UTGP 2011

What is probably the worlds biggest t-shirt design contest has yet again been launched by Uniqlo’s UT. The Grand prize is $10,000 which is pretty sweet for one winner. The contest is open to everyone regardless or nationality, age or whatever.

This time it is a themed contest which is a bit weird but that’s OK. I’m sure Uniqlo makes a lot of profit from their affiliation with Disney already and this will only feed the cash cow. Seems like it is quite unnecessary though.

Applications close September 19, 2010.

Link: http://ut.uniqlo.com/utgp/

Threadless Havaianas Contest Winners

Threadless announced two winners to the Havaianas t-shirt/flip-flop design contest but several other previous Threadless designs are also available on flip-flops. You can check them out on the Havaianas page of Threadless. The two below are not the winners, but two of my favorites that I picked out just to confuse you.

Artwork Junkies T-Shirt Design Contest

Artwork Junkies is another ongoing t-shirt design contest to add to Rude Retro’s ever changing list of t-shirt design contests. They are a German site and fairly new if I am right. I have no idea where I came across this one. Anyway, they seem to be carving a little niche in what appear to me as very strange designs. For an example just look up.

The Artwork Junkies website is painfully slow and fairly lacking in information but the prizes are as follows:

• 1 € per sold unit of your design for every shirt of the day (payment at the end of each month)
• 75 € in cash as well as a 25 € gift certificate for every shirt of the week
• 300 € in cash as well as a 100 € gift certificate for every shirt of the month
• 1.000 € in cash for every shirt of the year
• 1.000 € extra if your shirt is sold more than 500 times

They advertise that you can win up to €3000 but as you can see, that is very unlikely. Most people would just get €1 per shirt sold by the looks of it. The site is bilingual, German and English.

If you do sign up it would be great if you used “deadhippo” as the “User that invited you” on the sign up page. Thanks.

JiNX Design Arcade: New t-shirt design contest

I have mentioned JiNX here quite a few times. They are purveyors of fine geek t-shirts and more. Of course I just mention the t-shirts. More…not so much. Anyway they have launched a t-shirt design contest called the JiNX Design Arcade with a $1000 prize ($750 cash and $250 store credit). Awesome! Remember that they are mainly a gamer site so gamer humor in your design will probably go a long way to helping you get votes. Check it out and be sure to read the rules carefully.

Stone Temple Pilots T-Shirt Design Contest at DBH

The Stone Temple Pilots are the latest band in Design by Humans‘ music series. The prizes are decent and if you are a Stone Temple Pilots fans you might think that the prizes are awesome. Go to Design by Humans to get more details but submissions close on May 30th so don’t procrastinate.

There are three prizes of $1000 cash and more.

Tumblr T-Shirt Design Contest

I’m sure that you know that Tumblr is a hosted blogging platform and some of you probably use it. I don’t use it because I am a bit of a WordPress fanboy but I have heard only good things about it especially about its ease of use. Anyway, they are holding a t-shirt design contest for the next Tumblr t-shirts that will be sold on Busted Tees. The prize is pretty lame: 25 t-shirts, and it is only open to people who live in the US but if your design did get selected your artwork would be seen by a lot of people. I don’t know what kind of a bump you would get from it though. Will they credit the designer in the store? I doubt it but possibly.

Read more at Tumblr.

Linux Store and T-Shirt Design Contest

For all you geeks out there … well not all of you. For all you Linux geeks out there you may be happy to know that there is an official Linux store now where you can buy some absolinuxly hilarious t-shirts. OK, so they are not so hilarious but they are not bad and they are not too badly designed either but they are not amazingly designed either but if you think you can do a better job they want to hear from you. And if you do a better job they may reward you with a trip to LinuxCon. Yes, I know, wow! Well it probably really is a big wow for people who want to go there. Check out the info and links after the tees.

You have to submit your designs to the Linux T-Shirt Design Contest by April 11th. OK, so not much detail but click the link and all will be revealed.

DBH Facebook Profile Pic Design Contest

Design by Humans are holding a fun little contest with a $100 prize. You may also get a little fame so if you enter and think you might win and of course you do otherwise why would you enter then you better tidy up your website a little just in case you get some visitors. The details are below. I think you need to be a fan of Design by Humans to participate. So go check out the DBH Facebook page. There are already some sweet submissions.

The T-Shirt Vault is open!

