The 5 Level Rating I Use For MightyFine Voting

I ended up getting interested in free shirts and clothes since my current freelancing lifestyle has me living very frugally. As such I’ve began occasionally voting on submissions for Mighty Fine, a website that allows users to submit designs to contests for various pop culture ephemera like The Avengers, Jem or Scott Pilgrim. They then tend to pick the most popular/highest rated shirts and present them to a set of judges and they’ll commonly pick some someone related to the series to judge the shirts. Then some random voters get free shirts, the winning artists get money and the story ends.

Holy bells do some people have no idea what they are doing!
I ended up creating a chart for my voting list and it has yet to fail me.

5 – Yes if I win or get money I’d buy that shirt. The style works, it looks like a shirt design and it would print out nicely.

4 – If I was given the shirt as a gift I’d probably wear it in public. One or two things keep it from being a #5. Usually some spacing or the style is a bit weird.

And then we descend to the heart of the darkness.

3 – I have no idea how I feel. Something is up – the style might not work, it might have too many colors or it is just poorly constructed/laid out. If I were able to get money for editing it, I might buy it. Most text only designs end up here because they are boring or poorly composed.

2 – It shows something redeeming… Is… is that a pencil sketch of the characters? Why did you just scan a drawing and put it on the shirt. Is…is that fellatio?I… I don’t think you can draw. Or should. Wow, is that minimalism? Again? Without it meaning anything? I … I’d have to be pretty drunk to buy these shirts. Like I am needing a new shirt because I messed up my last one when I stopped being able to process alcohol.

1 – Fuck no. Congratulations. You learned to scan from the source material. Or from another product they actually sell. Oh wait, is that… custom art? Are you 6? I am sorry if you are but god damn. Why… why is this a watercolor? Why is everything in a gradient? I’d never wear these shirts. Except for money.

Mighty Fine needs some sort of art theft button to be honest – and possibly some pre screener. 3 is not the high point on the quality bell curve and something is wrong.

And remember – you don’t need a full cast photo – you just need a good idea, design skills and the ability to compose the image. Which seems to be asking for a lot.