The T-Shirt Blog

An earthquake struck Haiti one month ago. I just ordered this t-shirt from Threadless. Here are a few other t-shirts you can buy with proceeding going to the people of Haiti.

• A Galery of shirts over at Cafepress.
• Eske ou ka ede non, souple? at Etsy.
• Steel Train at HelloMerch.
• Be a Hero by Bungie Games - might work for those of us who like to play Halo.
• Haiti United at Soccer.com.
• Yéle Hands by Wyclef Jean.

Know any other t-shrits where 100% of the proceeds are donated to earthquake victims? Post them in the comments please.

I’ve been keeping up with responses to my Post Your T-Shirt Site post, and one of the sites that caught my was Shalom Shirts, dedicated to, you guessed it, tees with Jewish slogans. Sure, some of the slogans may be a bit kitschy, but I won’t quetch. There are many redeeming designs to be found.

Here’s a random t-shirt find from my travels. It’s a slightly cheeky reference to the 1982 movie Blade Runner. Find it at TimboTees.

The title says it all. If you run a t-shirt site, have an entry in a t-shirt competition, or have ever designed a t-shirt that’s up anywhere you can link us to, post it right here in the comments. Let’s make this the longest t-shirt comments thread ever!

The only catch - you must post a link to a t-shirt or a t-shirt site that inspired you. Just post your stuff, and then follow it up with a link to someone else’s work. Here, I’ll start:

Cafepress.com/Thetshirtblog - Contains a few of my designs, which I have uploaded to Cafepress, America’s favorite self-publishing site for t-shirts.

One of my favorite t-shirt sites happens to be T-Shirt Hell, not necessarily because I love offensive t-shirts, but more so because of the dry, sarcastic humor often found hiding behind the offending epithet.

Thanks everyone!

I receive what seems like a TON of e-mail from mostly a upstart t-shirt companies, and it’s difficult to keep up with, let alone reply to all of them. However, I do appreciate the effort, and here are some of the best t-shirt links I’ve received in my mailbox.

• Sandia T-Shirts - A site dedicated to I Heart state t-shirts. Only a few states are up so far, but the designs are quite nice, and the web design is superb.
• PMB Clothing - Very well done artsy t-shirts with oversized designs featuring monsters.
• FlippinSweetGear - Has been around for a while, and has some really cool pop-culture designs.
• Sobogear - A very nicely designed site with some nice t-shirts to boot. I appreciated that the t-shirts were modeled by actual human beings, instead of a digital overlay.
• Dadtastic - A site with over forty t-shirts dedicated to Dads takes some serious dedication!
• The Nerdiest T-Shirts - Forget about all the other nerdy sites you may have come across. These shirts, I believe, are made by people from MIT, and they contain unbelievably esoteric scientific references that will make you “Pi” t-shirt cry, and it’s colors run for cover.
• Rock Band T-Shirts - Trippy tie-dye t-shirts with a focus on classic rock.
• My Friend Dick - I love goofy URLs, which is why I’m including this.
• Designious - A website for vector art, including some beautiful, and inexpensive t-shirts.

I’d like to ease myself back into updating this blog, and I’m going to start by posting a few t-shirt related fails from award winning website Failblorg.org. Fail Blog is always good for a few laughs, and unlike this site, it’s updated several times daily. It also has a store called the Lol Mart, that features a collection of t-shirts dedicated to some of the greatest internet fads.

Now that I’ve got your attention, I’d like to tell you about a new website that I’ve been working on. It’s called Book Fail, and it’s all about funny, off-beat, and weird books. Some of my favorites so far are The Zen of Farting, and How to Shit in the Woods: An Environmentally Sound Approach to a Lost Art. I’ve worked up quite a list so be sure to check it out, and subscribe/bookmark.

I love the mischief and blunt honesty present in these two shirts.  Aren’t we all just horny cheapskates deep down inside?

(Psst!  Want instant email updates of my latest t-shirt findings?  All you have to do is subscribe.)

