Rands talks about the JERKCITY t-shirt escapade
As anyone who is a frequent reader of the comic knows, we’ve been promising Jerkcity t-shirts for years. Pants has gone through several gyrations which I believe he’s only moderately happy with. These gyrations are sitting in a box somewhere in California.
After a little help and a little research, I found a reasonable process
to g
enerate
GENUINE JERKCITY T-SHIRTS with little to no effort and money on the part
of the JERK PLAYERS while still generating a quality product. MORE ON
THIS LATER. The problem with this set-up is we still needed to find the
proper logo/graphic to put on a shirt.
This was the first set of requirements for the JERKSHIRTS that we came up with:
a) Must be definitively JERKCITY-like
b) Must be able to be worn in public place (IE: ASK ME ABOUT AIDSY COCKSUCKING
wasn’t going to fly)
c) Must force the casual PASSER-BYER to think, "Huh? What the fuck
is a Jerkcity?"
c) Must be long sleeved (BECAUSE I FUCKING LIKE IT)
With this set of requirements, I came up with a design which had HGUAHGUHAGUHAGH in front and COY PANTS + URL in back. While considering this, I fired up my favorite browser and perused popular t-shirt sites to do a little ad-hoc market research. THE RESULT: There wasn’t a single popular shirt which had artwork on the front AND back of a shirt. (Yes, I know there are lots of shirts out there which do, but the ones which ACTUALLY SELL AND MAKE MONEY don’t)
What I interpreted this to mean was that I was significantly OVERESTIMATING the amount of a time the average person looks at a shirt. The key was that the entire message MUST BE delivered in a nanosecond and assuming that this attention-deprived person was going to take the time to look at the back was incorrect. This feels right when you think about it… what t-shirts do you actually remember? HAVE A NICE DAY. <INSERT SMILEY FACE> SAVE GAS. FART IN A JAR. Simple. Elegant.
Ok, so we needed a revised set of requirements:
a) Jerkcity-like
b) Public apparel
c) Simple Frontal Artwork
d) STILL LONG SLEEVED (DON’T THINK I’M GOING TO CHANGE THIS YOU NAZIS)
This lead to the current incarnation of T-SHIRT MOCK-UPS which we’ve asked JerkFans to vote on. This vote has been up since last Monday (4/8/02) and after a rough sampling of the emails which keep rolling in, there is no obvious winner…in fact, folks are sending OTHER ARTWORK in which is JUST BLURRING THE ISSUE. SOME HELP YOU FUCKERS ARE.
What I’m looking for is rather simple. I’m waiting to present a design to someone I know and respect and I want their reaction to be, "Hahah. That is fucking funny."
We’re not there, yet. And I need a nap.
