Hi all,

Spring is here so it's gettin to be SWOLE SEASON. This week's contest will be surrounding the summer / spring theme but first we have a winner...

Congrats to /u/CarrionCassette on winning the $50 store credit contest w/ 31 submissions.

Community and Website

We need to focus on better quality.

A lot of the designs posted since relaunch wouldn't make it to the website. That is mostly my fault for letting things run on auto-pilot given all the changes. For that reason, I am delaying the Official Shirt Contest. I don't want to underwhelm or be unprepared.

Posting things that are funny is encouraged but what made the last sub so special was the depth of posts we had. All types of artistry were accounted for and it made the community very diverse. Hare and I are going to discuss potential new temporary rules to encourage quality content but I encourage people to want to submit awesomeness. One problem w/ contests, and why I used to do them quantity-based, is that the voting system has been a bad measurement of quality in the past. On the other hand, quantity-based contests promote lower quality. We'll need to be creative in how to best do this moving forward on this platform and for now I am going to have others around me discuss and pick winners until I work out a more transparent / better way.

Plainly, this startup is absolutely not guaranteed to end up surviving. If you like this community, the previous community (what it was), or believe in its future / concept - please consider helping me improve it. It'd mean a lot to me and I want to keep the fun going & growing. To help that, please consider following / sharing us on instagram, facebook, twitter, etc. I have stepped up our game there recently.

Community website updates

The website has progressed and we will be moving towards an alpha release ahead of schedule! This has been my bread and butter for the past month or two and really want to create something special as fuck. As it is improved, I eventually want to make an impact on the internet itself like Threadless and others did when their concepts were new too.

Whatever initial release we do will be limited for you all to get in and test stuff out / give feedback on. Users are selectively anonymous on it but I want to reward people that are our founding members somehow undetermined yet.

This website will be it's own free standing community AND a hub of original content to share anywhere & everywhere. Think of it as Imgur or a meme generator for shirt ideas. I'm pretty excited about that concept and hope you all are too. Any ideas you have about launching it, features, and sharing it will be directly listened to. We will pursue having a more seamless presence with voat, reddit, funnyjunk, etc. without relying on them too much.

I'm human

I just wanted to touch on my likely perceived lack of involvement here. Basically, I'm human with a constrained amount of hours and emotional capacity. This year started off fantastic and then crashed to become one of the biggest professional and personal obstacles I've ever had to overcome.

I care a lot about all of you and have been focusing my attention as much as possible on building what we need to welcome the future but to be completely honest - I have had to re-motivate and focus myself several times since I've often felt burdened by the stress of the unknown. I've come out of that cycle this month and will continue to work harder and harder to ensure our new lofty goal's success. If shit hadn't hit the fan in late-January, I likely would have been able to hire a couple people to help, as I planned on doing, but all of my money is being put on the table for this new mockup community to succeed and contests like these.

That said, we are going to come swinging. Our website / subreddit always had swings of hype, ups/downs, and what-not which many (besides probably Haredeenee) won't remember. Now that we'll be on a new platform, our successes will hopefully multiply on each other with greater longevity and we can build the features needed to make it fresh.

(Contest) Spring's Top Kek Fashion Line by anons

Dates: One week - 3/31/15 through 4/6/15

Summary: This contest will be to create the ultimate Spring & Summer top kek fashion line (not a real thing). The types of posts we're looking for:

• Spring / Summer-themed pictures, atmospheres, references
• Things that would rock at a concert, music festival, or on the beach

Some examples from previous design submissions.

Rules:

• Submit a design or album of designs
• Focus on quality of post rather than quantity
• The best design as selected by our team will win and possibly be featured on the website!

Prize: The winner will receive a free premium tank for the coming summer days.

If you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to ask for clarifications.