Jan 23, 2015 •Permalink

Freshly Laundered 015 / Ben Stafford

Ben Stafford is a graphic designer living and working in Columbus, Ohio. We spoke with him to get the scoop on what it’s like to work with your spouse, from home, with a small child underfoot. Read on to learn more about Ben and the designers he’d like to chat with over steak and cheesecake.

CB: You opened your design studio, Foxmeadow Creative, with your wife Beth about four years ago. How did that come about? Had you guys worked together before?

BS: I can’t believe it’s already been four years! At the time, we were Art Directors at different marketing agencies here in Columbus, Ohio. We had been doing freelance work on the side since graduating from college but never made it “official” until 2011. Beth left the agency world and pioneered the frontier of owning our own business. I didn’t join her full-time until November 2013.

We’ve heard working with your spouse isn’t for everybody. But for us (without sounding mushy), we really do love each other and are best friends. We have similar tastes, design sense and agree on a lot of business-y things. Our design strengths compliment each other well and we couldn’t feel more blessed to have this rare opportunity.

CB: That’s great! It’s a pleasure to work with people you respect and like so it’s gotta be doubly great to have your life partner be your business partner as well. You guys do a lot of work for ministries and nonprofits; did these types of projects fall into your lap, so to speak, or did you seek them out?

BS: Both, actually! We have always wanted to use our skills and abilities to help make a difference. Over the years we’ve teamed up with many different organizations and ministries that are near to our hearts. Just knowing we’ve played a small part in furthering these causes/missions is an honor and joy.

CB: Do you guys work out of your home? If so, how do you balance having your daughter at home with you while you’re working?

BS: Yep! We’ve got a space in our home dedicated to our office/studio. I get out occasionally for a different perspective, but most of the time, we’re in there together.

As for…<changes baby’s diaper then returns>…taking care of a small child while managing your own company, it has its challenges. We take full advantage of her nap time like nobody’s business. I’m sure it will get harder as she grows, but there have been continual adjustments and we seem to adapt. At the end of the day, I’m thankful for how much time I get to spend with my leading ladies while being a full-time designer/illustrator.

CB: Ha! That’s exactly what I was wondering about. You’ve gone four for five with your designs for CB, where do you find inspiration for this type of “personal” work?

BS: I wish I could say tangrams! I haven’t played with any in years but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some subconscious influence. Staying inspired is partly due to the fact that I’m constantly doodling in my sketchbook. It’s rare that an idea (good or bad) goes undocumented. I love working with simple shapes and practicing restraint with my illustrations/designs. As far as who I’m inspired by, the older legends like Saul Bass, Ivan Chermayeff, and the amazing Charley Harper are never-ending resources. The work Ty Wilkins, Mike Bruner, and Luke Bott are producing these days is top shelf and definitely makes me strive to be better and think differently!

CB: If you could sit down to dinner with Saul Bass, Ivan Chermayeff, and Charley Harper what would you ask them?

BS: During cocktails, I’d ask them to share some of the stuff that didn’t make the final cut or some of their personal work that was never shared. In our line of work, sometimes we have to “kill our darlings” and let go of some good concepts. So based on a hunch, I’m sure they have treasure chests full of unseen sketches.

While we’re dining on steak, I’d ask them to share their biggest source of inspiration. My guess is that it wouldn’t be the internet.

After we’ve finished our cheesecake and have moved onto coffee, I’d ask them for their autographs and a quick pic for Instagram. Because, “pics or it didn’t happen,” am I right?

CB: Yes, pics or it didn’t happen! That sounds A) like a pretty great dinner and B) like some great questions. Thanks for chatting with us Ben!

Keep up with everything Ben has going on, follow him on twitter, tumblr, and dribbble. Sign up here to be notified anytime Ben has a new design up at Cotton Bureau!

Jan 13, 2015 •Permalink

Freshly Laundered 014 / Jory Raphael

Our fourteenth interviewee (and first for 2015) is Jory Raphael. Jory is the co-founder of Notabli, a designer, illustrator, awesome Dad, and pretty funny guy. You may know him from such things as his line of vector icons, Symbolicons, his artwork for 5by5.tv, or perhaps one of our best selling tees, Sportsball. Click through to learn more about Jory, his work at Notabli, and what he works on in his free time.

CB: We love your latest Hipster Icons for the Flat set of Symbolicons. How did Symbolicons come to exist?

JR: Hey, thanks! I happen to like the hipster icons, too :) I have a ton more in the same style that I hope to release soon - if I could stop procrastinating. And by procrastinating, I mean “being ridiculously productive at other things while ignoring my icons”. And by “ridiculously productive”, I mean procrastinating.

