We kill about 80% of what we design. That's not a flex. It's just the maths of trying to only sell things people would actually wear.
The first filter
Every design starts as a phrase, a sketch, or a bad joke in a notes app at 1am. Most of them should stay there. The first filter is brutal and it's simple: would you wear this in public?
Not to a festival. Not to a costume party. To the shops. To pick up your kids. To the pub on a Friday when you're not trying to be anything in particular. If the answer is "maybe, in the right context" — it's a no. The answer has to be just "yes."
The second filter
Does it need explaining? If someone sees the shirt and needs a paragraph of context to get it, it fails. The best designs work on two levels — surface level for anyone, deeper level for the people it's actually made for.
A FIFO shirt should make sense to someone who's never been on a mine site. But it should hit different if you have. That double-layer thing is hard to get right. Most designs only manage one layer. Those get cut.
The "is this just a meme" check
Memes have a shelf life measured in days. A shirt has to work for years. If a design only lands because of a current trend or a specific internet moment, it's not a shirt — it's a screenshot. We've caught ourselves a few times nearly printing something that would've been cringe within three months.
The designs that survive are the ones rooted in something permanent. Roster patterns don't change. The way ADHD works doesn't change. The Australian instinct to take the piss out of everything doesn't change. We print from the permanent stuff.
The mockup stage
A design that looks good on screen doesn't always look good on a shirt. Scale matters. Placement matters. We mock up everything on the actual blank colours we use before anything gets approved. Sometimes a design that seemed perfect at A4 looks wrong at chest-print size. Sometimes a phrase that worked in black doesn't work on Pepper.
This stage kills another chunk. It's annoying but necessary. Nobody sees your design file. They see the shirt.
The gut check
After all the filters, there's one more. We send it to a few people in the target audience. Not for feedback forms. Not for focus groups. Just — "would you wear this." If the response is lukewarm, it doesn't ship. We're looking for the immediate yes or the immediate "send me one."
Lukewarm kills a brand faster than bad designs do. Bad designs are obvious. Mediocre ones sneak through and make your whole store feel like it doesn't know what it is.
What makes it through
The survivors are always the ones where someone says "I know exactly who I'd buy this for." Or better — "I need this for myself." Those are the ones that ship.
We'd rather have 20 designs that people actually want than 200 that people scroll past. The store stays small on purpose. Everything in it earned its spot. 🟧
Cut different. On purpose.
Tees for FIFO legends and brains that run hot. Designed in Australia.
Browse All Tees →