Greater>Than Clothing

Just after (like, minutes after) I received my degree in Philosophy, my mother remarked that I was the “cutest” out of the guys in the department. I didn’t accept the comment well. First, it was my mom, so, ya know, her impartiality is questionable.

Second, it felt something like damning through faint praise. I mean, what could be less relevant that what a philosopher looks like? At that moment I was trying to contain my intellectual jealousy towards those who had been tapped to speak at the departmental ceremony, and I was in no mood to be cheered by the idea that I was “cute”. Of course, my mom was just in a good mood and making what to her was a complimentary observation…

The t-shirt is immune to such confusion; it is quite comfortable as a vessel for both content and beauty. A t-shirt can always take the compliment. I think that’s a big part of why I’m drawn to the medium. The best t-shirts are both smart (or clever or funny or poignant or kitschy or subversive) and beautiful (or visually challenging/kitschy/subversive). There’s a synergy when these elements come together that I just love. This is what Greater>Than is trying to achieve with its designs.

The t-shirt is also an unabashedly commercial art form, which is freeing in a way. T-shirts are made to be sold, not hung in a museum (although if there’s a t-shirt museum I want to go). They are also made to be worn. So, essentially, you’re looking for someone to agree that what you have to say has some sort of merit, and (at least as importantly) that the way you are presenting that information is worthy of being displayed front and center on their body. That is kind of a lot to ask when you think about it that way. It certainly helps if the message and the method are mutually reinforcing.

There are plenty of clever t-shirt designs out there, especially on the internet. That is no longer enough to differentiate a design from the crowd. My plan is for Greater>Than designs to skew slightly towards the more meaningful side of the spectrum. I think there’s an opportunity to raise the level of discussion. I think there’s an audience for t-shirts with a little more behind them. We shall see…

(Part 1) (Part 2)

As I continued to explore what Greater>Than meant to me, I realized that it could be an encapsulation not only of the product, but of the entire project. The name and symbol began to represent an ethos, a set of principles to anchor the development of the organization.

Greater>Than, to me, is both aspirational and inspirational*. It’s a statement of appreciation, a way to highlight that which is excellent. Therefore, the company must seek excellence in its operations as well as its products. This will require diligent, conscious effort, as every choice will either bring the company closer to this ideal or move it farther from it. Inevitably, mistakes will be made, but hopefully the symbol will act as a compass, a constant reminder of the correct direction. Read the rest of this entry »

By now, I hope that the Greater>Than concept is starting to make some sense. If you’re new to the site, check out the “What is Greater>Than” category to get caught up. Now that the idea has at least been outlined, I feel that I can start begging for help. What I need more than anything at this point is to add more designers to the conversation, for two main reasons:

1. It’s my goal to make Greater>Than as designer-friendly as possible, so want to get input from the design community early and often.
2. I can’t draw.

Specifically, I’m asking for at least 5 people who are interested in developing a t-shirt idea to contact me (joey [at] greaterthanclothing.com). I’m looking for people with some degree of comfort with Photoshop or Illustrator (t-shirt printing requires separate color layers), but don’t be shy about contacting me even if you’re not an Adobe whiz.

I have several ideas sketched out and would love to get some input on them, and I’d love to hear some new Greater>Than ideas as well (any design with a greater than symbol “>” will be considered). I want to get at least 5 t-shirt designs finalized and ready to manufacture so that I have some variety to offer when I start accepting pre-orders.

Greater>Than Clothing is in its early stages, but if you think I’m on to something, please get involved. I will try hard to make the experience worthwhile.

Don’t be shy about forwarding this either.

Thanks!

(Part 1)

I’m not very good with blank pages. I find myself overwhelmed by their potential. Anything could be written there (not to mention drawn, etc.) and I know that whatever I scribble on the page isn’t as good as what otherwise could have been put there. When I get a new notebook I leave the first page blank out of respect.

In order to break myself out of that inertia I find that I often need to employ the use of what I’ve heard referred to as “liberating constraints”, those writing workshop games like “just keep your pen moving for 20 minutes” and “write about what you had for breakfast this morning”. It works. Try it. The most important thing is to move from inaction to action; from potential to kinetic. Even if you don’t think you have anything to say, you do, and you find this out as soon as you trick yourself into starting.

I used to think these techniques were somehow impure. I wanted to be able to call great, fully-formed ideas out of the ether. I’m still a big fan of those tremendous moments of inspiration, but I have come to understand that you can’t will them to happen. In fact, it’s best if you are already engaged in the creative process when they come. As Pulitzer winner and former Poet Laureate of the United States Ted Kooser put it, “…you need to be there writing and waiting, as a hunter might say, for that hour when at last the ducks come flying in.*” I’m learning that the art of writing, indeed of all creative activity, is to become adept at putting yourself in the mind-set that allows you to take advantage of those flashes of brilliance when you are lucky enough to earn them. Read the rest of this entry »

I have a lot to learn if I’m going to bring a company into existence. My plan is twofold: A) Read lots of books. B) Maintain a grateful attitude towards anyone who is willing to teach me something. If you can think of a book that a new entrepreneur should read, please leave suggestions in the comments or e-mail joey [at] greaterthanclothing.