Symbolicons have gone through quite the evolution. The very first icons I ever designed were actually for a couple of pedestrian wayfinding signs. From there I created a few more in the same style to use on a client’s website. And since the creation of icons hadn’t been scoped for that project budget, I offered to make them for free, as long as I kept the rights. It was a rare moment of prescience for me.

At some point, I looked down and noticed that I had created a bunch of icons that weren’t half bad, and I thought “hey, maybe I can sell these”. And so I did. And then someone actually bought them. And then I was hooked.

CB: It’s definitely easy to get hooked on selling things, you could say we have that problem too. Tell us a little about your newest venture, Notabli. Where’d that idea come from?

JR: If Symbolicons are all about creating something of value for designers (and developers), then Notabli is all about creating something of value for parents (and their kids) [and their family] {and their friends}. Basically what I’m saying is that I’m all about creating value.

My buddy and fellow designer Jackson Latka and I created Notabli as a way to authentically document childhood. On the surface, it’s an easy way to privately share photos, videos, audio, quotes, and notes about your kids with the people who actually want to see them. But below the surface, it’s a way to create a powerful archive of the most important part of life. So instead of selfies, status updates, and pictures of last night’s dinner, we encourage folks to post moments that they want remembered. P.S. Your dinner last night looked fantastic.

CB: Notabli sounds awesome! Parents are going to love having that virtual archive to go back through I bet. What’s the response been like so far?

JR: The response so far has been fantastic. If you’re a parent, and you love your kids, you’ll love Notabli. If you’re a parent, and you’re only mildly fond of your kids, then you’ll probably still love Notabli.

Right now, we’re iOS-only (with a web viewing app and email digests), but are working hard to complete the picture. A full-featured web app will be launching in the next couple of months, along with an Android app.

CB: Awesome! When you’re not working on Notabli what are you doing?

JR: Are my partners at Notabli reading this? If so, then I’m never not working on Notabli. Right now, while I’m responding to this question, I’m actually working on Notabli. When I make breakfast in the morning, the pancakes are shaped like the Notabli logo. (And yes, I eat pancakes every single morning. It’s a requirement if you’re a Vermonter. I wake up early, tap a few maple trees, convert the sap into maple syrup in my attached sugarhouse, milk a cow, and then make pancakes… and then work on Notabli.)

But seriously (yes, I know what that word means), when I’m not working on Notabli, I’m spending time with my family. And occasionally making icons. And even less occasionally working on a children’s book. Wait is “less occasionally” a double-negative?

CB: A children’s book!? That sounds cool. Are you writing it? Illustrating it? Both? Tell us more.

JR: Both! Albeit rather slowly. I actually have two ideas for children’s books. The first will be called “The Little Girl, the Little Boy, and the Rock Giant”, or something similar. It’s a story about (you guessed it) a little girl and a little boy meeting a rock giant (and also a baby turtle - awwwwwwww) and the shenanigans that occur thereafter. The kids will, of course, be modeled after my own. But they’re used to that. The Notabli logo is actually based on them (my daughter has a little gumdrop haircut and loves headbands, and my son has a double-cowlick).

The second is called “The Day the Signs Went for a Walk,” and will probably be aimed at a younger audience. The goal is to teach about types of signage, and why we need it. I did wayfinding design for a number of years, and it has always fascinated me. The book starts when the dude on the crosswalk sign decides to abandon his post and take a stroll around, and then all of the havoc it creates.

Apparently both of my book ideas have an event happening that results in havoc and/or shenanigans. In other words, write what you know.

CB: Jory, you are seriously so amazing. The idea for the wayfinding book is so clever and cute. Thanks for taking time out of your hectic schedule to chat with us. Now, back to work!

You can keep up with all things Jory via his twitter feed and website. Check out Jory’s 2015 Year of Icons project on dribbble. You can find out more about Notabli here and if you’d like to see any of Jory’s tees come back for another round, make sure you get your requests in.

Nov 18, 2014 •Permalink

Better Than Cheap

What if I told you, there was something better than cheap t-shirts? What if I told you, that’s what we have at Cotton Bureau?

I’m listening to the New York Philharmonic’s program “Summertime Classics: Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, and Friends” (introductions by Alec Baldwin) on SoundCloud, right now, for free. A brief ad was read at the beginning and another toward the end, but nobody ever asked me for any money. My SoundCloud account is free. (Though the Philharmonic’s is not.) The performance has been made available to me by the Philharmonic for free. I could be wrong about our Russian comrades, but I suspect their work is in the public domain and their estates are no longer being compensated for their compositions.

