Re: Mo-om... he’s squishing me!
Wow... a bunch of criticism now. Some of it pretty nasty too. That’s okay, though. Each person is entitled to her or his own opinion. I guess I ought to address some of the ideas there.
No, I’m not fishing for sympathy votes here. My goal was actually to raise awareness for a really worthy cause. I’m sure it’s pretty clear that I could have gone completely maudlin here... made up a shirt design with a grave or something on it and said “I can’t participate in a mommy derby ‘cause my mommy is dead... please vote for me to make me less sad!” That would have been horrible and a poor way to commemorate my mother. I went completely the opposite direction. I made a shirt with an image of a family of cats that I thought would be appealing to people who were looking for something to buy as a Mother’s Day gift. I think I hit that demographic pretty well, given the comments I’ve heard about how perfect a shirt it would be for someone’s mother, grandmother, aunt, sister or daughter. I realize that it’s not the style of shirt many of you would buy for yourself, but I’m pretty sure it’s something lots of people would buy for their mothers.
I can understand why some of you might be upset at seeing my shirt do well. I certainly have seen many shirt designs that I liked get buried beneath other, seemingly less deserving shirt designs. I’ve even seen shirts get what I felt might be an unfair advantage in some way. It can be really frustrating, I know.
Simply telling an appealing story doesn’t get you a pile of votes, though. I send out a story with just about every shirt design I do and I’ve got plenty of designs that just tanked despite my storytelling. I’m just a storytelling kind of person, I guess. I like others to hear the ideas rattling around in my brain when I make a design, so I’ll keep on doing that despite the fact that it’s not a particularly vote-raising strategy. Likewise, promising to donate your profits to charity isn’t a ticket to fog-town either. The last derby I offered to donate to a worthy cause and got less than a hundred votes all told. Less than seventy even. I’m sure there are people out there who see that my entry did well and will try to copy my “formula,” but they’ll be sorely disappointed by the results.
To make it to printing at Woot you have to create something that appeals to a constantly shifting and sometimes maddeningly unpredictable voting base. Some days it’ll be skulls and ravens, other days it’ll be video games or science references... we’ve seen cute shirts, beautiful shirts, dark shirts... nobody can get exactly the shirt designs they want out of every derby. I realize that my design won’t appeal to each and every one of you out there. There are a huge amount of people, though, who are looking for exactly this kind of shirt to use as a Mother’s Day gift... or as a gift for an aunt, a sister, a grandmother, a cat lover... I hope you don’t begrudge them the chance to get their shirt made. They really want to get this shirt printed, and it’s not like I’ll be lining my own pockets with the profits. It’s going to a really good cause and just might help save the life of someone close to you someday. I hope that you get the shirts you want for the next derby. Heck, I’ll even take requests for designs if you like.
Sorry for the long post, I know a bunch of you haven’t even bothered reading this far, but thanks to those of you who took the time to listen to what I had to say.
