Show HN: I Made this Y Combinator T-Shirt (Words from PG's Essays) | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I Made this Y Combinator T-Shirt (Words from PG's Essays)

tagxedo.com

72 pointsHardyLeung45 comments

I don't want to put words into anyone else's mouth here, but if anyone ever made and wore a t-shirt containing a frequency count of the words in stuff I'd written, then I'd find it kinda creepy and weird.

You can always buy a mug instead...

I think finding out someone had made a t-shirt tribute to my writing would be what they call "a good problem to have".

A few years ago I made a similar word cloud of his essays using Wordle:

http://i.imgur.com/akCnD.png

I've often thought it would make a good shirt or book cover.

That's really attractive. Did you automate the layout and color assignments?

(Mmm! Even the font makes me happy! 'something people want')

That's all Wordle. I did tweak the settings so it would look good (not sure why the defaults look so bad). The colors themselves don't mean anything, they just make the resulting cloud look good.

If I could use one word to describe that design, it would be "tasteful."

Thanks!

Sort of off topic, but I wonder if you can copyright or otherwise do something legalish with specific word frequency distributions. It's not nearly enough information to, say, reconstruct a corpus, but it's often sufficient information to identify someone with precision (so I've heard, anyway).

I studied these issues a lot (copyright, right of publicity, etc), and I think this particular use is fine. You are right that sometimes it is easy to figure out the text from the cloud, just like you can make out a famous photo from a very small 10x10 thumbnail, or draw Mona Lisa in 50 polygons http://rogeralsing.com/2008/12/07/genetic-programming-evolut... or as a single tweet http://www.flickr.com/photos/quasimondo/3518306770/

It may or may not be fine, but my guess is that calling your Zazzle shop y-combinator is a bit much. Yes it's a generic term, but out of courtesy you should probably rename it to something like pgfan or something that indicates that you're not somehow "official"...

This is actually the "Tagxedo" shop in Zazzle, and the category is called "Y Combinator".

The link goes to http://www.tagxedo.com/shop/y-combinator so this is also Tagxedo shop Y Combinator category. It's clearly stated that this is a tribute. I don't think I used language that is misleading, but I'll triple check.

Oh I didn't mean that at all, it just brought up a question I thought was interesting.

Now HN only needs its own memes and its transformation to reddit 2 will be complete.

This is actually a remarkable promo for tagxedo that is merely using community self interest as its entrée into our awareness.

How is that a justification for making HN more jejune?

What part of my brief statement read like a justification?

HN already has its own memes... "We are better than Reddit because we don't have memes or sarcasm and are super adult and reasonable" is a big one.

I think that's a theme, not a meme.

Could be, but "one step closer to reddit with each passing hour" is a meme.

Better build my own MVP?

I always just wanted the ycombinator on a shirt, and spreadshirt looked easy enough to use so I gave it a shot. Here's what turned out: http://wright.spreadshirt.com/men-s-heavyweight-t-shirt-A757...

I'd highly recommend spreadshirt by the way. The site was incredibly easy to use to create the shirt and storefront, and if the shirt quality is anything like the American Apparel shirts I own, it should be very good quality shirts as well.

Do I get Birkenstocks and a fresh pair of socks if I join this cult?

I think it's awesome. Very cool.

Thanks!

I see most of "Make something people want" but none of "Relentlessly Resourceful". If I were making a YC T-shirt that's what I would put on it.

I've always wondered how this is actually done, algorithm-wise. Can someone more knowledgeable give me a link, or at least a google search term?

wow that is super cool. what did you use to make that?

I use Tagxedo to make this.

http://www.tagxedo.com

Perhaps I should rephrase:

I made Tagxedo so I can make this :D

Why not just make an actual essay into a t-shirt? The instapaper logo is a merlin mann essay, for example.

Sorry to be blunt, but word clouds are just ε over meaningless.

To each his own.

I see it as an art, and I wouldn't say art is meaningless. Perhaps you want to check out https://www.facebook.com/tagxedo to see some more examples. It's much more than a blob of tags arranged in some random order to "help" navigation (that might be a bit cliche).