If neither SoundCloud nor the Philharmonic nor the deceased composers are being paid by me, the customer, and the revenue from ads and SoundCloud Pro subscriptions is limited, why is everyone okay with it? Kevin Kelly provided the answers all the way back in 2008 in his seminal post on the economics of the Internet, Better Than Free. “In short,” Kelly wrote, “the money in this networked economy does not follow the path of the copies. Rather it follows the path of attention, and attention has its own circuits.” Both SoundCloud and the Philharmonic are perfectly happy—thrilled, even—to accept our attention as payment, today. Each, of course, would like to collect real money from us at some point in the future.

How will they do this? What do they have to sell that can’t be copied? Kelly lists eight possibilities: immediacy, personalization, intepretation, authenticity, embodiment, patronage, and findability. While SoundCloud does not offer a for-pay service (waiting to be acquired, probs) there are services that you can pay for, depending on which of those generatives you value most. The Philharmonic, for example, makes its performances available on Rdio, a service known for its personalization. Alternatively, if I prefer the Philharmonic to receive the lion’s share of my money, I can buy access to this performance directly from their store. Of course, iTunes and Spotify also carry their recordings. Spotify in particular has had reason recently to claim that theirs is a business in which both they and the artists are thriving—all because not despite living in a universe of super abundant copies.

What does any of this have to do with t-shirts? In our world, things cost money. There’s no way around that. How much money though? Some things are cheap and some things—usually our things, as it turns out—are not. Price is supposed be a simple function of supply and demand. That’s what classical economics teaches us. The number of people that want a thing combined with the available quantity of that thing should yield the price people are willing to pay. In the case of recordings of Tchaikovsky, the supply is infinite—which means price ought to be zero. With t-shirts, the supply isn’t infinite, but it’s certainly quite large, which should make price correspondingly small. While that’s an undeniably valid explanation, it’s not even close to complete. We have to go further. Demand for what? Why shouldn’t you buy a cheaper version of the same thing? I’m glad you asked. Because—and here’s where we blow your mind—there is no cheaper version of the same thing. (Hold that thought, if you can.)

I’m going to introduce one more economic concept here, and that’s the idea of a substitute good. You can read all about it if you like, but the essence is that all goods (things we buy) are in some ways similar to each other and can do the same jobs. You might want a t-shirt to keep yourself warm. You know what could do the job just as well, or better? A blanket or a coat. You might want a t-shirt to make a fashion statement. But a new watch or a stylish haircut might be a better use of your money. After paying your bills and setting aside some money for a rainy day, you may wish to spend some of the money you have left over. You could go to the movies or an amusement park or a restaurant or a concert. Or you could buy a t-shirt. When you think about it that way, the potential supply of “dollars for t-shirts” (that’s just another way of saying the demand for t-shirts) is enormous.

What about the t-shirt itself? Surely we can at least agree on that, you plead. Absolutely. A t-shirt is a t-shirt is a t-shirt… except when it’s not. A t-shirt is not just a t-shirt when you care about, say, how long it will last or whether it boasts your favorite sports team’s logo or your rival’s, or, in fact, whether it has a genuine copy of your team’s logo as opposed to a shoddy ripoff. You might care where and how the shirt was made. In America? By people being fairly compensated and well-treated? It might matter a lot to you if the t-shirt profits are going to a mega-corporation or a mom-and-pop shop. All of these attributes—and many more—are integral parts of what it is exactly that you are purchasing.

There’s an inherent duality or tension in every exchange. Goods are both mere elements on a spectrum of more or less perfect substitutes and utterly unique snowflakes, sui generis bundles of traits that not only can’t be obtained anywhere else but also vary according to the preferences of you, the customer. That’s a long-winded explanation for what I wrote earlier: there is no cheaper version of the same thing.

Let’s talk, then, about how that all applies to Cotton Bureau. First, unequivocally, yes, you can buy cheap t-shirts on the Internet. No, you cannot buy cheap t-shirts (and hoodies and sweatshirts and, someday, hopefully even more things) on Cotton Bureau. Cotton Bureau t-shirts qua t-shirts are nowhere near the bottom of the price spectrum. If the price of your shirt is critical, by all means, shop somewhere else. Shop at Walmart or Woot or any of a thousand million other places you can buy cheap t-shirts. Just know that you, friend, are not buying the same thing that we are selling. You think we are selling t-shirts, expensive t-shirts. We are not. We are selling quality. We are selling community. We are selling convenience. We are selling authenticity. We are selling longevity. We are selling trust.

