Greater>Than Clothing

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.

I kept turning it over in my head, putting it through different permutations. I made it longer, shorter, imagined it with different fonts and layouts. One version had the text very small except for the word “superior”, which was big and bold, right in the middle. That one gave me an “Aha!” rush that told me that I had discovered the part of the idea that was worth keeping, the part that had made it hard to discard. I started to think of other slogans that could use the same format, and a brand started to take shape in my head: Superior Clothing.

I got kind of excited. I felt like I was on to something. Once again my friends were underwhelmed. Superior didn’t resonate. It was still missing something. I was kicking the idea around with some friends again, and someone came up with the idea of replacing Superior with Greater Than. Everything clicked into place; Greater Than resonated big time. It added the visual cue missing from Superior, the greater than symbol: “>”. It was also less stark, less bullying, more subtle. My theory is that this is because it conjures a continuum that the word superior doesn’t. One can assert something is greater without suggesting it’s the greatest. It can also be remarkably economical. “The sports team that plays in…” could be condensed to “My Team > Your Team”, a much more t-shirt-friendly slogan.

Now, finally, the idea felt finished. I felt grateful to my friends who had indulged me by following me down that rabbit hole, and was glad I could now add it to the ranks of good ideas developed and discarded. Since you’re reading this blog, however, you know I still couldn’t let it go…

Updated: Read Part 2.

*Edgewood Arsenal.
**Piss Shivers. Apparently the phenomenon colloquially referred to as piss shivers actually has a more medically-appropriate name: Post-micturition convulsion syndrome. It’s a whole syndrome! It’s times like this when my reference obsession seems totally worthwhile.