Compete-tee-tion

Shirt.Woot is getting a little crazy with their newest derby theme, asking designers to create art based on Madness. Here’s the full description from Woot:

Insanity gets sort of romanticized as the ultimate creative force in movies and television today, but there’s more than a slight difference between the savant with poor manners and the guy talking to his deity of choice via his Alphabits. So for this derby show us madness: the voices in someone’s head, the swirl of hallucinated hecklers following your every move, or…something else. Yeah, you could draw a lonely-looking guy in a straight-jacket, but we’d rather see you conceptualize actual madness. That’s high-brow, right? Finally, no one will have any reason to complain in the comments! Of course, even the criminally insane have their limits, and that means:

No Video Game references.
No bunnies.
No text.

And in case you’re inspired by the March variety, keep in mind our omnipresent rule about no copyrighted images.

The derby opens to submissions at noon on Friday, with submissions continuing until Wednesday at noon. Voting is on-going from Friday at noon until Thursday at noon. Three winners will be printed the following weekend (as chosen by site members), with the printed designers earning $1000 for the first night of sales and a potential $2 per shirt sold on any sales after that date.

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Shirt.Woot is setting things up for a derby full of delightfully odd tees (at least I hope!). The theme is Band Names Reinterpreted, and hopefully we’ll be seeing some weird choices. Here’s the summary from Woot:

Trendy mall stores have made it impossible to tell the difference between someone who is actually a fan of a band and someone who just spent $30 on a Ramones shirt because that one guy on that one show wore one. Since we need new, avant-garde ways of showing our disdain for those slightly behind the zeitgeist bell curve, use this week’s theme to craft shirt designs based on, inspired by, and reinterpreting the names of famous bands. You can go for the obvious take (guy with a radio where his head should be?) or the slightly more obscure (a single-engine high altitude reconnaissance plane?), but the shirt should focus on the name entirely. And while we’re not going to judge your taste in music (Mayor named John?), we are going to question the validity of any band that can only be found via some obscure myspace page with 10 friends. Keep it real, yo. That means:

No copyrighted imagery. If the band already did it, we don’t want to see it again.

No videogame references.

No bunnies.

No text.

-Edits, for clarification:-

No celebrity likeness, either. You’re reinvisioning the band NAME, not showing us the band.

Band names, not performer names.

The derby opens to submissions at noon on Friday, with submissions continuing until Wednesday at noon. Voting is on-going from Friday at noon until Thursday at noon. Three winners will be printed the following weekend (as chosen by site members), with the printed designers earning $1000 for the first night of sales and a potential $2 per shirt sold on any sales after that date.

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Shirt.Woot‘s newest derby has a Luck theme- which might prove interesting if designers address bad luck as well as good (otherwise, I’m not sure how many rabbit shirts I can take!). At any rate, here’s what Woot has to say about the theme:

Sure, you can get by in life on hard work and determination, but there’s something even more rewarding about skating by as the universe inexplicably and arbitrarily rewards you for simply existing. After all, anyone can just try hard. You’ve got the fates on your side, and that makes you way more special. This week, work your shirt magic and show us luck: lucky totems, lucky people, lucky happenstance, or just conceptualize the idea of luck itself. And yeah, we’re coming up on St. Patty’s Day and all, but anybody can slap a clover or a leprechaun on a green shirt. We know you’re better than that.

Incidental text is permitted: It’s okay if someone’s holding a legible horse racing form. It’s not okay if your shirt just says “GET LUCKY!” in huge balloon letters.

No Mario.

No Star Wars.

The derby opens to submissions at noon on Friday, with submissions continuing until Wednesday at noon. Voting is on-going from Friday at noon until Thursday at noon. Three winners will be printed the following weekend (as chosen by site members), with the printed designers earning $1000 for the first night of sales and a potential $2 per shirt sold on any sales after that date.

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Walmazan, a shirt designer who has had multiple prints sites like Threadless and Shirt.Woot, posted a great walkthrough of the creation process of his latest entry at Shirt.Woot. It’s rad to see how his illustrations take shape from sketches to the final product, and his unique use of 3D imaging is a neat trick that other designers might do well to look into.

To vote on the entry he wrote this guide for, click here.

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Shirt.Woot has a new derby underway, and this theme is sure to get most artists working in a different way: The New Vintage. Will we be awash is rehashed slogans, or will some people surprise the voters with something truly original? Only time will tell. Here’s Woot’s description of what they want:

For shirt-wearing enthusiasts, nothing beats scoring an awesome old t-shirt from a thrift store or vintage shop. Well, we don’t have any vintage shirts to sell you. But we can jump on the fake vintage bandwagon, and jump we shall. This week, show us a shirt that looks like you found it on the dollar rack at Goodwill. The subject matter can be either retro or contemporary; if you’ve always dreamed about a ’70s LOLcat t-shirt, you can haz it. But the look must be vintage, through the graphic style, the choice of fonts, distressed effects, or preferably all of the above. Wait a minute: “choice of fonts”? That must mean…

Text is permitted as part of a design with images or graphics. No slogan-only shirts.

No references to any video games about mustachioed Italian plumbers.

No references to any ’70s blockbuster films about a struggle against a dark intergalactic empire.

The derby opens to submissions at noon on Friday, with submissions continuing until Wednesday at noon. Voting is on-going from Friday at noon until Thursday at noon. Three winners will be printed the following weekend (as chosen by site members), with the printed designers earning $1000 for the first night of sales and a potential $2 per shirt sold on any sales after that date.

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Shirt.Woot is back with another new derby, this time celebrating Olympic fever with the theme Faster, Higher, Stronger. Here’s their summary:

Commercialism and cheating and poorly-designed venues aside, those three words are supposed to be what the hulaballoo in Vancouver is all about. Striving for perfection. Friendly competition. Pushing the limits of what human beings (or aliens, or whatever) are capable of. At their best, the Olympics embody those ideals. So take those three simple words as inspiration for your design this week, even if the real Olympics aren’t always so pure of heart.

We are not looking for Olympic-themed shirts. Please don’t use the five rings, Olympic mascots, or any other specifically Olympic imagery in your shirt. The Olympic motto should be the jumping-off point for your design, not the final destination.

No text.

No bunnies.

No Mario.

The derby opens to submissions at noon on Friday, with submissions continuing until Wednesday at noon. Voting is on-going from Friday at noon until Thursday at noon. Three winners will be printed the following weekend (as chosen by site members), with the printed designers earning $1000 for the first night of sales and a potential $2 per shirt sold on any sales after that date.

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Shirt.Woot is having one of their infamous double-take derbies this week, where they’ve hand-picked some of the best and most interesting designs for a second chance at derby glory. While I’ve been fairly bored by the last few of these, this one has some particularly good entries. It’s the first double-take in awhile to have multiple entries that I’d eagerly buy and where.

I’ve linked my top two favorites above, but honestly there’s a lot more worth a look. The top three vote-getters will print next weekend, and a few lucky entries will be chosen as Editor’s Choice picks later that week.

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