50 States Supply

Even though Helpful Human primarily existed to help other businesses with their digital needs, we would occasionally take on internal projects to test out new ideas or technologies. One such project was 50 States Supply.

# David O’Hara pitched the idea

David O’Hara is a designer friend of Helpful Human. He had an idea for an online store around state-related apparel that relied on a community of designers to submit designs from their home states. There was then a group of designers, known as “Congress”, that would vote on which designs would be featured on the site.

After some discussion, Helpful Human decided to take the project on. Initially, it was called “50 States Apparel” before later being rebranded to “50 States Supply”.

# So what did I do?

I assisted in the setup and initial development of the site before handing it off to other team members.

# How did it go?

We had a minor amount of success, but we shut down the project due to the amount of effort that would be needed to maintain it with a fresh supply of new designs.

The site is also no longer active, but you can view an archived version on the Wayback Machine (which is linked above).

# There were some really great designs

Sadly the only place I can find them online is the Wayback Machine. So for the sake of preserving them, here are a few of my favorites.

Heads Up!

I did not create these and sadly could not find records in my files of the original artists. If I can track down this information, I will update this page.