Few months ago I got an email from someone called …, telling me that he’s starting a men’s magazine targeting middle-easterns. He told me that the magazine will be published in some of the hot spots of the region (dubai, beirut, cairo, …) and that he wanted to do a feature on my t-shirts.
I politely refused, mainly because It’s hard for people in kuwait to find my t-shirts (even through two outlets) yet alone people out of kuwait.
I just didn’t want to tease people with stuff they can’t easily get. I told him that I’m working on a solution and at the same time I planning to take this thing to the next level by importing high-quality t-shirts and starting my own screen printing studio.
I sent him the email but it bounced back, I tried again after few days … the same. I just gave up and he didn’t contact me again, so I thought he wasn’t really serious.
Yesterday, while trying to finish some project at the agency, I get this missed call from Jordan. It was the same guy, He told me he didn’t get a reply and I explained to him the whole thing and again I refused to do a feature on the t-shirts for the reasons I’ve already mentioned and I added another one that been bothering me for a while now. Although I posted the t-shirts on the blog, I think publishing them in a magazine (a printed, more accessible matter) might lead to a chance of my ideas getting copied and abused.
Then he suggested something. He was like “I really like that afro icon, why don’t we do, like, a profile on you”. That seemed like a good idea to me, I mean the t-shirts won’t be the main focus but they will be mentioned on the side. I mean a little bit of recognition won’t hurt anybody if we ignored the inflation of my ever-so-growing ego. Hmmm, That would look sweet on my resumé.
Now with my daily duties in this job and the demanding nature of the advertising business I hardly get any personal time. So the t-shirts project is on some kind of hold till further notice. I don’t think I will be able to follow up with anything anytime soon. I mean don’t get me wrong, I already have finished designing enough concepts for more seasons to come but I promised my self I WILL NOT print anything, anymore, unless it’s on a better quality t-shirts that comes in various sizes, different models and cuts.
I’m not sure really whether to do this free publicity thing or not, it’s like opening a can of worms. Ahmad, the editor of bazar, offered that they do something on me … maybe even do some kind of collaborative project of some sort. I’m all for it but I just keep on post-boning things forever, I don’t know what I’m waiting for really. Hell, I didn’t even write back to Villa Moda when they left me that comment.
Some people saw the big procrastinator in me and offered to totally take over the project and give me ,like, royalties and stuff like that and I absolutely refused. I just don’t like to give others the control end of things, especially with things I love so passionately like this project.
What would you do?