Every time you buy a shirt from Cotton Bureau, you know it’s going to be a good one. We work with a tremendous local print shop, and we pack every order right here in our office by hand. If—this happens every so often—there is a problem, you know Sara is going to take care of you. When you come to the site, the selection is guaranteed to be fantastic—unique designs in a diverse array of styles from the best graphic designers in the world printed on a growing variety of product types. We are absolutely committed to making Cotton Bureau a haven for designers and people that love design, a place to support and be supported. You + us + designers is an iron triangle of awesomeness. Every feature we add that makes it easier to check out, easier to follow designers your care about, easier to see what’s new; every design that goes to print; every shirt and hoodie that we deliver; every new year that we’re in business; every soul-searching blog post that we write only strengthens those relationships. You believe in what we’re doing because we’ve been straight with you from the beginning. We don’t have investors, we have customers. We don’t exploit designers, we pay them. We don’t sell cheap t-shirts. We sell the incarnation of our blood, sweat, and tears—and we do it at a fair, sustainable price. That is what nobody else can copy.

Many, many, many of you have supported us in the past and are supporting us right now because the ideas expressed above are meaningful to you, and we love you for it. Let’s pause for just a second to celebrate that support and the fact that the number of t-shirts, hoodies, and sweatshirts we sell each month is enough to pay our bills. Cotton Bureau is a business—a small one and a young one, but a business nonetheless, not a startup without revenue or one just hoping the numbers begin to add up before the play money runs out—that pays a living wage to every person working on its behalf and still manages to pay designers real money. (If making a big pile of money by growing quickly and selling out was what we wanted to do, we would have raised funding a long time ago.) We will continue to make Cotton Bureau better for as long as people keep coming back to us with new designs and you all keep buying them. We are beyond thrilled that each day we come into the office we get to work on improving Cotton Bureau for the long haul. We have ourselves a real, sustainable business. We might be biased, but that sounds a whole lot better than cheap t-shirts to us.

If you think so too, we covet your support. Share this blog post, subscribe to the RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, join the newsletter, buy a shirt, tell a friend—we can’t do this without you.

Nov 13, 2014 •Permalink

What’s New?

A lot changes in a few months, it turns out. Let’s run through it all, shall we?

Hoodies + Multiple Tee Options

Did you ever think, “I wish that shirt came in a different color”? Or, maybe, “Tees are great. But it’s getting cold. I could use a hoodie.” We read your mind. Each Cotton Bureau design can now be printed on up to three different blanks (blanks are what screenprinters call the item that receives the ink). If you’ve worked with us before, you might be curious how the process has changed. As in the past, you submit you artwork along with your preference for the primary design execution. We then work carefully with the you to come up with a few additional great looking options—say, a neutral-style for those that prefer black or grey tees or a brighter option for those that like a little more color in their wardrobe.

More Sizes

Besides the additional style options per design, we’re also very pleased to be able to now offer a fuller range of sizes. Nearly every new design on the site is now also available in Men’s XS as well as Men’s 3–5X. We’re still actively exploring sizes and manufacturing options, so if you have particular needs, please let us know.

Design Improvements

You know what’s really important for a retail site? Making it easy for the customer to buy things. Increasing the complexity of the design page by adding more products meant we needed to find an even smarter and more elegant way to communicate your options. We whiteboarded a depressingly-large number of techniques. In the end, we think we really nailed it though.

Each design has a number of executions, which we’re showing as a stack of options to the right of the product preview. Each option shows the most important details: manufacturer, fabric, color, and an SVG icon showing the shape and texture. Selecting any of those options updates the product preview to the left (or above if you’re using a smaller screen).

You’ll notice we chose to build something custom here instead of using a dropdown. Dropdowns are lazy design. We’re showing you more information, reducing the number of taps or clicks, and giving you a bigger tap and click target. We built a similarly-custom size selector. Again, rather than using a dropdown, we’re showing each available size as a nice, big clickable target. We think the attention to detail on this page is going to make a difference.

Once we got started tweaking the design, we just couldn’t stop. The home page has been lightened up. We’re back to using product mockups instead of the zoomed-in detail view thanks to our fancy new mockup templates we re-built (you can pick those up right here), but you can filter by detail, tee, and, now, hoodie. If you’re really paying close attention, you’ll also notice we moved away from our beloved Futura to the friendlier Brandon Grotesque and sprinkled in Minion Pro for contrast.

Designer Payouts

It is essential to us that designers are fairly compensated for the designs they sell on Cotton Bureau. Because printing t-shirts is a pretty straight-forward process, we’ve never allowed designers to set arbitrarily large, Kickstarter-style goals. If a design hits 12, we’re going to print it. It’s your job as a designer or community leader to find ways to promote it without misleading and manipulating your fans. Kickstarter projects need a critical mass of people to fund an idea; t-shirts don’t. That’s why we automatically increase our designer payouts as our costs decrease. Each time you hit a new cost tier—50, 75, 100, 150, 600, and 1200 items—we add $1 to your margin. Every item successfully sold counts toward those tiers, no strings attached.

