Putting the lid on Dell design
By Simon Fuller. Crowdsourcing community Threadless has been churning out some funky Tee shirt designs for a while now, with the site printing the most popular submissions from its collective of artists in Tee form. But recently Threadless traded apparel for microchips, teaming up with computer brand Dell and its Dell Design studio to get creative with laptop lids.
Dell Design Studio already had 200-plus laptop covers to choose from before the Threadless community got involved this summer, adding 11 new lids with the promise of more to come. These included the metropolitan London! by David Bushell, a series of landmarks and iconic images from the capital in linedrawing form, along with AJ Dimarucot’s colourful Electric Sky, a Northern Lights-esque rainbow spectacular above a forest. The full collection is here.
“In partnering with Dell, we [were] giving Threadless designers a new canvas to showcase their art,” says outfit’s vp of marketing, Cam Balzer. “Dell brings a lot of marketing reach to Threadless, helping new people learn about our community of artists and the awesome designs they produce.”
The designs were chosen for inclusion by Threadless’ legion of 1 million or so community members, who got out the vote after pondering the virtues of a raft of submissions provided by some of Threadless’ 80,000 designers.
“The beauty of Threadless is that it is a way for an artist to turn a hobby into something productive,” explains Balzer. “There are… no specifications at all – this is something that artists are creating anyway. It’s a way for you to take your art and publish it out for the world to see. Whether it wins or not, as a submission it will be seen by a ton of people, you keep all your rights to your design and so it is a great way to put your work out there.”
