Compete-tee-tion

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:

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?

The Uneetee $1000 winner for June is:

Yoshi Andrian Amtha’s Where Is My Happy Face?

It’s a pretty great shirt, and definitely a deserving winner (although, like many, I’d like it better without the text). If you’re interested in buying it, you might want to hurry- like most Uneetee shirts, this will be on sale for today only (though it will probably be featured later on a re-run weekend event or at a higher price in the catalog at a later date, if you miss this purchase window).

If you think your design could be next month’s winner, you still have nine days to enter the July contest.

The band Kings of Leon have a t-shirt design contest underway. The contest is in conjunction with t-shirt makers Barking Irons, which should give you an idea of the style they likely have in mind.

If the band selects your shirt as the winner, your shirt will be sold while the band tours. You’ll also receive an Epiphone Guitar singed by the Kings of Leon and a variety of band-related merchandise. 10 second place winners will get the band’s entire CD catalog.

This competition ends on July 15th.

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.

Every t-shirt designer knows the horror of designing some genuinely cool art, only to have the comments fill up with people who wouldn’t wear it. If your art isn’t suited to t-shirts, don’t let it go to waste! Check out Don’t Panic, an on-going poster design competition. They’ve got a variety of themes, so your work is bound to find the right place.

Winners of the Don’t Panic competition receive 20 copies of their winning poster and a share of the sales revenue from their work.

Red Bubble, an online gallery and creative community, has a t-shirt competition underway. The theme is “In Praise of Shadows.”

If, like me, you need some further clarification on that theme, here’s what Red Bubble has to say: “A celebration of the optical phenomenon of controlled darkness, endless possibilities.” Well, that certainly clears things up 🙂

Designers should also be aware that at the moment, Red Bubble only prints on white shirts. While this is an odd limitation for a contest with a shadowy theme, I think it can only improve the level of the designs being entered. Which is a good thing, since each designer is only allowed one entry.

Entries must be received by July 30th, 2007. The best design will net its owner a $250 voucher for Red Bubble (they sell wall art in addition to shirts, so this could be a very cool prize). Five runners-up will get $50 vouchers.