Justyna Dorsz

Justyna

“irrelevant type design”

I was reading Seth Godin’s blog archive at random and came upon a post titled “Judging a book by its cover”. Here’s a quote:

You can always tell the jacket designer is in trouble when the cover uses irrelevant type design to get the project over with.

As an example he used George Orwell’s “1984” book cover:

That reminded me of my favorite book, “Little, Big” by John Crowley. The paperback cover is this:

But the cover for the Kindle edition is just a typography design, and it’s even worse than the cover of “1984”.

That’s the lowest effort cover that I have seen.

It could have been a popular book but the publisher just keeps shooting themself in the foot with those covers.

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Weird Dog

A few years ago I made a creepy design for a contest. Here, below, is a dog which was part of the design:

I ordered a t-shirt with it and gave it to my brother. His wife said that this is my worst design ๐Ÿ˜€

Anyway, it didn’t win the contest and I haven’t published this design in any of my stores. As you know, my Threadless shop is a mess, it contains a bit of everything: lots of cats, dogs, other animals, and also space and nature and flower designs. But most of the designs are either cute or funny. A weird dog really wouldn’t fit.

I am thinking of opening a separate store for strange, scary designs. Everyone says that you should find your niche. It’s good if a store is thematically consistent so that customers know what they can expect. This will be a small store, I just need a name.

16 Personalities

A friend sent me a link to a personality test that assigns you one of 16 personality types. I took it for fun, but the test surprised me โ€” it was more thoughtful than I expected.

The questions were easy to answer. What I mean by that is I knew immediately what the correct answer for me was. One of my problems with most quizzes is that questions are often so vague that the only correct answer seems to be: “it depends”. However, the 16 Personalities test is well done and the questions are unambiguous. I didn’t have any problem choosing my answers.

Some questions were so obvious that it was strange to me that anyone could answer differently. For example, there was: “You enjoy watching people argue”, and you had to choose how strongly you agree or disagree on a 7 point scale. It hadn’t occurred to me that watching people argue might be enjoyable. There must be a significant percentage of people who enjoy that, or it wouldn’t have been a question in the test.

Another question that stood out was: “You feel confident that things will work out for you”. I agree. It’s not a belief that by some external force things will work out. Rather, it’s: whatever happens, I can handle it, and I will be fine. This is not only my approach to work. It’s one of my most strongly held beliefs about my life in general.

The result was that I was an INTJ-A type, which is called an Assertive Architect.

You can take the test here: 16 Personalities Test.

Awesome t-shirt advertisement

Check out this video:

It’s of course an advertisement. But so well done! The key point is not the t-shirt but the idea that thinking of yourself as the Main Character can impact your life and mental health.

I like both the video and the concept that I am a central character in my story. I would buy the shirt if not for the fact that I already have too many t-shirts โ€” being a designer means that you get A LOT of free t-shirts.

Here’s the link to the t-shirt: Be A Main Character. I am not affiliated with them, I just really like it and I think it might even be helpful to see the reminder that you are the Main Character every time you see yourself in the mirror.

Sleeping cats

Did you know that when your t-shirt is selected by Threadless to be added to their catalog, you usually get a $250 coupon code? I use my coupons to buy hoodies and t-shirts for my family and friends.

If you want your design to be added to the catalog, you need to submit it to their main design challenge. Every week they select new designs. If your design doesn’t win, don’t give up. Try again. The more designs you submit, the better the odds of one of your designs being selected.

Here’s one of my recent designs:

It has just been added to the Threadless catalog. This means more people will see it and more people will buy it. And even if they don’t buy it, they might check out my other designs and find something else for themselves.

It look good on triblend blue:

sleep sleep sleep

For new artists

I’ve notices that Threadless published a useful article in their Creative Resources section: Get Featured on Threadless.

One of the questions that new Threadless artists often ask is whether they should opt into the Threadless Marketplace. I think it’s really worth it to opt in โ€” most of my sales come from the marketplace. If you are a new artist then most likely you are not very good at promoting your art yet. If you don’t opt in you will have a difficult time getting people to visit your shop. It’s of course up to you. You can read Threadless’s advice here.

One other topic that Threadless mentions is that you should submit 1-2 designs a week. I admit I haven’t been designing much recently. I wish I could submit more but I’ve been swamped with other work like preparing our game for releasing on new platforms and migrating the manichyena.com website to a new server. But that’s all behind me, I plan to draw more in May.

Go read the whole article, it’s full of good advice ๐Ÿ™‚

Act now

My design “Act Now” has just been added to the Threadless catalog.

Act Now

There’s a story behind the design. I was in a grocery store and behind me there were two guys buying beer.

  • Guy 1: So how’s that postwoman of yours?
  • Guy 2: …
  • Guy 1: Have you talked to her?
  • Guy 2: I didn’t dare … I won’t ever dare.

I was thinking about it when drawing the skull. We are all going to die, we have less time than we think. I added the flower โ€” a symbol of romance โ€” to say: if you hesitate, if you don’t act on your feelings, you will die alone.

“Act now” is in the Threadless catalog. Check it out here if you want. Wear it as a reminder to be brave.

Two paintings

Someone posted this painting by Ben McLaughlin on Facebook:

I immediately wanted to know more about the artist and see more of his paintings. And then I stumbled on the following painting, also by Ben McLaughlin apparently:

This is not the same painting! Those are two different paintings. Look at them side by side:

This is strange, right? Did Ben McLaughlin painted those two paintings? Did he like the scene so much that he painted it twice? Or is one of them painted by a copycat? There’s no way to know because Ben McLaughlin doesn’t have a website. Some of his paintings are shown here and here, but neither of those websites display either of the train paintings.

Design Challenges

I was looking for a topic to write about and noticed that Threadless published a new video in their “Your Art, Your Shop” series, this time about design challenges.

I have participated in many challenges but have never won any. However, my “Not Today” design was one of a few designs selected for printing in the Black and White challenge back in 2016, so maybe it counts a bit like winning. Besides that, a lot of my designs were selected in the Threadless main challenge, where you can submit anything. But I haven’t yet won any of the themed challenges.

Even if you don’t win anything, it’s still good to participate. Thanks to the fact that I submitted my designs to challenges, I got a few hundred followers on Threadless. And now, when I publish a new design, people who follow me are notified about it, and some of them probably end up buying something from me.

That reminds me that Woot has challenges too – they are called derbies. I used to participate a few years ago. Again, didn’t win anything but some of my designs got printed anyway ๐Ÿ™‚