Compete-tee-tion

I’m pretty damn excited about the new Threadless shirts this week: this marks the first time in recorded history that I have 5’d two of the printed designs! Those two designs are the Eagle vs. Shark winner, Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places, and the most gorgeous shirt ever in all of eternity, Beasts and Pearls. Both great concepts, exquisitely executed.

Now, on to the other new additions… A Birth Day is nicely done, but I feel like the whole “unlikely offspring” concept is really overdone and this one doesn’t bring much new to the table. Messages from the Reverse is awesome, brilliantly drawn and creating a nice shape on the shirt. Skip Dessert is food with faces, so typically I’d hate it- but the styling is so fresh, I can’t bring myself to dislike it. Pense Pas Bete shows the world how shirts with lots of type should be done (hopefully some frequent type submitters are taking note).

As for the reprints, they’re okay. As always, I find them pretty underwhelming compared to the level of current submissions.

The Uniqlo UT Grand Prix is an annual Japanese t-shirt design competition (formerly known as the Uniqlo Creative Award). In last year’s competition, 30 designs were chosen to be printed.

This year, the prizes stack up as follows: Grand Prix- one winning design will be printed with the designer receiving 3 million yen (!!!). Judges Choice- 10 designs will be printed with the designers receiving 200,000 yen. UT Top Selection Awards- 20 shirts will be printed and awarded 100,000 yen.

There are no limits on designers whatsoever. The theme and style are of the artists’ choosing, and winners can be of any age and from anywhere across the globe. Though this is a Japanese contest, the contest page is also available fully in English.

If this sounds awesome to you (and it should), submit your work before September 20th, 2007.

It’s Friday, so the new Shirt.Woot Derby theme has been announced: Superheroes! A bold choice, especially since many feel that last week’s derby was marred by copyright infringement (something a superhero theme will only invite more of). Still, it ought to be fun. I’m a huge geek, so I will probably be buying this week’s winner no matter what it looks like.

There’s also a very cool blog posting up at Shirt.Woot showing the whole process of creating shirts (The cost estimates they show for each piece of equipment are especially fun). Pretty awesome- I’m still shocked that they’re able to get shirts printed so quickly.

Shirt A Day has updated the potential shirt area of their web pages, now allowing visitors to vote on shirts quickly and easily. Good news for both slogan submitters and people looking to bring back the rat tail.

InnerTee is a website that allows users to create their own t-shirt mixes (shirts made by using multiple pieces of artwork from the InnerTee library). Right now, they’re got a Music contest running. Submit artwork with a music theme for the chance to win $200 and an iTunes gift card. Submissions must be received by the end of August.

(InnerTee is switching domains right now, so there may be some oddness on the site until it is resolved. Check the forum post about the contest for more information.)

via T-Shirt Contests

Much like competitor A Better Tomorrow, Threadless has released a few of their designs as wall graphics. There are some interesting choices, but my favorite has got to be The Happy Creatures (pictured above left).

It looks like this is going to be on-going: Blik has set up an area of their site so that visitors can vote on which Threadless designs should become wall stickers next (I’m pulling for Foxy).

Starting on August 15th, La Fraise will be shipping to the USA (and Canada, and a host of other countries)!

To commemorate this, a new contest is underway. In the American Politics competition, artists will create shirts that reflect the weird politics of the US.

The winner will receive 1000 euros and a bag of American stuff. To participate, just enter your design before the end of the month.