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]

#########################################

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.

10 Alternative Mickey Mouse T-Shirts

It took me a while to collect all these Mickey Mouse t-shirts, so long in fact that by the time I get around to posting them some of them are no longer for sale. Anyway, there are still quite a few Mickey Mouse t-shirts that we can actually get excited about.

1. Bukowski at T-Post – OK, so this tee is no longer for sale but I think it is the perfect start to a list of alternative Mickey Mouse T-Shirts.

2. Cute Killer by Gprod at laFraise – Mickey and a few other cute characters get what some may say was coming to them.

3. Crossbones at Badstarz – Well, Mickey is surely no stranger to pirates.

4. AV Mouse at Springleap – As much as I dislike the folks at Springleap I have to admit that this is one of the best alternative Mickey Mouse tees I have ever seen.

5. Mouse at Disturbia – Disturbia just loves Mickey Mouse. This one is a pretty disturbing image in a totally cool way.

6. Mickey at Disturbia – Walt Disney –> Want Disturbia…get it?

7. Fallout at Disturbia – He’s barely recognizable but Mickey is in there.

8. Playmouse at Yes No Maybe – I don’t know how this could happen but…

9. Micky Freak at Coontak – The things people do to poor Mickey Mouse.

10. The Real Mouse Tee at Another Enemy – Mickey has an evil side.

You can also get some pretty awesome officially sanctioned Mickey Mouse tees in the Bloc28 Series. Check out Addict.co.uk.

Springleap Video Interview

Our friends at Pop Culture Tees recently posted about this video interview with Eran from Springleap. I have mentioned Springleap before a few times as you might remember. They are a South Africa based t-shirt competition site. They seem like a nice bunch of people and it is nice to what they look like and how they are thinking. From the video and as they have mentioned many times, winning is not just about money at Springleap, it is about exposure. Watch the video to find out how winning at Springleap can help your career.

As well as the above interview with From the Couch there is also a video showing us around the Springleap offices and introducing us to the staff. Pretty cool and much shorter than the interview so you are less likely to fall asleep.

Some of you may also remember my criticism of Springleap’s prizes and mentioning the fact that I hadn’t received all of them yet. Since then the system has changes and they are awarding prizes of about $750 with no runners up to receive the pathetic prizes like I received. Well done Springleap!

I would also like to mention that I never received the hand-drawn poster of my design nor have I received any royalties from sales of my design.  In a way I have been waiting over 6 months for that poster so I guess they some more work to do.

Springleap Reacts

Springleap’s reactions to my review were comprehensive enough that they deserve a post of their own so they are copied and pasted here for your convenience. I feel that some hype was included in these responses though and I hope they can live up to it but I do have lingering doubts. When I reap the rewards I will post again. Also I’m pretty sure that the mixed metaphor of baby stepping in leaps and bounds is an oxymoron.

Some really good points Alan and i’ll just answer a few of them…as I’m sure Eran will pop round to your blog soon to answer the rest.

1. THANKS for the feedback – we still have a long way to go, and it’s up to the feedback that we’ll get things right

2. The Tshirts are a springleap style – we buy the cotton from South African mills, have it CMT’d into our design, and then have it printed. We’re still tweaking the style and the more feedback we get, the better we can make the tshirts.

3. I meant by “email you the poster design” that I’d email it to you so you could see it before we post it to you. We want to do things differently, so we brought on board springleap an artist to hand draw the winning designs. You had a really good point – we were all going to sign it with things like “Well done” etc, but now we’re going to copy it, and write on the copy rather than the original. Hopefully you’ll like what we come up with.

4. We totally agree with raising the prizes. From the september competition, we’ve now got 10 winners a month, and the 9 runner-up’s get R200 which is about $25 at the current exchange rate PLUS Royalties. (not a huge amount but it’s our first attempt at raising the prizes)

5. Talking of royalties, we’re printing low volumes at the moment, but are actively marketing the tshirts, so hopefully will get some big reorders – and remember the royalties are for life, so if we get a order for your design in a few years time, it’s recurring royalties.

