Funny and Pithy and Nuanced T-shirt Ideas

Cafe Society
1

Howdy all! I’ve been working on a T-shirt idea around Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand” concept and have been talking to others to bounce some ideas off of them. Cardinal, as a charter member here on the SDMB, suggested I post something up here to tap your collective wisdom with a good ole brainstorming session. So here goes with some guidelines:

  1. I’d prefer an idea for a picture I can make in one color that gets the point across, a caption is fine.
  2. One liners are a great place to start, I can flesh out an image from there.
  3. Let’s keep it clean, I want to be able to explain it to my kids.
  4. For posting you agree to give me the copyrights! Thanks!
  5. Bonus points for everyone who knows who Layton Kor was.
2

A large hand (in dotted-line to show it’s ‘invisible’) pushing over a tall bank building so that it falls down and crushes a group of people in the street.

There’s the idea - run with it!

3

So basically, you want us to do your work for you, and we receive nothing in return.

Capitalism, my dead Aunt Tilly.

4

I would have gone with an invisible hand giving poor people the Finger.

5

A T-shirt with “Howard Roark is a Narcissist Douchebag” on it might be fun.

Or “Why is the Unseen Hand always found in the cookie jar?”

6

You might want to run that one by the Chicago Reader.

7

Woah, I had no idea that worked! Lemme try:

For reading this post you agree to give me a new car! Thanks!

8

Damn, I should have stopped reading at Post #6. Your car is in the mail.

9

Well, basically.
However, if it really does become an idea that explodes in profits ($10k+) after I do all the work sourcing the cotton, paying for the cotton out of pocket, printing the shirts, paying for the print supplies out of pocket, advertising the shirts, selling the shirts, paying the credit fees, paying the shipping, paying for the shipping supplies out of pocket, paying for the equipment out of pocket, paying for the maintenance on the equipment, collecting and tabulating and paying the sales taxes, paying to tabulate and pay all other local and state and federal taxes, paying for the gas and other overhead of all of the above out of pocket; I will happily share 10% of the profits with you as an idea finder’s fee.

Sound fair?:slight_smile:

Not that we want to get into the problems of entrepreneurship in the Cafe Society forum, but artists aren’t generally any good at running a business and business admin’s generally aren’t any good at art. It is 1% of people who can do both. As for me, <Chanting Loudly> “I am – the 99%!”

10

LOL, now we’re talking.

11

Ha ha ha. Neither copyright nor contract law works that way.

That said, an idea for a t-shirt posted here is not protected by copyright (ideas are not copyrightable). As long as you don’t use art that someone uploads, or a sufficiently long block of text (where “sufficiently long” is determined by expensive lawyers), you’ll be fine.