Compete-tee-tion

Since the Threadless Eagle vs. Shark competition deadline passed a few days ago, here’s a look at my favorite three entries:

This shirt is fantastic in just about every way. The awkwardness is easy to understand and the style (reminiscent of old circus posters) is impeccable.

Curses uses a great style (one that hasn’t been printed very often at Threadless). The story is easy to understand at a glance, and it has a lot of visual power.

Looking for Love is more of a typical Threadless shirt, employing cute animals to service the theme. But the detailing, from textures on the animals to a neat star pattern in the background, set this submission apart from the pack.

Any of those three (and a handful of other nice designs) would be a great addition to the catalog and a worthy prize winner.

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Either I’m really easy to please today, or this was an exceptional crop of new shirts. I like every single shirt for sale today, and there are a couple that are on my buy list.

The best of the bunch, though, has got to be Priscilla Wilson’s excellent My Father Was a Sailor:

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Everyone wears t-shirts. And these days, it seems like nearly everyone is selling them, too. This is great news for people who can come up with cool t-shirt slogan ideas, because a lot of sites are willing to pony up big cash for them.

1. ThinkGeek. The big daddy of all nerd stores wants your ideas, and they’re willing to pay big for them. If you provide a slogan they use, you’ll get $250 (or a $300 gift certificate for the site).

2. Nerdy Shirts. Like the name says, they’re in the business of selling shirts to nerds. No art skills required, if your slogan (or t-shirt idea) is up to par with their product line, they’ll pay you $50.

3. ShirtADay. A relative newcomer to the t-shirt sales scene, this website features a brand new t-shirt design every day of the week. And that means they need a lot of shirt ideas. If you send them a PhotoShop file of your slogan and they use it, you’ll get a percentage of the day’s sales.

Honorable Mentions:

4. Threadless. Although they’re better known for more illustrative shirts, Threadless is also in the business of printing t-shirt slogans. If you’re slogan is printed, you’ll get $100 and a $100 gift certificate to the site. This is great, but the trouble is that new slogan tees rarely get printed and there is a ton of competition.

5. La Fraise. Sort of a European version of Threadless, La Fraise is also better known for designed t-shirts. It’s unclear what the odds are of getting a slogan printed right now (the site just broke off into three regions, each with its own slogan contest), but at any rate this is only of real interest to Europeans (you need a European address- or a fake one- just to register for the site). The prize for getting a slogan is also unclear, so be careful.

There you go, T-Shirt Slogan writers of tomorrow. When those slogan paychecks start pouring in, how about redirecting some of that my way?

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It seems like every region will soon have it’s own t-shirt competition giant, and Myntra seems to be the first to lay claim on India. Although they currently resemble ShirtCity much more than Threadless, I wouldn’t be suprised if they evolve into something more exclusive eventually.

Myntra offers designers 10% of the revenue from their designs.

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Oh lovely Monday, how I love the new shirts you inevitably bring.

Threadless has some new tees, as usual, but shockingly I don’t really care for most of them. I’m sure they have great personalities, though. The only real winners for me this week are the Select shirt, Diodes Are a Girl’s Best Friend and the reprints, Pickles are Cucumbers Soaked in Evil and Octopus.

At any rate, since there aren’t any new additions to the other shirt sites that are worth mentioning, Threadless still maintains a huge lead over the competition when it comes to style, even on days when their choices don’t match my taste.

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There’s an article in CNN Money about Threadless. I have to say, I was unaware that some of those shirts cost as little as $4 to produce! Dang, talk about your profit margins…

It was also news to me that Naked and Angry is considered a flop. I feel like the idea is certainly there, but the site itself is much less intuitive and fun to use than the Threadless one. Hopefully they haven’t given up on it yet, I think it has potential to grow.

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New shirts have been posted at Threadless. I’m rather partial to Sound of Silents.

There have also been a few new additions made to the Camiseteria catalog. The best of the bunch is Para Rene Magritte, which is eerily similar to Threadless’ Can’t See the Forest But For the Socks, only with less feet and more Magritte (which is a massive improvement, in my opinion).

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