“I moved to New York fifteen years ago. Didn’t really have much interest in drawing at that time—vaguely interested, but when I found Threadless, this whole community of artists on the internet who help each other and bounce ideas off each other, and it was a way to make money,” says Nathan Pyle.

In many of the episodes in Dan Harmon’s show Community, the character Abed is actually wearing a graphic tee from Threadless, a Chicago-based design company who crowdsource unique graphic tee shirt ideas. At the time, the company paid about $2,500 for beloved designs.

“It took me a long time. I think I did 100 submissions, at least, before I got my first license. Before anyone purchased anything. But, in those 100 submissions, I was learning a lot, I was making friends. That was me creating, doing something at night, while I worked another job in the day.”

Over time, Pyle learned more and more about designing. Eventually, this hobby helped pay about 20 percent of his income. Eventually, it completely took over and in 2021, Pyle teamed up with Dan Harmon to create Strange Planet for Apple TV.

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