The T-Shirt Blog

Wow… time sure goes by fast, and the 30 day sale at Threadless is coming to an end. The sale’s apparently been extended till 11 AM this Thursday, so that means you and I (and anyone else who might want to buy some shirts) have approximately 1.5 days to get our $^!# together and wade through Threadless‘ catalog of brand new , newly reprinted and older tees, as well as newly offered long sleeved shirts and hoodies.

For those of you who aren’t entirely familiar with Threadless or their famous sales, they are basically one of the most popular and best known t-shirt retailers around. They hold on-going t-shirt design competitions and have a constant stream of new quality designs. Their shirts do well enough at a regular price of $15-17, but once or twice (or thrice) a year they hold a $10 sale, and not just to sell off inventory either - they continue printing and reprinting tees throughout the sale. With that said, on to my picks:

It’s winter time in the Northern Hemisphere, and I’m definitely partial to designs that come in a hoodie and/or longsleeve version in addition to the classic tee. This design oozes 80’s retro, and looks good on a cozy and warm looking sweatshirt.

I *heart* t-shirts with stuff printed in non-standard places. In this case it’s simplistic autumn leaves looking particularly good on an off sheer girls’ long sleeve, or a regular’s guy’s long sleeve tee.

To me Threadless is all about designs like this one, slightly off the beaten path, with a fine arts sensitibility, and an element of irony.

This one actually made me smile and go ‘aww’, in a non-verbal sort of way (since I don’t talk to myself outloud). I am also beginning to suspect that a lot of Threadless‘ design submissions are recycled art school homework. This illustration would definitely get an an A+ from me.

Not sure what more can be said about this terrific design, but here are some more T’s worth mentioning:

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I am not going to post the YouTube link to ‘Kramer’s’ racist tirade at a Las-Vegas nightclub. You can find it yourself if you’d like. Needless to say the outburst was so outrageous that no apology can make up for it — he might as well have been wearing the “arrest black babies before they become criminals” tee from T-Shirt Hell. What I find interesting is how quickly T-Shirt Hell came out with a t-shirt about the whole thing. The story surfaced on Monday the 20th, and by Wednesday evening the shirt was featured on their front page. The illustration isn’t super amazing or anything, but 2 days is at least how long it took me to write this post.

In fact, T-Shirt Hell has been staying on top of recent events, as they continue to churn out their brand of edgy and irreverent tees:

And while you’re over there, check out “International Age of Consent Tour“. I’m sure you know someone who deserves to own that tee.

Some t-shirt sites make their living selling offensive t-shirts. The Worse Than Hell section of T-Shirt Hell, for example, makes light of some of humanity’s greatest tragedies. Personally, I’m not someone who is easily offended, in fact I sometimes laugh at things that probably shouldn’t be funny. However, the more offensive a joke is, the more clever or funnier it needs to be to balance out the crassness. Especially if you’re going to put it in on a shirt. Here are some examples of tees that fail at this balance, starting with an awful reference to Steve Irwin:

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I just got an email from Threadless announcing a sneaky little two day sale - almost everything is $10 until Wednesday morning.

Holy cow, we’re having a quick 2 day $10 sale before the sale to get your blood pumping. If you like to get an early start on the holidays, start your gift buying now!

This includes a lot of the new releases I wrote about recently, as well as the older favorites. Some t-shirts have been reprinted and overall it seems like there is a bunch of shirts I haven’t really seen before. Here is some [affordable] eye candy:

If you wish to contact me you can use the following address, mail [at] thetshirtblog [dot] com.

…Is apparently higher if you are a girl. This awesome breaking up tee from Threadless is only $15, unless a girl ever wants to buy one, in which case the price becomes $17. I’m sure there is a perfectly good explanation for this, such a difference in suppliers, but as a boy I am worried. I’m a firm believer in a sort of karma between the sexes, so now the draft might actually happen, to balance out the price discrepancy.

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I could almost picture myself wearing this shirt, even though I’ve been a Boston Red Sox fan for the past fifteen years. The Sox were sitting pretty at the All-Star break, but imploded in the second half, and finished in third place behind New York and Toronto. No “yankees suck” chant, not even the 2004 World Series win can atone for the fact that the Yankees have won the division for ten straight years.

But look how the mighty have fallen, at least in their own eyes. The Yanks lose the ALDS to a pretty good Detroit team, a whole lot of people lose their bets, and the second longest tenured manager in baseball is about to get fired.

Sure, for most of us it’s about style and uniqueness, but there is no reason why the internet shouldn’t serve as your personal discount bin of cheap t-shirts. OctopusInk has their colorful logo tee on sale for only $6 ($3.50 shipping).

One of the best places to find consistently cheap t-shirts is eBay - most of the auctions end below $10. If you are looking for high fashion at a reasonable price, Threadless has random sales several times a year, which is how I got my “Flowers In The Attic” for only $10. Cafepress also has some unique designs if you really dig around, and you can snag a $5 off $20 coupon at CPCoupon.com.

