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.

Camaro T-Shirt Design Contest at Yerzies

If you like cars and you like designing you will be delighted to hear that Yerzies are holding a Camaro T-Shirt design contest with a $500 first prize. You must be a US resident to take part though. Check out Yerzies for Terms and Conditions and other details.

Incubus T-Shirt Design Winners Announced at DBH

Back on June 16th I told you guys about the Incubus t-shirt design contest being held at Design by Humans and I totally forgot that it had happened. Well, no worries because I was reminded today by the annnoucement at Design by Humans. Of all places! Anyway, it is an excellent illustration and I guess a deserved win. I say ‘guess’ because I haven’t seen the competition. Anyway, as the illustration is a little hard to see on the tee I have included a closeup too.

Free Promotional Gear

YOUTHEDESIGNER is holding a contest  to provide you with a great free promotional package from UPrinting.com. “One lucky winner will win 500 business cards, 250 stickers and 250 hang tags courtesy of UPrinting.com”. You just have to leave a relevant comment (see post for details) to be in with a chance of winning this package.

Even if you don’t win this contest, if you want to launch your own line, these are things that you should definitely consider. Always hand out your business cards to potential buyers, pin them on notice boards etc. If the right person finds them word of mouth can really help your brand. Stickers can be a nice bonus for your customers and hang tags make your tee more professional looking.

Dreamhost T-Shirt Contest

I am a Dreamhost customer and this website is hosted on Dreamhost as well as half a dozen other neglected sites of mine and today I had a little look around the Dreamhost website and came across this little contest. Here is the challenge in a little copy and paste:

Create your own retro-styled DreamHost t-shirt design to recapture the early days of web hosting as we know it. If we like yours enough we’ll turn it into actual t-shirts. Our employees will get them, people on the Internet will be able to buy them, and YOU’LL get a year lifetime of free hosting! And mayyyyyybe even some copies of your own shirt! What the heck!

An here are some more details:

You don’t need to be a current customer to win. Just post a link to your entry (or entries) in the comments of this post. If you’re a winner you’ll need to be able to provide your artwork to us as a 200-300 dpi PNG file at a maximum size of 13.5″ x 16.5″. (Don’t forget the alpha channel data for any transparent areas.) File sizes must be no larger than 10 megs. Post an email address with your submission so that we can contact you if you’ve won and award you your prize!

Marlon Brando used Dreamhost to host his websites! Really!

Remember, this isn’t just a t-shirt design contest – this is a retro t-shirt design contest. Walk through a thrift store if you need inspiration. Ask anyone wearing a polo shirt what they think of your design – If they hate it, you’re probably on the right track!

I might just enter myself.

Basic details:

• Submission deadline is 11:59PM PST, Sunday October 11th
• Retro style t-shirt
• 200-300 dpi PNG file at a maximum size of 13.5″ x 16.5″

ShirtFight over but not out

ShirtFight have just posted the winner of their final bout. For those of you who don’t know, ShirtFight is a t-shirt contest site that just appeared a couple of months ago. They held a weekly themed competition and attracted great designers many of whom made designs especially for these contests. They seemed to be doing quite well until a few weeks ago when they announced that they would be increasing the time between contests for financial reasons. They later announced that they would be doing away with the contest altogether. I would guess that sales were not quite as high as they had hoped and these contests were scrapped to stave off financial ruin.

Over at ShirtFight there was a great community and I think they probably put a lot of effort into making their site a success but of course success isn’t easy especially in this industry where hundreds, if not thousands of shops are vying for the same customers and that doesn’t include the POD shopkeepers like me. I often read Jud’s (co-owner of ShirtFight) posts about how he created ShirtFight “to showcase and support really awesome artists and their work” and things like that and in that he has been successful. As I said, he built a cool community and has developed strong relationships with designers. This may also have been ShirtFight’s failing though as he should really have been developing stronger relationships with customers and spending his time marketing his products.

I follow a lot of tee blogs and I didn’t see ShirtFight mentioned often even though they had some very sweet tees designed by popular designers. Of course if, as in my case, they promised to send a tee and didn’t (twice) that might have pissed off the bloggers. We can be a fickle bunch. (I myself have recently been snubbed by Andy at HYA for reasons undetermined.) But hey I’m still posting about ShirtFight regardless. It’s all about the shirt, right?

Another thing I noticed is that even thought they have an affiliate program, apart from an announcement, they seem to be keeping it a secret. Where is the link on their site to the affiliate program? I don’t know. We bloggers like to make some money too even if it is barely enough to pay for hosting. Let’s know about it.

Anyway, perhaps now that ShirtFight’s contest is over it will leave Jud and Miss Ettie time to really market their stuff. They have a good product and a cool new website coming (tomorrow?) so all they need to do is to get the word out. Here is my shout out for them.

Britney Spears T-Shirt Contest

OK, so the prize is pretty weak but for Britney fans the honor of designing a t-shirt that will be sold in her store will probably more than make up for it. I’m not a big fan of Britney’s music but I imagine she is a pretty cool person.  She’s been a star since she was small and she couldn’t really handle the attention for a while which tells me she is human. She is also quite pretty. Ahem…

Anyway, because I am late in telling you about this contest you don’t have much time left. About three days actually.

The winning design will be for sale in the Britney Spears Online Store, the winner will receive designer credit and once printed, we will send you a few of your winning t-shirts!

Contest submissions will be accepted starting September 14 at 9am PST, ending September 28 at 5pm PST.  Britney will pick her favorite design and we will announce the winner on October 5.

All contestants must be at least 13 years old and must reside in one of the following countries: United States: Canada (excluding the provence of Quebec), Great Britain or Ireland.

20 Days Left for Submissions to Edo Label

There are now over 100 designs in the running for the Edo Label t-shirt design contest. The designs are quite varied with most of the submissions coming from Japan. There have been quite a few non-Japanese entries too though and there is plenty of time for you to submit yours too. There are 20 days left so if you are planning on submitting you had better get around to creating your design soon.

There are two prizes of 50,000 yen which works out at around US$500 and submissions close midnight September 30th, Tokyo time.

$10,000 Winner Announced at Design by Humans

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I’ve just been very busy. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the t-shirt world didn’t wait around for me. There has been plenty of activity and I think the announcement of a new winner at Design by Humans DBH10K is big news indeed.

This is a 5th win for Philippines designer, csj89, at Design by Humans and there are surely more to come.

The second place was also taken by a Philippines designer and last years winner Collision Theory. It will be the next t-shirt printed.

Third place went to Tang Yau Hoong for his surreal cityscape. The t-shirt came out very well.

4th place went to The T-Shirt Review favorite; SOS Strawberry by Gloopz.

The t-shirt came out no where near as well as the design.The tee is just too white.

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