Looks like that’s about it. The next 12 months are going to be as busy for us as ever, and the next four weeks are absolutely critical. We’ve got a truckload of features we really, really want to add to the site. If you want to see that happen, we still need your help. Follow us on Twitter and sign up for the newsletter if you haven’t already (in addition to our lovely, weekly newsletter highlighting all things awesome about Cotton Bureau, you’ll also receive a 10% OFF COUPON as ~~a token of our appreciation~~ an inducement to spend money with us.

One last thing: please, please tell a friend about Cotton Bureau. Christmas is right around the corner here in the U.S. It’s just not possible to give a better gift than one of our small-batch tees and hoodies.

Nov 5, 2014 •Permalink

Freshly Laundered 013 / Wade Ryan

Lucky number 13, Wade Ryan, is a designer living and working in Dallas, Texas. When he’s not busy designing sports trading cards at his day job, he’s out exploring the scene and sharpening his skills with a little side work. Read on to learn more about Wade.

CB: Tell us about your Sports Cards designs, how’d you get that gig? Where do you look for inspiration?

WR: I came across the junior designer position upon graduating from Ohio University in the spring of 2010. I had collected football cards for years as a kid and when I saw the opening I immediately applied and bothered the company until they gave me a shot. The company owns and releases many different brands that are sold annually (within all the different sports), that each have their own niche and theme. Some are very low end, some are very high end. Some have vintage/worn looks, while other brands are minimal and modern. Because of the vast difference between brands, I’m able to design in a lot of different styles. Research is a necessary key to keeping these brands fresh and reinventing them year after year. Almost any design outlet available on the web could hold value for inspiration so we as a team can get new ideas relating to color, typography, photography, and other design ideologies. Inspiration could come from someone’s shirt design, or the body style of a car, or a 3D motion graphic. It’s everywhere and all over.

CB: How’s the design community out there in Dallas? Are you involved in anything happening around town?

WR: Dallas is a huge, exciting city with so many opportunities to see great art and hear amazing designers speak. Between the vast amount of agencies and boutiques in Dallas always having shows/galleries, the ridiculously talented design community in Austin coming through, and the constant onslaught of speakers and artists showing and nationally touring - I have my pick of things to see and people to meet. I try to get out there whenever I can to meet new people and experience other artist’s work in person. Dallas has no shortage of art events or anything close to a lack of a design community.

CB: That’s great to hear that the Dallas community is vibrant and giving some love to designers and artists. It seems Austin gets all of the credit for what’s coming out of Texas these days. Got any cool side projects going right now? How do you spend your time away from your desk?

WR: I try to do as much freelance and side work as I can to get better design-wise and experience some different types of clients and business. The want to create more and get more work out there is what drew me to Cotton Bureau. My freelance clients range from all different types of people and organizations. Recently, I just got done designing a label for an up-and-coming vodka brand out of Oklahoma City that should be in Texas by the end of the year called Success Vodka. I also have re-branded and created a lot of merch for some of my favorite bands including Four Year Strong in recent months. When I’m not designing I’m usually at concerts or exploring festivals and different things around the city with friends.

CB: It seems to be a common theme that designers are into some great bands. What kind of stuff do you listen to while you’re working? How does what you’re listening to affect the outcome of your project?

WR: I typically hate when I ask someone what they listen to and they respond, “everything”, but I listen to so many different things when I'm working. I think it changes throughout the day and I go on spurts with genres depending on what’s new and the time of year. I listen to a lot of pop punk and hardcore music on a pretty regular basis. Punk rock was my first love (as far as arts) and I actually began my life as a designer when I started drawing and creating promotional materials for friend’s bands in high school. I have always been, and will always be, into those type of bands. I also listen to quite a bit of electronic music, hip-hop, and country in the summertime. I think listening to music helps me zone in on a project and really focus. The outside elements around me disappear and the music gives me a pace that’s less easily interrupted. A great album can work me through a project like it could help someone get through a tough time or a road trip.

Currently playing: State Champs - Elevated

CB: That makes a lot of sense actually. Listening to a bunch of different genres while working on a project might make your mood a little disjointed which could show up in your work. Thanks for chatting with us Wade!

To pick up Wade’s latest design, Don’t Make Plans, make sure you place your order before Wednesday, November 12th at 2pm EST. You can also keep up with Wade on twitter or via his very prolific tumblr account.