Learn Why Our Artists Love Peanuts!

By now, you’ve hopefully heard our super cool news: we’ve launched our Peanuts design challenge, and for the first time ever, artists are invited to take their own spin on designing the whole cast of characters! To help inspire ideas for the challenge, we asked a few Threadless alumni to take a stab at reimagining the iconic cartoon in their own, original styles. Well, did they ever deliver, and now we have awesome Peanuts tees for purchase alongside the launch of the design challenge! Good grief, that’s exciting!

Of course, we had to take a minute to pick each artist’s brain on their rad designs, so we asked each a series of three questions. Below, check out their answers as well as their designs, and when you can barely stand the awesomeness of their work any longer, shop their new tees here!

Questions:

1. What about Peanuts, as a comic, and Charles Schulz, as an artist, do you find most inspiring?
2. Why did you choose this concept for this design, and in what ways does it capture the spirit of Peanuts?
3. Who is your favorite Peanuts character and why?

1. I really love how Charles Schulz was able to create pop culture icons with such simple artwork, characters, and storylines.
2. I wanted to create a design with a more sketchy feel. I felt it would capture the style of Peanuts, but with a twist of my own aesthetic. Also I think some of the most iconic concepts of the show included Snoopy escaping reality in his own mind, and the love of friendship that always brought he and Charlie Brown together.
3. Snoopy is my favorite character. He doesn’t have to say much yet is the coolest character in the show.

– Alex Solis, Chicago, IL

1. What gets me in particular is Charles Schulz’s art style; it’s very dynamic and beautiful. Also, it inspires people like me to really understand the structure and anatomy behind things in order to draw them ‘cartoony’. Schulz did such an amazing job in reducing his lines to the most important message.
2. My design concept was inspired by other artists with a similar approach: Try to represent a concept by designing a font where each letter embodies a character. It was completely new to me to try this, and it proved to be challenging but fun.
3. My favorite character will always be Snoopy, because I remember trying to draw him quite a lot when I was a small child.

– Queenmob, Graz, Austria

1. For having such a relatively simplistic style, Charles Schulz was able to elicit a lot of feeling and expression into his comics. He could make you feel really invested in the story even if there was no dialogue present.
2. For my design, I thought the vintage tattoo styling felt appropriate for Snoopy vs. the Red Baron. I’ve always been intrigued by the strips involving the Red Baron and wanted to pay tribute in some way.
3. I can’t help but love Snoopy. I love when he’s crabby and says nonsensical, garbled things. And when he gets drunk off root beer.

– Julia Sonmi Heglund, Glendale, CA

1. Peanuts is a classic. As for Charles Schulz, being able to create characters that can resonate with so many people for so long is such an awesome feat that few artists have been able to achieve.
2. As for my design concept, I really love the early design of Charlie Brown and the other characters, and I wanted to mix that with the relatively newer concept of adults sounding like strange horns (or geese) that the animated version introduced. And at the end of the day it’s just like ‘ugh parents, amirite?’
3. My fave Peanuts character is Snoopy when he’s dancing.

– Jublin, Los Angeles, CA

1. Charles Schulz had an amazing ability to portray deep childhood emotions in an incredibly approachable way. As a child, fraught with anxiety, I related all too well to Charlie Brown. Now that I am an adult, I find it even more amazing that Charles Schulz, as an adult, was able to connect with me as a child through the likes of a short little bald kid who was mediocre at sports. I have since become a bald guy who is mediocre at sports, so touché, Mr. Schulz!
2. While thinking about my design, my wife and I we were talking about how iconic the characters were, and how they still resonate to today’s world. She suggested that the hoverboard as something that we are all still obsessed with today, and it would be fun to see a character on one. I agreed, but I had to create a Peanuts style twist. I imagined it would be perfect if Snoopy saw the technology, and with his gang of birds, he tried to recreate it. It would be way more fun for him than those poor birds.
3. As much as I love little bits and pieces about all the characters, one still makes me laugh to this day. I think my favorite character has to be Pigpen. The idea of the dirty kid is such a funny truth. There is always one but Pigpen takes the cake. It was probably dirt cake.

– Phil Jones, Minneapolis, MN