Yet another t-shirt contest site has opened but this is definitely one with a difference. In the T-Shirt Vault all submitted designs will go on sale and the designers will received $3 for every shirt sold. When a tee is sold it’s sold on a DTG printer and shipped out, like a POD.  It’s not very clear but I think that the t-shirt that sells the most in a month will get the grand prize of $5000 on top of the royalties. Then $3000, $1500, $1000, and $500 respectively for 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th place. They are pretty decent prizes. $3 royalties per shirt is pretty crap but the chance to win those prizes might make it worth.

Well, again I feel I just throw my 2 cents in. The site design is nice enough but it’s a shop and they haven’t made that obvious enough on the front page. There are some pretty good designs in there but lots of mediocre ones too and you have to do a lot of clicking to see them in any detail. I don’t know how many people will bother with that when there are a million t-shirt sites out there with easy navigation and better presentation. I think the T-Shirt Vault will have a difficult time pulling it off as that is a lot of prize money they have to pay out which means they have to sell a hell of a lot of t-shirts just to cover the cost. I think that they might break even around the 1000 t-shirt mark which is pretty tough for a new unknown brand.

Also they are printing DTG rather than screenprinting which a lot of people have doubts about. That said I have some awesome DTG t-shirts and I think at this stage it just depends on the quality of the DTG printer.

I do have some concerns about the lack of information and Terms and Conditions on the website too. There are also quite a few broken links. Hopefully it will be sorted out pretty soon.

Having said that I encourage you to check out the T-Shirt Vault and if you like some t-shirts you will be supporting designers by buying them as well as being part of this new experimental business model.

47 Online Ongoing T-Shirt Contests

There are now tons of websites holding design contests as a way of sourcing designs for t-shirts and this is probably the most comprehensive list you are going to find. So if you are creating some awesome designs you now know tons of places you can submit to.

1. Threadless
   Of course Threadless would have to be at the top of this list as it is often credited as being the first to use this business model. It is also the biggest and probably the most successful of all the t-shirt contest sites.

   Prizes
   $2000 Cash
   $500 Threadless Gift Certificate (can be redeemed for $200 cash)
   $500 in cash each time your design is reprinted
   Up to $22,500 more if you win a “Bestee” in the Threadless Awards
   Alumni Club membership including a Medal of Honor and other goodies

   How often?
   Weekly.

2. Design by Humans
   At just about 2 years old Design by Humans is one of the most talked about tee contest sites and is famous for its large prints.

   Prizes
   Shirt of the Day: $500 cash plus $250 store credit
   Combined with Shirt of the Week/Month and the Rock Star program you could earn up to $8500

   How often?
   Almost daily.

3. Uneetee

   Prizes
   $1500

   How often?
   Weekly

4. laFraise
   Probably the largest t-shirt contest site in Europe. Owned by Spreadshirt they have a lot of resources. Specialize in cartoonish designs. Multilingual web site (German, French and English).

   Prizes
   €1,000

   How often?
   Almost daily.

5. Look- Zippy
   France based site I believe, multilingual (English, German, French and Spanish) and specialize in fair trade organic garments.

   Prize: €300 for 200 shirts, €75 for every 50 more printed
   How often? Monthly

6. Springleap
   South African based contest. Don’t expect to get paid soon. It is about one and a half years since I got runners up there and still haven’t seen a dollar which is probably about all I earned as the runners up prizes were probably the worst prizes ever for a tee contest. A few days ago I received an email saying that they are finally going to pay the winners but I’ll believe it when I see it. My advice: avoid this contest.

   Prize: About $900
   How often? Bi-weekly.

7. Red is White
   The premier Christian tee design contest site.

   Prize: $500 plus royalties after first 250 shirts
   How often? Perhaps monthly.

8. Bang Bang T-Shirts
   British contest site that focuses on pop culture.

   Prize: £100 – £125
   How often? Occasionally.

9. Edo Label
   Japanese contest site with bilingual site (English and Japanese).Prize: 50,000 yen + 10,000 yen  store credit.
10. Code Creations [Disappeared]
11. Shirt.Woot
    They have a Derby (contest) regularly as well as accepting submissions for their daily tee. Famous for $10 t-shirt deals.

    Prize: From $500 (I think)
    How often? Weekly (perhaps)

12. Scribtee
    It’s connected to the ShirtCity POD.

    Prize: $300-$500 plus $50 shopping voucher
    How often? Twice a month.

