PixelPants wrote:The version of [url=http://shirt.woot.com/offers/curiosity-8] that printed last derby finished in 10th place. Three derbies in with the new system may be a little to identify a printing pattern. I imagine the editors and guest judges take votes into consideration, as much for the the voters who took the time to pick their favourites as for the wider buying audience.
I'm excited by the prospect of this Single Line derby as the first one predated my woot involvement. It will be interesting to see if the results are very different this time around. Hopefully I can reign in my tendency to overwork ideas, and get something done.
I think that's why I'd be doubly excited to see a truly great tee win regardless of placement: because it would develop an anomaly and ergo prove that even if woot preferred top vote draws, it's not a given. Basically every doubletake derby has proven that shirts that don't place top-three can out-sell even the number one spot of its original derby, and that shirts that never even fogged could sell as well if not better than second or third. If we were to see, say, 15th or 21st print, a) it would not sell abnormally poorly, because woot has an ever-growing viewership yet an ever shrinking votership, and b) it could be impetus for people to really push themselves even further quality-wise, knowing that even vote neglect won't keep great work from printing.
It is definitely hard to get a bead on overall trends, especially with four derbies with weird themes... of what I've followed, neither "wishes" nor "restaurants" really had scads of must-own pieces. In a style derby like this one, however, there is a guarantee of great work lingering outside the fog, and that's why it's a great way to (hopefully) see a bit more shake-up. Artulo himself could easily give a speech on how it feels to be shafted outside the fog while what prints prints, based on his placement-to-quality ratio the first time this theme passed through. Simply put, to me the sooner we see a true outside, left-field print choice that seems to be made on design worth (that is to say, no picking #43 just because it has a particularly bad Hunger Games pun), the more the derby immediately gets more exciting for the artists and those of us voting for art (and vicariously, immediately risks losing the sorts of voters who have made woot and the derby hemorrhage users of that sort, so win-win). As someone who I've seen a number of intriguing and intricate pieces from in the past, I'm sure you'd be all the more excited about a derby if you knew you could be 100% true to your inspiration and still potentially garner a print for that.
As for "curiousity," I'm not sure that 10th place last week quite counts, since there was a very similar version in 5th. It does, however, so far showcase that old chestnut that I already mentioned: print score means nothing in sales, so why bother with it? 5th, or 10th if you prefer, is still ahead of 2nd.