Thanks for the review and the feedback. You made me realise how much we still have to do to get things right.

Eric

Hi Alan

Just to add – in the future we will be printing the designs on ALL sorts of amazing products – and that means more and more royalties for awesome designers like yourself for life.

We are still young, so bear with us – we won’t disappoint!

Just recently I wrote a response to your points that I think would be pertinent to quote :

“Regarding exposure – firstly we are HUGE on creating exposure for artists. It’s all well and dandy to win some cash but exposure is worth tenfold to a designer. Some of our designers have been on the radio, in the newspapers and magazines thanks to being a runner-up or winner. Some have also been approached for freelance work and we have opened many corporates to our designers with no cost as agents or involvement save providing introductions. In other cases where a corporate entity or business wanted some amazing shirt designs we have opened our catalog and hooked them up with the designer and produced the t-shirt. The designer would charge a freelance rate and there s the promise of more work.

The outer back of springleap t-shirts bears the username of the artist as well the title of the work – we are NOT Threadless or Almightees, Emptees and so forth. Our aim with this is to really expose the public at large to art in a gallery without walls – to remember the immense value that the creators of aesthetics and graphica have in their lives.

We don’t want people to wear a brand name on the outside of the tee the value of a brand’s product is that designer’s talent – so for us, we are a brand that emphasizes the artist as a brand unto themselves.

We are – in a sense – picking up where Andy Warhol and the Pop Art movement left off – exposing the average man to Art. Getting everyone involved. Very few people go to art galleries anymore, and while those galleries serve a fantastic purpose – the t-shirt is the most relevant canvas for our era.

We want people to go to shops looking for an artist’s name – not just a brand-stamp.

To this end we also include a postcard with every springleap t-shirt. The front bears a high res image of the design on the tee and the back bears the picture of the artist, a short profile on them as well as a few thoughts they have about their design.

Each springleap t-shirt is also bundled with a monthly catalog as well as a well finished button-badge (beating the design or an element thereof) with a saftey pin so you can pin it to your cap, bag, jeans, cargos – well anywhere your heart desires!

Over time we will organically grow the prizes – we would love to be giving the biggest and baddest prizes on the net – but these things take time.

As for US$1000 – we haven’t heard the winners complaining lately

With regards to our t-shirts themselves : the t-shirts are 165g combed cotton and a slim-cut fit. We have jst undergone a change in the cut creating lower necklines for ladies and adjusting the slimcut pattern for the men based on the feedback of the community and purchasers. The cotton of the shirts is manufactured specifically for us and the shirts are not stock tees.”

I think that you will find our new tees far more improved – in both softness and cut.

Ultimately springleap is still babystepping in leaps and bounds. We are growing organically and our aim is eventually to be incomparably rewarding artists all over the world in a massive scale and reminding people who puts aesthetics and beauty in their lives as well as the massive value that they represent, while offering the coolest tees on planet Earth.

Hope you stick with us and let us change your mind!

All the best

Eran

The T-Shirt Review News

I just thought I would let you all know that I have changed the RSS feed over to feedburner and that you can also now subscribe by email if you want to be sure not to miss any posts. Just check the bottom of the right-hand sidebar.

Other news is that in the latest Google shakeup The T-Shirt Review moved from Google Page Rank 2 to PR3.

After my lengthy post and review about Springleap not only was I contacted by Springleap but also by Skyrove who kindly offered to send me the Skyrove voucher that Springleap didn’t give me. I checked their map though and there is no Japanese coverage yet. Springleap also said there are some changes coming. You can see more in the comments for that post.

Also our forum is open and ready for posts so feel free to start a discussion and if you have any ideas about what you would like to see in the forum or in this blog for that matter just let me know.

Thanks for reading.