Seth Godin has long been considered an authority on marketing in the internet age. He founded a pioneering online marketing company and sold it to Yahoo! before writing Permission Marketing in 1999. That makes this book fairly ancient by internet standards, and it does show its age at times (he gushes about My Yahoo!, which isn’t exactly groundbreaking any more), but I was actually surprised at how relevant the message still is. There certainly are companies that have yet to adjust their marketing to take advantage of the opportunity represented by the revolutionary change in the nature of communication (or, more fundamentally, information) over the last decade.

Godin starts by describing the late 20th century’s dominant paradigm, which he dubs “Interruption Marketing”. He’s referring to the mass broadcast commercial, junk mail, spam, and all other forms of marketing that are a mile wide and an inch deep. Response rates for this type of message are very low, but with enough resources it has been possible to make up for that with volume. He makes a great point about how traditional media and Interruption Marketing are mutually reinforcing. They can’t exist without each other.

As programming choices multiplied and new media started vying for the consumer’s time, attention became a scarce commodity, which put new constraints on the efficacy of Interruption Marketing. I’d argue that the fragmentation of the entertainment landscape has only accelerated since 1999 (this was before YouTube, before blog readership gained any momentum, etc.). The internet, part of the “problem” for traditional marketers, provided tools that made another form of marketing, “Permission Marketing”, much easier to scale.

Read the rest of this entry »

Instead of letting the Greater>Than idea slide like I have done with so many others, I surprised myself by starting to think about what it would take to make it a reality. It just so happened that as I was developing this Greater>Than concept I was also discovering that I was an entrepreneur.

I’ve been a vegetarian for about 8 years. Vegetarianism is one of those lifestyle choices that people feel comfortable asking you about, so I’ve answered the question “Why did you become a vegetarian?” dozens of times. It’s a bit of a delicate social situation; I don’t like to come across as too fanatical or strident. So I deflect. “It’s about the animals; it’s a health thing…” and I trail off. While these reasons are true, the real explanation is a little more nuanced. The way I see it, I didn’t so much decide to be vegetarian as discover that I was one already.

Vegetarianism flowed logically from beliefs I had internalized but hadn’t thought through consciously. Once I had put the pieces together in my mind, though, I had no choice but to embrace the consequences. The typical follow-up question is “Don’t you miss eating meat?”, and the answer is that I can’t un-discover who I am, and wouldn’t if I could. Read the rest of this entry »

As this site develops I hope that it will be a reflection of who I am and what I’m about, so I’m not planning on writing a lot about myself, but I will take this opportunity to introduce myself…

I was born in southern California, the only child of adoring parents. I’ve joked with my folks that they ruined my career as a novelist by completely failing to scar me emotionally. They raised me in Carmel, CA, a beautiful, idyllic, sheltered community that I was all too eager to leave as soon as I got a chance. I went to school on the other side of the country, spent a year in London, met many truly amazing people, and ended up back in Carmel with a degree in philosophy and, shockingly, a great job.

It was a life without any significant challenges, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was settling. I knew I needed to experience a lot more than what my little town had to offer (and my time away made me realize I was a city boy), so my buddy Brian and I escaped paradise a second time and drove to Seattle. I’ve been up here for the better part of three years, and it has been a more rewarding adventure than I could have imagined.

Weekdays, I ride a bus across Lake Washington to my job at the internet arm of a big software company*.

I am 25 years old.

I’m Joey. Nice to meet you.

*Views expressed on this site are my own and are not endorsed by anyone as far as I know, let alone any big software companies.

So what’s the big idea? Well, it all started out as a joke…

I like to think of myself as an “ideas guy”. I like to brainstorm and journal, just letting ideas spill onto the page. I get a big kick out of a creative give and take (even with myself). This manifests itself in many ways, like when I invent names for nonexistent bands (”Edgewood Arsenal*” and “The Piss Shivers**” are the first two I could remember - please don’t read too much in to that).

Ideas for t-shirt slogans also frequently pop into my head. One was something along the lines of “The sports team that plays in the city near where I live is superior to the sports team that plays in the city near where you live”. I’ve since seen very similar messages on actual shirts for sale, and it’s possible that I saw them before I came up with this, but at the time I believed it was original. Either way, I thought it was kind of funny (for a few reasons: it’s way too long to reasonably fit on a t-shirt, it underlines the absurdity of rooting for a city you don’t live in, etc.). It didn’t get the laughs I expected when I told some friends, though, and the idea probably should have died there. I didn’t know why, but for some reason I couldn’t get rid of it. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello! I’m very pleased to welcome you to greaterthanclothing.com!

I’ve carved out this little corner of the web in order to incubate an idea that has increasingly consumed my thoughts over the past few months: Greater>Than. In my head it’s a brand, a company, a community…there are a lot of things that I hope it will become. But in real life it’s nothing. Yet. Watch this space.

I believe in the power of ideas, but even the best ones are only potentially impactful. An idea can mean something on its own, but someone has to bring it to life for it to do anything. That’s why I’ve launched this site, and that belief will be one of the key principles behind Greater>Than, whatever it becomes.

Vision is not enough; it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must step up the stairs.

–Václav Havel