Not a t-shirt, I know, but a good find while browsing Cafepress’ marketplace.

A couple of days ago I wrote about Spreadshirt, one of the leading t-shirt on-demand companies in the world. I didn’t stop there, and I’d like try out and review many more custom t-shirt and write about them here. Next up is MySoti, a previously unknown, and mysterious printer with and Indian sounding name. One of my readers, Kevin, alerted me to their presense, and I decided to give them a shot.

It turns out that MySoti is in fact a t-shirt printer and allows you to put your designs on sale in a sort of a shop, much like Spreadshirt and Cafepress. Uploading your designs and finalizing your products is pretty easy, especially considering a much smaller range of products, which includes American Apparel products for Men, Women, children and babies! I also like the the large 12.5″ by 17.5″ printable area, but what really interested me about MySoti is the way that it’s organized—more like a community than a t-shirt marketplace. You can vote for designs you like, check out creators’ profiles, and view other shirts offered by a given designer. In my mind, voting is what’s missing from major t-shirt marketplaces. Think YouTube meets Cafepress—now that would really separate the wheat from the chaff!

While MySoti proved to be a fun experience with it’s vibrant collection of available designs, it remains to be seen if their quality is up to snuff and whether their reach is big enough to make them relevant.

A few days ago I signed up with Spreadshirt, in order to play around and see how everything works.  The only on-demand printer that I had worked with previously is Cafepress, and in a way my first impressions were made up of ways in which the two are different.  Here’s what I found.

Vector Designs and Printing Methods

In addition to the traditional WYSWIG method of digital printing Spreadshirt employs something called plot printing.  I’m not any kind of an expert on this, but the way I understand it is that a blade cuts your design out of a colored material, which is then adhered to your shirt.  This allows for a wider range of materials, such as glittery foil and velvety “flock” prints, and Spreadshirt claims the results are a lot more durable.  There are some limitations in terms of the shapes your design can have, and only one swatch is possible.  This also requires the use of vector graphics (think Illustrator not Photoshop).

A Wide Selection of Printable Products

Spreadshirt has a dizzying selectino of printable apparel for men, women, and children.  There is anything from cheap lightweight t-shirts to American Apparel and even track jackets.  Choice is always good, but makes for some difficult choices when designing your products.  The upside is that printing areas are fairly large, average around 12″ wide and up to the whole shirt length.

Sell Your Design at Spreadshirt

Another way that Spreadshirt is diffirent from, say Cafepress, is that in addition to putting your shop’s products into the “marketplace” you can also submit your designs, which in turn can be used by other shopkeepers, in exchange for royaltees.  This works a bit like clip-art.  Design an element that someone might like to use (think shamrock, stylized heart, baseball bat), and you can earn a couple of bucks anytime it’s printed on a shirt.

Aside from all these positives Spreadshirt also has a slick, modern interface, and tons of customization options.  Just take a look at a shop like Amorphia Apparel to see how seamlessly Spreadshirt can integrate with your website.  This high level of customization at a price of a higher learning curve, but the e-mail support so far has been great.

Want to see what’s available in the Spreadshirt Marketplace?  Here are some coupon codes:

BUYMORE8 - 20% off when you buy two products.
BUYMORE9 - 25% off when you buy three products.

Experies Nov 28th.

CYBER48 - 25& an order for $30 or more.

Valid Dec 1st - 5th.

There is no other way to say it. I’ve put a lot of work into these t-shirt designs, and while they are not perfect, I greatly enjoyed making them and I want to share them with the world.

Which of my t-shirts designs do you like best? Chode Island Kiss Me I'm Queer Kiss Me I'm Illegal I Beat Up Ashley Todd Save a Tree, Hug a Person I'd honestly prefer just a plain white tee. View Results  Loading ...

Hoaxicillin is a 100% all natural product that effectively addresses the symptoms of of anxiety, stress, depression, panic attacks and restless Sleep caused by boring, unoriginal, and underdesigned t-shirts. Unlike prescription drugs, Hoaxicillin is formulated to naturally and safely treat you without the unwanted side effects you may find with prescription habit forming medications.

