Pre-pixelated Clothes for Reality TV Shows Go from Internet Joke to Overnight Hit
April 11, 2006
Subscribe to this News Feed
Pre-pixelated Clothes for Reality TV Shows Go from Internet Joke to Overnight Hit
On reality TV shows, recognizable logos on clothing are pixelated to avoid trademark violations. The blog “Ironic Sans” decided that someone should make clothes with the artwork pre-pixelated for Reality TV. Within weeks, hundreds of shirts had sold, and the idea gained international attention.
New York, NY April 11, 2006 — On reality TV shows, recognizable logos and artwork on clothing are pixelated in post-production to avoid trademark violations. Blogger David Friedman of the website Ironic Sans (www.ironicsans.com) realized that this extra step could be avoided with some advanced planning, and decided to make clothes with the artwork already pixelated.
“The pixelation process seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through for something that could have been avoided with a little pre-planning,” he writes on the site. “So I’d like to introduce my new line of pre-pixelated clothing for Reality TV shows.”
Friedman signed up with on-demand custom clothing retailer CafePress so that people could actually buy shirts with his designs.
“I thought it was a funny idea,” he says, “but I didn’t actually think people would buy them. I just thought setting up a CafePress shop made it even funnier. In my wildest dreams I thought maybe I would sell one or two shirts, and I figured those would be to my parents.”
The next day, the idea spread like wildfire across the blogosphere. Friedman’s post was linked to from the websites of MSNBC, USA Today, Wired, CNet, Entertainment Weekly, the Boston Globe, and dozens of other blogs.
The April 10 issue of New York magazine calls the pre-pixelated shirts “brilliant.” The Fox Reality Channel contacted Friedman, requesting shirts for their “Reality Remix” program. Publications as far as Sweden have contacted Friedman for more information.
Ironic Sans went from 100 hits one day to 18,000 the next. But what surprised Friedman most was the fact that people were buying shirts.
“In the first two days, I sold 75 shirts” he says. “I was seriously shocked. I thought people might get a laugh and pass the link along if they liked the idea, but they were actually buying shirts. The pixelated images seem to strike a chord not just with Reality TV fans, but with people who are looking for clothing that’s a little different than the everyday logos they’re used to seeing.”
Friedman won’t say how many shirts he’s sold to date, but he hopes the successful idea prompts people to explore more of his site than just the one post that’s gotten him attention. “The theme of Ironic Sans is that it’s a place for me to post my off-beat ideas as I get them. Pre-pixelated clothes is just one of the ideas I’ve had in my head that I needed to get out. If people click around the site a bit I think they’ll find other posts that are just as creative and hopefully just as catchy.”