Several years ago and inspired by a gaffe during the 2012 presidential campaign, I designed a t-shirt. In less than a day I designed the shirt and built a landing page to collect email addresses from people interested in the shirt. A few days later, I launched a Shopify store to allow people to pre-order the shirt. ~160 people pre-ordered the shirt.

In the months following the sale, I struggled to fulfill my orders. The shirts were printed relatively quickly, but at the time I couldn’t figure out how to print out postage-paid shipping labels in order to ship the shirts. After several months of delays, I offered refunds to anyone who pre-ordered a shirt and wanted one while promising to send the shirt regardless of whether the refund was accepted. I think it ended up taking about 6 months to finally get the shirts delivered to my customers.

It was an incredibly embarrassing screwup. Ironic, given the shirt was designed to poke fun of someone else’s mistake.

Ever since, I’ve been hesitant to try another side project like that. While I love the idea of designing and selling merchandise online (the first product I ever sold was a t-shirt for my band), I couldn’t justify the risk of not being able to fulfill the orders that came in.

Services like Cafepress will print and fulfill orders of products featuring designs uploaded by designers, but I’ve never been impressed by the quality of their products. Also, your products are displayed alongside everyone else’s work, which takes away from your ability to build your own brand identity.

Last year I discovered Printful, a service that will print and fulfill orders for products you design. The downside was that in order to have your own store, you had to pay for a pro Shopify account, which was ~$300 upfront. To test things out, I set up a store and ran a few ads on Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. In total I spent around $600 to test my idea.

I sold 0 shirts.

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Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when Max Tempkin informed me about Threadless Artist Shops, an all-in-one print and fulfillment service that lets you set up a store for free. As Max wrote, “I just make the design and collect the money.”

That sounded simple enough to me!

I was itching to check it out, but was just days away from spending 9-days off grid in the wilderness of Newfoundland with by brother.

Last week, I was reminded by a tweet from Andy Berdan that I wanted to give Threadless’s service a try.

I want a shirt that says “Abnormal is normal.”

“I can do that,” I thought.

A few hours later and the design was available for purchase.

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A Wonderful Shop of Wonderful Wonders (NSFW) is my new online store. There you’ll find the design requested by Andy, the oft-requested re-release of the Helvetcia design, and a few more fun original designs. All orders are printed and shipped by Threadless. They’ll also take care of any issues you have with the products you receive.

I just collect the money.

To celebrate the launch of the shop, I’m offering a promotional discount on all products on the store. The promotional period will end when I remember to log into Threadless to turn it off.

Visit the shop to find men’s, women’s, gender neutral, and kid’s apparel, home decor, and accessories featuring a variety of original designs. Follow the new Twitter account or sign up for the newsletter to be notified of new products and promotions. And share the shop’s URL — awonderful.shop — with your friends and family.

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It has always baffled me when a company offers a lower salary to designers than to developers. My assumption is this derives from an inaccurate understanding of what design is and the role it plays in creating a product or system.

A designer’s role is not to make something “pretty” or to help a product “stand out.” It is to identify a problem, iterate on potential solutions, and bring the resulting product to market. Or, as Steve Jobs famously put it:

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

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Even the bots don’t get it

Recently, I’ve been seeing ads from a company called B12 who claims to use artificial intelligence to design websites in 60 seconds (in my day, we called these “templates”).

The example provided is a website for a preschool. On the left is presented what’s purported to be an old, crusty layout juxtaposed with a sleek, modern layout on the right. Unfortunately, this example also shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the purpose of design.

No doubt, the website on the right looks nice. It fits into the latest design trend of having a minimal layout, a massive background image with a text overlay, and a single primary call to action. It’s probably even responsive, likely tucking all of that useful navigation into a hamburger.

However, I would argue that the website on the left is a better design. Without scrolling, clicking, or doing anything other than loading the page, the website on the left tells me:

1. where it is. The ad is so compressed that you can’t really read the menus on either design but if you zoom in, you can see that this preschool is located in Summit, Missouri. I couldn’t point to Missouri on a map, so I know this preschool isn’t for my (hypothetical) kids!
2. what ages it serves. Several times since I left preschool, I have heard about kids who are starting preschool younger than when I did. By the time I become a parent, I very likely will not know when I should be sending my kids to preschool (though, I’m sure it’s in a handbook that’s given to every parent who gives birth at a hospital). The website on the left gives me that information up front.
3. its operating hours. I work for myself, so my schedule is pretty flexible. Most people don’t have this level of flexibility, so knowing when a preschool is open has to be one of the key indicators of whether it works for them and their children.

In contrast, the website on the right tells me my kid will feel “right at home”. However, I have no idea where or when they’ll feel this. I’m sure I could click that green button under the main headline to find out more. That is, if I’m not colour blind.

Of course, I might not even get that far if I’m part of the 23% of the population of Missouri that is underserved by broadband connectivity in the 42nd most connected state in the union because that picture is so fucking big.

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There are certainly aspects to design that require creativity and even an artistic flair. Understanding typography, colour theory, Gestalt laws of grouping, and many other facets of design are certainly critical to the acceptance of your solution into the marketplace. However, these are not the only aspects to design. You must also understand the constraints and objectives of the audience you are designing for and the context and medium through which you will communicate with them.

Design isn’t just how it looks. Design is how it works.

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