that I thought looked great, but didn’t make a particularly spectacular t-shirt, which shows how much I know about the t-shirt buying public!
Anyone care to offer their thoughts about the Bestees?
When I first mentioned the 2008 Bestees I said I wasn’t going to provide any picks because I don’t follow Threadless closely enough to make an informed decision, but now that they’re down to 20 finalists from the 331 designs released last year I feel as if I can have a stab at it. I don’t really know how I should be judging this, because the name of the award is ‘design of the year’, yet I feel as if really we should be picking the t-shirt of the year. For example, I think that RED by Kneil Melicano is a fantastic image (as is “The food Chain” by Olly Moss), but as a t-shirt it doesn’t particularly wow me, you know, I’d wear it, but I don’t think it would be a showpiece in my tee collection, so what are people meant to be voting for, the best image, or the best t-shirt as a whole?
For me, it should be the best t-shirt, which is why I eventually decided that “When Pandas Attack” by Jimiyo and AJ Dimarucot was my pick of the bunch. It’s probably indicative of how my tastes have slowly moved away from the stereotypical ‘Threadless style’ that I would pick a design that most people would probably feel was more suited to Design By Humans, but I must admit I was pretty tempted to pick Fail by Budi Satria Kwan because it’s so damn cute, or “Foam Monster in Emotional Reunion with Severed Limb” by Aled Lewis because it’s so damn funny.
So, any bets on Threadless reprinting all 20 finalists when they announce the Bestees?
I’m cutting it a little fine with this video if you’re looking for Threadless Bestees voting inspiration, but to be honest the designs aren’t really on screen for long enough to get a proper look at them, but a video showing all 331 tees that Threadless released in 2008 does show just how big they’ve become.
This may come as something of a surprise to you, but I don’t actually pay all that much attention to Threadless, that’s probably a form of blas-tee-my for a clothes blogger, but with them being so astoundingly popular (hands up if you don’t own one of their tees) I feel as if I should only mention them when something really interesting comes up.
The Bestees certainly are interesting. $40,000 of interesting.
$20,000 prize: Design of the Year, based on YOUR vote! Starting Jan 12, all 326 designs released in 2008 will be in the running and up for voting. On Jan 19, we will narrow down 20 finalists for an additional week of voting!
$10,000 prize: Designer of the Year
$1,000 prizes: Newcomer of the Year Unprinted Designer of the Year (plus a design printed) Blogger of the Year Gallery Photographer of the Year Collaboration of the Year Groundbreaking Design of the Year Best Use of Critique Slogan of the Year Select of the Year Kids Design of the Year
We will be announcing the Bestee 2008 winners on February 2, 2009, along with a little something extra you won’t want to miss!
I’m not going to pretend to know what/who should win, feel free to put your suggestions into the comments, but I am looking forward to finding out who the winners are, even if it just means I know what to spend my street team points on.
You can check out the usual over-excitement of the Threadless community on this related blog post.
I’m not going to ruin the surprise of the Bestees for all y’all, but if you click through to this link you can see all the winners of the various categories and prizes, or you can watch the awards recap in the video embedded above (feedreader…. readers may need to open up the webpage to see it). Congrats to the winners (even if I do not agree with some of the winning designs), and well done to Threadless for actually having the awards in the first place, from my quick tally they gave out $100,000 in prizes for the Bestees, crazy stuff.
The polls have been thrown open for the people’s choice award for their Bestees 2007 Awards ceremony. The winner gets ten grand, so head on over and make your pick. I was actually kinda disappointed looking at the selection available, I feel as if all the design available to vote on are great illustrations, but I’m just not sure so sure if they make for great tees.
