Thursday, July 23, 2009

Fyeh.

So I get another call today, from the shirt people (you know, the ones I feel like I do nothing but complain about lately?) this morning, confirming that yes, I will be making the shirts for them by Saturday, and that I can bring in the shirts on Friday and Tim will give me the money. So later on, I'm at home, with chilli con carne simmering, and I'm looking up the design (as yes, I had deleted MY designs in a fit of pique) that they want when I discover something. My google-search leads me to the musician's MySpace page, which leads me to two realisations:

1) MySpace is awful Even loading up someone's page makes my Firefox crash and makes me want to run back to my Facebook.

B) When these people were originally calling me 5 or 6 times a day to quibble over what I was going to theoretically do, one of them mentioned casually that Tim had said I was good with Photoshop, and could I put the logo onto one of the promo pics and that they'd give me credit for the design, as well as for the t-shirts. I said okay, and sent them a basic logo spot, then 3 or 4 half-assed attempts of mine to make the photo cooler, saying that they weren't finals, but just me messing around with ideas, and to tell me what they thought. This email was responded to with the 7 weeks of silence, so I figured they didn't think much. Well, what I found on the MySpace page was one of my designs which they'd clearly liked, as it's the Australian street poster for the tour. It's on the MySpace as such, with no credit to me listed.

Now, I get not giving me the shirt credit, because I didn't do them (except the two prototypes), but that? Come on! It's my work! Tanja pointed out that she didn't see much of a change, so I'll let you judge:
Here's the original picture.
Then the logo they sent me.
And this is what I made in 10 minutes.

So the question is: Did I change it enough to make the new work my intellectual property? Not that I want to kick up a big stink, but it just mad me angry(er).

To top it all off, I got ANOTHER call this evening from them, wanting to meet me tomorrow, even saying they'd drag Tim along. They then asked about the shirts again, and I confirmed they'd be ready tomorrow. They sounded presently surprised. So why did they want to meet with me if not to pick up the shirts?

So I probably won't give them a serve when I see them tomorrow, as I'm nonconfrontational and polite (read: gutless) so I'll probably express my concerns as a "goshdarnit, haven't I been worried" joke and I won't be heard.

But hey. For all I know they want to apologise. And if you belive that, I have a use Death Star to sell you.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Required: One Padded Room

As I discussed here (4th paragraph), I had been approached in early June to do some shirts for a promotions company. Well, after 7 weeks of silence, I got a phone call while waiting for the train this morning.

 

“Oh, yes, it’s So-and-so. Can we still get two shirts with just the name, not the design?”

“Ummm, I suppose. I still have the shirts I bought last time.”

“Yeah, those will do. Can we have them by Saturday?”

“Ummm. I guess.”

“Okay, do you have other So-and-so’s number?”

“No. And I can’t write it down. I’m at a train station.”

“I’ll call you later when you’ll be able to write it down.” *click*

 

It took me a moment, but then I was so angry I wanted to thrash around and scream. 7 freakin’ weeks!?!? No word? I mean, come on! I’m a cottage industry and I’m more professional than these mooks. I don’t even know if I have the designs anymore, as I’ve deleted most of them thinking, oh I don’t know, that I’d never hear from them again!

 

So (since I have the inability to say no to people who want to pay me), I’ll do their two shirts, and then I’ll give them a serve. I might type it, so I can get the tone right.

 

Sigh. It’s hard out there for a pimp t-shirt maker.

 

 

Lucas Brown | Proxy Champignon
Master of Brainthinking