The owner of this blog also happens to be a wanna-be, amateur designer.

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  I can proudly say that there are six Chode Island shirts in existence in as many as two continents, as of the post date.
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  I entered this design in the Snakes on Plane promotion at Cafepress. The shirt didn’t make a single sale, in part because it was buried among all the other entries. At least the movie was good (or so I hear).
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  This was my first custom design ever, circa 2001. If you search for “compton hat” in Google, my site still comes up first :).
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  This is another design inspired by a movie I either hated, or haven’t seen. Back in 2005 this was by far the most searched for t-shirt design, and I tried to make it as close to the original as possible (skewed, misaligned letters). Unfortunately Cafepress removed all Vote for Pedro shirts due to copyright issues, although you can still find the shirt at other sites.

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  “Flowers in the Attic” by Threadless
  This shirt gets by far the most attention whenever I wear it out. People either recognize it as Threadless, or love it regardless.
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  The Blog T-Shirt from T-Shirt Humor
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  Vote for Pedro, still relevant to this day.

The list is far from complete, so feel free to comment with any possible nominations.

You might think that I’m a nudist based on the shortness of this list:

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  The world famous “Flowers in the Attic” from Threadless.
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  One of my own creations, the only one I actually wear.
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  I actually got this shirt at boutique, but you can get it online too, for a lot less than I paid for it.

The whole point of having a wish list is keeping it intact, so without further adieu here are some shirts that I might never buy.

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  “Urban Camouflage” from Threadless
  This boy likes getting spanked, so a nice Medium might be in order.
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  “Monday!!!” from Threadless
  I think this Monday shirt is a winner any day of the week.
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  “Spain: Where no means no!” from Busted Tees
  Or is it “no means no?”
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  “I’d Hit That” from Busted Tees
  I want to get this shirt for my non-Mexican friend Dan, who seems to always bring it up whenever we talk about funny t-shirts.

Threadless released quite a few new tees in the past month and the results are as expected. The winner of the Nextfest design competition has been announced, and the rest of the designs include this cool art deco-ish premium tee, the usual emo fare, and a shirt I just don’t get. There is also further proof that Threadless is made for art students, by art students. The best of the bunch, however, is this striking illustration entitled “No More Bento.”

I’m also starting to like the shirt that looks like a bathroom wall, ever since I realized it has two sides, and a “NO SPANKING” sign on the lower black.

They also brought back “What Would McGyver Do?” one of the few Threadless tees that a fratboy would actually be caught wearing.

Threadless did the right thing by taking down the “I’d give my left arm to play drums for Def Leppard” slogan tee. It wasn’t terribly funny, whether you are familiar with the actual story, or not (more on t-shirts that shouldn’t have been made in my next post).P.S. Take a look at SplitTheAtom, a new Brittish company which seems to have a very similar setup to Threadless.

I thought of this as one of the better t-shirts on TshirtHumor, even before I ever started blogging. Hopefully, I’ll be able to avoid this kind of narcissism. I am going to devote this post, however, to the elusive �blog t-shirt,� but before we get to the predictable blog swag drivel, here�s another blog t-shirt that�s actually good, from who else, but Threadless.

Not to say that this tee isn�t without blogtroversy, or that you won�t get sued (shot?) by your local Bloods chapter for ripping off their gang sign. If you�d rather avoid all that, here are some shirts inspired by the pure, unadulterated angst of blogging.

Ahh, nothing like an attractive female telling me that she doesn�t want to read my blog. Finally, here is an interesting site that manages to create a word cloud for your blog, or website, and print it on a t-shirt. This is what my word cloud would look like.

Now time for one last bit of geekyness, as promised in my previous post. If you check the Overture Keyword Suggestion tool (a very useful tool that includes data from the second largest search network) for the keyword �t-shirt blog,� you will see that the term gets about 100 searches a month (much more on Google). Since the tool doesn�t differentiate between �tshirt blog� and �blog tshirt� it�s impossible to tell who was looking for what. Either way, I am likely to see hits from both searches because I have the two words in my domain name, and why not? I deserve the traffic!

It’s only fitting that I start off the T-Shirt Blog with a post about one of the most beloved t-shirt retailers on the web. In case you’ve never been to Threadless, they run ongoing t-shirt design competitions, and sell the best, most popular submissions as voted on by viewers like you. The end result is a constantly evolving, limited edition collection of unique designs, all reasonably priced at around $15 each. Here’s a round up of the ten most popular designs on Threadless (based on the number of submitted photos), so you can see what you are missing out on:

My one and only Threadless tee actually happens to be “Flowers in the Attic,” the one with the butterflies. Can I get some props for being completely unoriginal and getting THE most popular shirt on the site? I might also go for this svelte going-out tee next.

Stay tuned for more cool tees, and possibly an in-depth search engine keyword analysis of this domain name.