Author(s): Jake Nickell

Fashion

There are T-Shirt companies and then there is Threadless. Threadless.com is the phenomenally successful community-based T-shirt company with more than one million registered members and over 4 million tees printed since it began in 2000. (Basically, people submit T-Shirt designs to Threadless.com which are ranked by the users of the site. The winners get $2500 and their T-shirt printed.) Since it was founded in 2000, over 225,000 designs have been submitted and over 4 million tees printed and sold making it one of the most creative and vibrant on-line communities. Frequently featured in publications such as Wired, Inc., and the New York Times, Threadless has become the posterboy for crowdsourcing - the hugely influential new economic model that taps the power and creativity of the community. Threadless has helped the once humble T-shirt become one of the most expressive - and certainly democratic - mediums of contemporary art and design. In the process, they have amassed a vast archive of very cool, very hip and often very entertaining designs. Threadless is a spectacular showcase of 300 of the very best T-shirts created by the community - a barometer of art and design over the last ten years. Much more than a book of extraordinary graphics, it will also tell the extremely interesting Threadless story with its pioneering model of crowdsourcing. The book will also feature "think pieces" from influential admirers of Threadless including design guru John Maeda, Jeff Howe of Wired and bestselling business/marketing writer Seth Godin, among others.