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Rikki Burns<br />
I’m RikkiB, I’m 29 and I’ve been making t-shirts since I discovered iron-ons and<br />
an old screen in school. I’ve always drawn in my spare time and made my own<br />
crappy t-shirts to fill my personal craftiness requirement.<br />
When t-shirt competitions started showing up on the Internet I jumped at the<br />
chance. Then came opportunities from print on demand companies such as My-<br />
Soti, and smaller tee companies looking for different designers. I love the t-shirt<br />
design community. Emptees was great for opinion and advice.<br />
My Breakthrough Moment<br />
It was being picked up by shirt.woot.com. It gave me some great publicity, but<br />
the community at Design By Humans really got my name out there. I love them<br />
both for supporting me and the hundreds of other designers they help every day.<br />
Standing Out<br />
I’m probably a bit different from the others because I only design as a hobby -<br />
so I haven’t gone out there with my name on a NES themed YouTube video. I’d<br />
certainly <strong>not</strong> recommend against making something ‘“viral” but I would recommend<br />
making something awesome! I can only handle a small amount of design<br />
work in my spare time so I generally don’t go looking for it. It still comes to me<br />
which is probably a combination of luck and promotion from awesome t-shirt<br />
competition sites.<br />
My inspirations include Ray Fenwick, Ray Frenden, Jimiyo, Wotto, Godmachine...<br />
Their styles are different from mine, but I admire them and their attitudes.<br />
If I Could Do Things Differently<br />
I’d listen to people more. When you look back in a year, you’ll see that the designs<br />
you loved were actually pretty shitty. And you’ll recall that someone who<br />
knows told you that, but you didn’t believe them. Get all the criticism and advice<br />
you can before putting your work out there with your name on it - especially online,<br />
because it never goes away.<br />
THREAD’S NOT DEAD • Jeff Finley<br />
I’d recommend joining a community like Emptees. Get some real advice and<br />
criticism, and use it to make your work better. Criticism can be harsh so get your<br />
thick skin on before you go there... and remember that you’re better off improving<br />
your work in that kind of environment than in a real public forum.<br />
Trends<br />
Firstly, the distribution of t-shirt sales has gone from smaller stores to huge<br />
daily tee and competition websites, to print on demand. This has made it easy<br />
for anyone to be a designer, and harder for designers to get <strong>not</strong>iced. In actual<br />
design, the trends change almost weekly. One week it’s wolves, then space,<br />
then robots, then bears, then huge prints, then small prints...<br />
Case Studies & Interviews 96
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