Runner Up at Springleap

Well, I don’t really really want to start two posts in a row with “Well, some of you may remember..” but some of you may remember a post a few months ago where I announced that I was one of the winners at Springleap’s t-shirt design contest. It took a while (several months) to receive some of my prizes (I haven’t received everything yet) but receive them I did.

Anyway I received a rumpled brown envelope with tons of South African stamps on it addressed to Alan (that’s me) without my surname. Pretty funny, I thought. Looking at the package I didn’t have high expectations about the contents but I was pleasantly surprised. The t-shirts were all professionally folded inside transparent plastic sleeves. Attached to the t-shirts themselves was another clear plastic bag containing a matching button (badge in British English), a card with your design (including Springleap logo) on one side and details about your winning design on the other and a small booklet containing info and images of the other June Winners. Looks very professional

That’s the t-shirts (more detailed review later), but there were supposed to be a few other prizes and there was nothing else in the envelope except a short hand written note from Springleap. The prizes were supposed to be as follows:

• Their own tshirt PLUS 2 others randomly selected from that month’s winning range
• A limited edition poster of their design
• Sponsored prizes (these vary depending on who is sponsoring these prizes and what they wanna give you
• R1 for EVERY TSHIRT of theirs that we sell

I realize that it may take time to find out how many t-shirts are sold before you get paid royalties and I wasn’t too worried about it because to be quite honest the royalties are very low. I calculated it at about 12 cents per shirt sold. Still, that’s about $120 for every thousand t-shirts sold. $120 dollar is nothing to be sniffed at. Anyway I decided to contact them about the royalties, limited edition poster and the sponsored prizes which I have yet to receive. Below are my questions:

1. When do we find out how much our Royalty payments will be and when we receive them?
2. I didn’t receive a skyrove voucher. I don’t know what it is but it was marked as a prize. When do I receive it and what is it?
3. I was told that I would receive a limited edition poster of my design but I didn’t. Is that coming later?

And here is the reply.

1. We will be building a system where you can see how many of your designs have been used on tshirts and other products and how much you have earned and have been paid. It will launch in a few months time. At this time we have only printed 108 of each design, so the royalties are going to be small until the orders start coming in.

2. The skyrove voucher is for use in South Africa on a wireless network – so the vouchers are for South African designers only.

3. We are doing hand drawn designs at this stage of your design which the whole team is signing. We’ll email you your signed design as soon as it is ready.

I was a little surprised that they only printed 108 t-shirts. At 12 cents a t-shirt that works out as a meager $12.96 in royalties for us designers. I know it’s possible that more will be printed but I guess it is not certain. This is very disappointing as I would make more money than that selling two t-shirts on a POD site. Of course I don’t have the chance of winning the $1000 or so grand prize with a POD but still.

Of course I am not all that disappointed about not receiving the skyrove voucher either as I didn’t even know what it was but I think it should have been clearer that this was a prize for only South African designers.

I am a very curious about this hand drawn design thing and looking forward to what they will come up with but I am quite curious about why they are doing a hand drawn design of a design and why they think we would be interested in their team’s signatures (autographs?). Seems bizarre. Also they said they are going to email it to me which means that, unless email technology has advanced tremendously without me hearing about it, that it is not the limited edition poster that I am supposed to receive. Anyway, time will tell.

The T-Shirt Review

I know you are all thinking. What about the t-shirts? How were they? What did you think? Well, I guess I should be embarrassed by this but I didn’t like my own winning t-shirt. The tee is too yellow. Maybe the yellow will improve after a few hundred washes but more than likely it will just sit unworn in my closet. That doesn’t bode well for future sales of this tee either which would also mean that my royalties will be pretty sad. It is possible though that these bright colors are popular in South Africa as another of the tees I received was bright blue and it is not something I could wear either. I am not really into the design either. The third t-shirt was not bad, it was black and I don’t really get the message of the design but that is OK. I think I could wear it.

