I make no secret that my gorge rises at inspirational quotes and especially those that imply teams are more productive than individuals. I particularly hate "Teamwork makes the dream work." And "there is no 'I' in team" is right up there with simplistic teamwork propaganda that makes me throw up a little in my mouth when it is spouted in my presence with a sense that it means something.
I used to reply, "But there is an "am" to blank stares and bafflement. So I was quite pleased with myself when I whipped out a design for "There is no eye in team." Art AI wasn't particularly cooperative with it. I think it is a chronic Pollyanna and does not grok my sarcasm and puns. It couldn't crank out "There is no eye in Team" for the life of it (not that it is alive). But it did create some pretty cool looking eyeballs. So I did the text myself.
I like it because it means absolutely nothing and should keep positive people at bay for awhile.
While I was fixated on eyes, I came up with this one.
I had a design pulled today:
Apparently Jimmy Buffett's estate holds a copyright or trademark on the saying "It's five o'clock somewhere." I find this very disappointing because the stupid saying was around a long time before Jimmy Buffett wrote a drinking song using the phrase (and I know "drinking song" and "Jimmy Buffett" are redundant). So I am not sure how you can copyright something you didn't really come up with. But he did along with umpteen other phrases (most of which include the word Margaritaville).
Don't get me wrong, I like Jimmy Buffett and I listen to his station on Sirius Satellite Radio all the time and I was very sad when Jimmy died. But now that whoever inherited his estate has gone all draconian about making sure no one steals lyrics that Jimmy...well...stole....I may have to rethink my lapse in taste in music.
It's not that I think the "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" design was great art or that interesting. I just figured it would appeal to many of the borderline alcoholic Jimmy Buffett fans who like to make excuses for day drinking and think a t-shirt with the phrase "It's five o'clock somewhere" gives them that excuse, who am I not to exploit their addiction. Again, it wasn't like anyone had bought one of the designs.
I plan on changing the headline to "It's cocktail time somewhere" and throwing it back up on teepublic.com just out of spite. It's the principle of the thing that pisses me off.
It did motivate me to create a new Hunchback of Notre Dame t-shirt just to tweak Notre Dame for making me take down my Hunchback football player design. I thought about changing it to an early 19th century football game in Paris organized by the Catholic church out of Notre Dame, but the thought of explaining that to Art AI and going through 100 attempts to find something that worked didn't appeal to me.
So I created a simple one with two early 1800s Catholic priests holding tryouts for altar boys in Notre Dame Cathedral and encountering Quasimodo. I reused the same lines the coaches used in the football version. So screw them. I have a hunch they'll never see it anyway.
All in all I cranked out and loaded 13 design ideas on my storefront today. I'll leave you with one I think is pretty cool looking.
See, I don't have a one-track mind after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment