Interview with Art Director for Threadless

An interview with Ross Zietz, Threadless

Today I was given the opportunity to interview the Threadless Art Director, Ross Zeitz – this coincides with their symposium tonight in Sydney, Australia.  Thanks for the opportunity, Ross!

What’s been the greatest, or the most rewarding aspect so far?

Looking forward going to my job every morning is pretty cool. When I was studying Graphic Design in college I never thought I would/could end up being an art director for a successful t-shirt company. It’s pretty neat.

Why do you think Threadless has such a cult following?

I think there are a couple factors to this. The first one is that we sell a cool product. T-shirts are cool. Unique interesting t-shirts designed by people all over the world is even cooler. Anther factor would be the whole community aspect of our site. We have about a million registered users now on threadless. They are customers, designers, and dedicated bloggers and we know we wouldn’t be where we are now with out all of them.

Is it the community or the technology that really drives Threadless?

They both do in a sense but I think the community does so more. We just do our best to stay on top of the technology aspect.

Favourite design so far?

Oh man… So many just popped into my head. The one I seem to wear the most is this one:

Might be because I am partial to green though.

What do you think Threadless (and maybe the internet?) will look like in 12 months?

Threadless will probably look pretty similar. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Our navigation and search system might be a little more concise though to make it easier to find stuff on the site.