Poll: If you were a doctor, which would you recommend? Mikoc Fukitol Neither View Results  Loading ...

Every Tuesday JunaD puts out a new batch of his favorite Cafepress tees on his blog/review site, TuesdayTeez.  Looking at today’s featured designs, I quickly noticed “Power Tools,” a slick play on words about some of Photoshop’s most used tools.  On second thought, did Photoshop ever have two selection tools, and would you consider them to be power tools?

All of the shirts pictured above are from a site called GeekyTeez, which has a predictable potpourri of themed shirts ranging from video games, coding humor, nostalgia, video game nostalgia, and the obligatory pirate inspired panache.  There’s even a romantic t-shirt about chess, which my dad would probably appreciate.   [Cafepress via TuesdayTeez]

Threadless released a bunch of new t-shirts today, and I just had to get this one in.  Turns out meat IS murder.

P.S.: PETA is at least making an attempt to meet all you carnivorous meatheads halfway.

Just wanted to post some carnivorous t’s in response to my post about PETA.

I’ve been working hard on a couple of my own t-shirt designs lately, and a part of my ispiration is a site called One Horse Shy.  You might not notice just by looking at it, but OHS fully relies on Cafepress‘ on-demand printing and ordering platform.  What’s amazing is how seamlessly the Cafepress ordering system is integrated into the website, and how professional the t-shirts and the site’s design look.  One of my absolute favorites is “bad grammar makes me [sic],” and there plenty more shirts organized into topical categories, such as  Political, Religious, Topical.

So I happened to watch a Guinness World Records TV special 2 weeks, which happened to feature a t-shirt related record nestled amongst all the other, mostly useless feats.  The record in question is most t-shirts worn at the same time, and needless to say that it’s more than the total number of t-shirts I have ever owned:

That’s 100 pounds of t-shirtness worn all at once, although I really have to question “Dance Of The Valkyries” as music choices.  Definitely has me seeing “Apocalypse Now” flashbacks. 

Further digging around reveals  many other failed and apparently successfull attempts to break the record.  It also turns out that the record Guinness showcased on NBC had already been broken before the airing of the show.  Take a look at the following clip, as a man named Charlie Williams from the UK sets the new record at 224.  This video wins on many different levels — each t-shirt is painted on by schoolchildren, and the guy makes funny faces while wearing all sorts of different sunglasses in each shot… just watch:

I’ve come to notice that some of the most popular t-shirt sites seem to be complete opposites.  Take T-Shirt Hell and Threadless, for example.  Both do extremely well, yet I can’t imagine their tees coexisting peacefully in the same closet. 

Have a different t-shirt shop in mind that truly is your favorite?  Let everyone know in a comment and maybe I’ll add it to the poll.  (Commenting couldn’t be easier and doesn’t require registration.)

T-shirt designers are welcome to plug their site, but please make a case for why your t-shirts really are worth our attention.

It’s 3:00AM here, and I’ve just figured out how to embed Youtube videos in my blog.  Believe it or not it’s not that simple, as grabbing the code Youtube gives doesn’t work with my blog software, and the official fix didn’t work for me either.  So, I’m kicking things off with the most amazing t-shirt related video that Youtube has to offer!

The T-Shirt Blog was started in 2006 and is maintained by one man, Alex The T-Shirt Blogger. The purpose of this website is to keep an eye on the multitude of up-and-coming, as well as established t-shirt sites, with a focus on t-shirt designs that are funny and/or aesthetically pleasing. Additionally topics of interest include t-shirt related news, really lame t-shirts that should have never been printed, and some occasional webmaster information for t-shirt designers.

The T-Shirtblog uses a heavily modified version of Vistered Little and is powered by Wordpress.

Privacy: No personal information is ever shared with malicious intent. Email addresses submitted via comments are kept strictly confidential.

Disclosure: While this site does not contain any paid advertisement, affiliate links are sometimes used in outgoing links.