Some of my favorites:

http://daily.tagxedo.com/may-20-linkedin-rockets-skyward-in-...

http://daily.tagxedo.com/may-16-space-shuttle-endeavour-blas...

http://daily.tagxedo.com/march-23-faster-much-improved-firef...

Where's "it turns out"?

No offense, and call me a cynic, but I don't think this would get you into YC.

Not meant to.

I think its a great design coming from a designer myself, but I'm no lawyer and I don't think you can be making money off someones logo or brand. I dont think you need to be a lawyer to know that either.

Plain and simple, would you want to create a startup and someone make tshirts and make money off your brand or logo?

Like I said in the other comment, I did study this issue (to understand under what condition I can offer Tagxedo to users and when I can sell Tagxedo artworks).

Use of the logo design is fine. The use of the entire essay with distillation of selected words is definitely fair use (very transformative). The word "Y Combinator" is ... generic, but I'd buy that this is subject to debate (and yes I did refer to pg's YC not the math term). OTOH I can argue that this is really a commentary of YC so ...

And I didn't do this out of profit motive. It is first and foremost a tribute. Second, Tagxedo as an entrepreneurial venture is partially inspired by pg and YC. Third, I spent several hours to process the text and come up with the best design (much more than I usually do). Unless somehow boatloads of orders come in, I don't see how I can break even time-wise (which I already knew before I started).

I offer Tagxedo for free and many kids love it. Teachers told me that Tagxedo opens their eyes, seeing words and languages not as boring, but fun and artsy. If there is a any hint of profit motive it is to perhaps allow me to justify continuing to offer Tagxedo to everyone for free.

That said, I might take it down if I get a C&D from Paul Graham and associates. I wouldn't mind if pg takes this and run with it (sans Zazzle), adding to the famed gray and black T-shirts :D

Yea I understand where your coming from with the Tagxedo (which is really cool, minus the copyright issues that could arise), but putting it on Zazzle would be debatable. Not my debate.

Regardless, if its not made for profit, after one sale its profit. I mean its really cool and I'm not one to care about all the legal crap, but someone does at times.

As far as your break even it doesn't matter if its not your brand your working on. I can spend months designing something a court wont care if its not mine in the first place.

I wouldn't really worry about it.

I really think its cool, but I was just stating some matters.

Appreciate. I agree that anytime I sell something I need to face the legal ramification, no matter how small the profit (or the nature of the profit). Any time a person uses someone else's property, even if it is fair use, there is the chance that it'll get messy. In fact the US copyright law almost answers the question of fair use by saying "it depends".

So I understood what you said and thanks for your feedback.

| Plain and simple, would you want to create a startup and someone make tshirts and make money off your brand or logo?

On second thought, actually this is not a bad idea. If you are a startup and you want to make cool T-shirts or posters about your company, Tagxedo would be a great option. It would be a form of marketing. Anyone interested please contact me. Examples of company logos as Tagxedoes (all from Daily Tagxedo):

LinkedIn http://daily.tagxedo.com/may-20-linkedin-rockets-skyward-in-...

Skype http://daily.tagxedo.com/may-11-microsoft-buys-skype-for-85b

Intel http://daily.tagxedo.com/may-5-intel-unveils-impressive-3d-t...

Color http://daily.tagxedo.com/march-25-prelaunched-social-app-col...

Of course I can't arbitrarily "profit" off brands - I do need to honor various rights.

I think its a great option if the company approves of it.

The logo is CC Attribution 2.5[1]. I'm not sure what the status of his essays are. His site has (c) Paul Graham, so I'm not sure what's up there.

[1]: http://apps.ycombinator.com/item?id=2233123

A fair use of a copyright piece of material.

Deleted comment

Transform T-shirt into V-neck ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzcN_7xj3hk

You can actually change to other styles (sweetshirt, baby apparel, etc). Not sure V-neck is an option though.

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