13. teetonic.com
    British site.  I haven’t notice much activity around here in a while.

    Prize: £100 plus 50p per shirt sold.
    How often? Rarely, if ever.

14. Allmightys
    One of the first contests where the prizes were based on sales.

    Prize: $2 per shirt sold.
    How often? Occasionally.

15. Cameesa
    This site added crowdfunding to crowdsourcing to build what should be a risk free contest site. They don’t print the tees until they are paid for.

    Prize: $200 cash, $50 credit plus $2 per shirt after the first 125 sold.

16. Ink Fruit
    India based site.

    Prize: 5000 rupees (about $100)
    How often? Every 15 days.

17. Monsieur Poulet
    Based in Paris, France, this is a bilingual site in French and English that uses fair trade cotton garments.

    Prize: €2 per shirt sold
    How often? Several times a month.

18. Fair and Bare
    British based site also using Fair Trade cotton.

    Prize: £200 plus residuals
    How often? Occasionally

19. Chimpogo
    British based contest site.

    Prize: £500
    How often? It says every week but I don’t think that is happening. Maybe occasionally.

20. Canvas
    Contest for Christian based designs.

    Prize: Up to $400

21. Ink Hound [Gone quiet]
    Design hats and t-shirts.

    Prize: $2 per shirt
    How often? Weekly.

22. Teextile
    Fairly new site that sells t-shirts for one week only.

    Prize: $4 per shirt for first 500, decreases after that for some reason.
    How often? Weekly.

23. Full Metal T-Shirt
    This site is wild. Like a cross between Dungeons and Dragons and bikers if you could imaging such a thing.

    Prize: $100 cash, $100 credit plus $5 per shirt (or print) sold for one year.
    How often? Weekly.

24. Teepay [On a break]
    British site similar to Cameesa in that the tees won’t be printed unless enough people order them.

    Prize: £2.50 per shirt sold.

25. Tilteed
    Popular t-shirt contest site with Tilteed Limited Edition shirts as well as a regular contest.

    Prize: $500
    How often? Weekly.

26. Goodjoe
    Looking for designs that inspire.

    Prize: $1 per shirt
    How often? Weekly.

27. Scopial
    Another India based site that attracts a lot of great designers.

    Prize: About $400
    How often? Don’t know.

28. bookis.org
    Similar again to Cameesa. This time though the designer can set the profit he wishes to make per shirt. Based on the Chinese idea of “tuangou” where a group of people get together to buy in bulk from the wholesaler.
29. Metal Ink
    Tatoo inspired designs for tees.

    Prize: $700 cash + $300 store credit + residuals

30. ArtyTee
    Not too sure about this one. Seems to be some type of subscription based store

    Prize: $2 per shirt (up to $100)
    How often? Monthly

31. SwishSwosh
    New site from the UK.

    Prize: £1100 + 50p per shirt sold for first place, £101 + 50p per shirt sold for runners up
    How often? Monthly.

32. Syckfits [Disappeared]
33. Badashell

    Prize: $200 + $50 store credit
    How often? On a break.

34. nomoretees [Retired]
35. Camiseteria
    Brazil based website in Portuguese.

    Prize: R$800 in cash, R$800 in store credit

36. BlackEyedT.com [Died.]
37. Is This Chicken? [Not active]
38. Collar Free [Retired]
39. itself
    Turkey based tee contest burst onto the scene about two years ago with a $4000 prize. Selected just a few tees and then no activity. While they appear to be accepting designs and if you dig around you can find a voting area I suspect there is no longer a contest. The last submission was in July. The last tee was chosen about a year ago.
40. Wooshka [No activity]
41. Milk Shop Gang [No activity]
42. Righteous Enterprise [Disappeared]
43. ice cream t-shirts [Be right back. I don't think so.]
44. Tasty Threads
    Never made it out of the gate.
45. Teeple [Retired]
46. tFuse [Reported Attack Site]
47. Caponocca [No Activity]

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Note: These are all just websites that I have come across over the last while or so. I didn’t search the web for t-shirt contests so I am sure there are some that I have missed. On top of that I am sure I have made some mistakes in the details. These things happen.

If you know of any other t-shirt contest sites or can see some mistakes I have made please leave a comment below and I will do my best to rectify the situation.

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