Society6 review

I've been offering many of my drawings as iPhone & iPod cases, prints, t-shirts, and more through Society6 for a little while now. I've ordered a few things myself, so I thought I'd share with you a little review.

A quick summary: the iPhone & iPod skins and prints are terrific. The t-shirts are good, but might not be what you expect.

UPDATE: Society6 has free worldwide shipping this week, through Sunday (July 1)

You can get prints (some as big as 28x34 inches), stretched canvases, framed prints, iPod & iPhone skins, iPhone cases, laptop and iPad skins, t-shirts, hoodies, and even greeting cards. I haven't ordered from every category, but here's what I've seen so far.

iPhone & iPod skins

I ordered one of these as a gift for my father-in-law's iPod (4th generation). They're $15 each. When you receive it in the mail, it looks like a glorified sticker. Once it's on your device, it looks slick:

I haven't ordered an iPhone case, because, well, I don't have an iPhone (or any smartphone, for that matter. I'm pretty low-tech. See VHS cassettes below). But loads of people (like 60 or 100 or so) have ordered one, and they tell me they like 'em.

Prints

I ordered the 17x20 inch print of one real antler, one imagined. Society6 adds about an inch of space all the way around, so I had to trim it to fit it in a 16x20 frame. This is especially handy if you live outside of North America, and your standard frame sizes are probably different and measured in centimeters. The extra space gives you flexibility to trim down to whatever frame you have.

The print quality is amazing. It's terrific. I know my artwork very well (obviously) and I can tell you that their prints are accurate and crisp. And the paper is lovely and thick and soft and lightly textured.

Here's some pictures. The large prints come shipped in a big tube, so they are curled a bit and need to be flattened, hence the VHS boxes holding it down:

Here's some close-ups:

I put it in this simple 16x20 inch frame:

I tend to make small drawings, so it's fun for me to see my work enlarged. I often get asked for larger reproductions, and Society6 has been a great solution for this.

(If you want a signed print, you'll have to order one from my own shop: http://shop.marcjohns.com)

T-shirts

I ordered the fish with beard t-shirt, and I like it. However, if you like your t-shirts to have that crisp, plastic-y screenprinted quality, you'll be disappointed. The print on this shirt is soft, and almost has a slightly faded quality to it. Maybe bolder artwork would read differently. I don't mind this soft quality, and I think it's appropriate for my watercolour drawings. I hope I'm describing this properly; I just want you to know what these shirts are like, so that if you order one you'll know what to expect.

Society6 recently announced that you can print your artwork on dark shirts (you couldn't before), which means they'll print a white undercoat before laying down the artwork. I haven't ordered one yet, but I bet this will make shirt prints that look a bit more like screenprinting.

Okay, that's it. Now go shopping.

Oh, and they have free worldwide shipping this week! Right through until Sunday (July 1).

 

Comments

[this is lemonade]

The print looks particularly tempting especially as I don't own an iAnything. Great framing too! Not easy to decide which to go for though...

[kate]

everything looks really great.
i have the iphone case and the sticker peeled off around the edges. sad.
has anyone else had that problem?

[Marc Johns]

Hi Kate, do you mean you ordered the iPhone skin? The case is hard plastic, but the skin is like a sticker. The skin on my father-in-law's iPod has weathered well - no peeling.

[kate]

yeah, it's the 4s case. the case is basically covered with big sticker. the rest of it has weathered fine, looks really good. just a big even peeling around the long edges.

[Marc Johns]

Sorry to hear that, Kate. Maybe you should email Society6 about it? This is the first time I've heard of someone having this problem.

[madbean]

I was on the site for a few months...then me and other members start noticing that other websites were selling our products (iphone cases). when we notified s6 at first they said they couldnt do anything..then they stopped replying...and then...all of the sudden and with no warning or explanation my account was temporarily suspended. I must have send them over 5-6 emails asking why (no telephone number) but i wouldnt get a single reply...and when i asked them where is your customer support and why wont you tell me WHY i was suspended they finally send a reply only to tell me that im now permanently removed from society6..TERRIBLE customer support..... feel free to ask other members of the site about it on facebook 'society6 users'... and also if your product sales it WILL most likely be stolen ...no watermarks, or other security whatsoever...

and speaking of tshirts...if you order the L or XL the image will be tiny in comparison to what you see on the website

[Daisy]

Yesterday I found out that my account was temporarily suspended because I could not log in anymore, no notification about their motivation to do that had to find out all bvy myself.

I freaked because I found out that while I couldnt access my work myself they were still selling my images. Since I do sell copyrights here and there I need to be able to take down my work really quickly if nescessary and by shutting me out they made that impossible for me, in fact they took over the control over my images which is clearly illegal. When I told them that and said I would hold them accountable for any financial damage they permanently removed my account ( again without any form of explanation) , saying that they would pay me my commision after their usual grace period.

Now this sucks in many ways...first of all they never notify you after a sale, you can only find out by logging into your account. Since they made it impossible to log into my account I am clueless about how many sales I made and how much commission they owe me.

This is all really bad so I want to warn people not to submit their work for sale there, unless they enjoy having it stolen and resold by little companies in Singapore and HongKong....

I didn;t overstep any guidelines and I think they suspended me because I requested them to put a little effort in protecting our work. Which isn't that hard, a clear giff does the trick in most cases. S6 is the only POD site without any protection against art theft, you can download anybodies work there for free with just one click....there must be a good reason for them to do that...I think everybody can do the math for themselves...most definately a NO GO AREA for any serious artist!

[Marc Johns]

Hi Daisy and madbean, sorry to hear about your negative experiences. I'd love to hear if you've found any print-on-demand sites that you prefer, that do a good job of protecting your work. I'm not worried about people downloading my images - the JPEGs on Society6 are low resolution anyway.

I've had my work show up on t-shirts and tote bags in markets in China and Singapore, and even on Etsy. But I don't think it was because of Society6. They were printing images of mine that aren't available on S6. If thieves want to steal your images, they will steal your images. If they can't get them on S6, they'll get them elsewhere.

All I can say is that my own experience with Society6 has been very positive.

I would like to think that Society6 wouldn't have anything to gain by randomly locking people out of their account - why would they do that? That being said, I'm disappointed that they didn't respond to your concerns. That worries me. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

I have a positive story about Zazzle (another print-on-demand site) with regards to copyright issues. I had someone email me, complaining that Zazzle wouldn't let them print one of my images that they found on Flickr onto a t-shirt. Damn right you can't just randomly grab an image off my Flickr account and make shirts! So a big thanks to Zazzle for having some kind of magical way of stopping unauthorized use of Flickr images (or maybe it's Flickr that deserves the credit?). Good on them.

[madbean]

Hi Marc....im currently using Zazzle my self but only for a few weeks so i cant tell much ...the one sure thing is that its very difficult to steal photos from there as they use flash and zoom in to see a photo making it very difficult to steal..at least so far...as for why would society6 do what they did...got knows..the one sure thing is that if you email them about a concern you are most likely to be banned... with no warning and NO reason...not to mention that they dont supply a phone number...and when i did some research on whois.com and found the number, i gave it to an american friend and they told me that there is a message on the phone that they wont accept calls....dont know if its still the same but it stinks!

[kate]

thanks for you responses Marc. I did contact Society6 again.