I don’t know what brand they use but all the t-shirts are the same style and shape and I think the cut is a little strange. The t-shirt seems to be a little tighter under the chest which makes the bottom seem to be a little loose like when the seams lose tension. Also on the back of the t-shirt is the Springleap logo and the designers name. Regular readers will know that I don’t like advertising on my shirt and even though this includes the designer’s names I still think it looks pretty bad. It is big and if the black t-shirt is anything to go by, it may not even match the color of the design. I suspect buyers will also frown at this unnecessary addition.

In general though, and I feel bad saying this as the guys at Springleap seem really nice, I don’t think that it is worth it to submit your design to Springleap. Only the winning t-shirt gets a decent prize and if you have a good design that you think might win you ought to submit it to another t-shirt design contest rather than risk being a runner up.

My advice to Springleap is first to increase the guaranteed prizes for runners up as what exists at the moment is just unfair to the designer. Give the runners up the choice of which t-shirts they want to receive instead of sending out random shirts. This will also give you an idea of which designs that are likely to sell well in the future. Move the back print information inside the t-shirt to the printed label and make it more subtle. Be clearer about what prizes and how much money winners and runners up can expect to receive. Use different blanks. How about Edun Live? They even provide jobs in Africa.

Springleap/Markham T-Shirt Competition

Springleap is a South African t-shirt design competition website which I have mentioned a few times before. I was a runner up a while back for my Spam Goes Old School design. I haven’t actually received any prizes yet though even though it feels like forever since it was announced. (Actually two months ago.)

Anyway Springleap have joined forces with Markham, which is apparently quite a big store down South Africa way, to hold a special design contest. There is a R5000 (about US$650) cash prize and the same again in vouchers for Markham’s store. I don’t know how that will be of use to people not living in South Africa but there you go. They’re looking for T-shirt designs inspired by the current “fashion forward” graphic T trend – like the designs found currently on springleap.com and in Markham stores. I don’t know what that means either but you also have to use one of the graphics provided on the Springleap site.

Springleap Winner

In a previous post I talked about a submission I made to Springleap, an on-going t-shirt competition based in South Africa. This is my first ever submission to a t-shirt competition so I am pretty delighted to be able to announce that I was one of the winners. The prizes are as follows:

• Their own tshirt PLUS 2 others randomly selected from that month’s winning range
• A limited edition poster of their design
• Sponsored prizes (these vary depending on who is sponsoring these prizes and what they wanna give you
• R1 for EVERY TSHIRT of theirs that we sell

R1 is about 12 American cents I think.

I think the sponsored prize will just be a skyrove voucher. I don’t really know what that means. Anyway, thanks to everyone who voted for me. I appreciate it. Now you can do even more my heading over there and buying a few thousand shirts to really put a smile on my face. Spam Goes Old School at Springleap.

One thing to note I think. I didn’t receive an email or any notification that I was one of the winners. I think that is a little strange. I am sure that I will get one but I thought that it would arrive before the design goes on sale.

*Update: I received an update and told that they might implement and automated notification feature in the future. I kind of like the personalized touch though. In the email, you are asked to send the following details:

1.       the high res artwork for your entry. This file would be have to be in illustrator, freehand, flash or photoshop format. If the file is in photoshop format, please make sure that you saved the artwork in 300 DPI.

2.       A high res photo of yourself or an avatar (no copyright images please)

3.       Your date of birth

4.       What city and country you live in

5.       3 sentences about yourself and how you feel about design.

springleap Submission by deadhippo

For those who don’t know, deadhippo, along with Rude Retro is one of my pseudonyms. Just for fun, I submitted one of my designs to springleap, another competition based t-shirt store. So, if you are a member please go over and leave a comment and rate my design. If you are not a member you can always join. It’s very easy. My design is called Spam Goes Old School. If you like this t-shirt and would like to buy it you may have to get all your friends to vote for it as well for without enough votes it won’t be printed.