Matt Cohen here and posting here for the first time. I’m the founder and current president of ChoiceShirts and now I’m taking on the new role as co-blogger with Alex Hillman for the Choice100. Alex and I decided to split up this blogging to make it a bit more interesting for our readers. I told him I’d take one post per week so you the reader could get a better sense of the nuts and bolts of ChoiceShirts and the business side of things while Alex and his team focus on building out the needed social elements of the Choice100.

This week as we gear up and continue building out the pieces for the Choice100 I wanted to focus on our art department and specifically on Matt G, our art production supervisor. Matt started out in our warehouse a few years ago but slowly climbed his way up to his true passion…art. Matt is responsible for making sure all our digital art gets prepped, ripped and printed correctly, efficiently and with the utmost care to design and print quality. I asked Matt to sit down this week and talk about some of his challenges especially as a designer. Oh yeah, Matt G produces a lot of the digital artwork seen on the ChoiceShirts.com site. Here’s what he had to say:

Creative Block

Creative blocks. We all have them at times but I seem to always forget how mind numbing they can be. I probably created five shirt designs that I scrapped today. Nothing seems to come out the way I want it to. I really wanted to start conceptualizing some political designs. I did my usual research and came up with a couple of pretty cool ideas (i.e.: Obama Fo’ Yo Mama, Vote Billary, McCain wrestling the democratic donkey, and a couple more) but every time I went to finalize the design I just hated it. Nothing looked the way I envisioned it. I kept thinking back to an art class assignment that I had in the 9th grade. The first day of class the teacher instructed us to come up with a design that represented a creative block. We had full liberty to create whatever our young imaginative brains could come up with. Ironically I had no shortage in creativity. I painted a cubed globe that was crammed with a ton of bright graphics in the suns light. On the opposite side of the globe was little old me standing alone on the dark side of the planet. I hit a home run with this design and received a good grade as well. Only if it were always that smooth but I understand that it comes with the territory. With the Choice100 campaign peeking its head around the corner I am not too discouraged. There will be plenty of designs and I will be one of many artists contributing. Tomorrow is a new day so I am just going sleep on it.

Here’s to a creative tomorrow!

Matt G.