The Best of the Best: Outstanding T-Shirts (Designed by Humans)

I need to purge all that negativity from my last post and focus on some of the greatest t-shirts available on the net right now. I could just vegetate in front of the TV, or argue with the neighbour about controlling his wayward dog and teenage son, or spend the remainder of my weekend inputting data at my new t-shirt printers directory. Sounds like another awful weekend, I’m sure one day I’ll be able to afford such luxuries, however until then I’ll turn to one of my favourite obsessions, great t-shirt design, and thought you’d like to see a selection of tees that have caught my eye from this legendary t-shirt label.

Design By Humans are an absolutely miraculous t-shirt design label, apart from the superb quality of t-shirt design available they have available there, the site, the format, the regularity of new and inspiring t shirt designs, and their honing of the Threadless method for selling t-shirts (to a far more select group of design geniuses who can really deliver), all amounts to one of the most pleasurable t-shirt shopping (or even browsing) experiences around. Here’s some proof to back up my point, enough said…

Once Upon a Time by CasJordi at Design By Humans – an incredibly elaborate and detailed surrealist dreamscape, I can see this artist doing very well indeed!

Country Club Nouveau by J3Concepts at Design By Humans is an old school/retro feast for the eyes! Again the detail of illustration is astounding, this designer obviously loves his vectors!

FlyCycle by Edelia at Design By Humans offers us a level of gruseome underground comic-style surrealism rarely seen on a t-shirt since the early 1970’s. I love the mosaic treatment of the fly’s eye in particular.

Bear Hug by JaynaJaynaJayna at Design By Humans is another highly popular tee, yet again surperbly executed, and Jayna has a miraculous eye/hand for complexed line drawing. Very apt title too!

GoodBye Old Friend by Sonmi at Design By Humans an excellent example of traditional 1930’s illustrative technique. The colours are perfect and the theme is particularly endearing.

Underwater Deer by FawnFruits at Design By Humans is another highy evocative t-shirt design, I do admit I love early retro advertising art, especially from the Art Deco period.

I’ve been impressed by the quality of designs at this site, perhaps even a little intimidated, however I’ve recently found out that they only accept .PNG and JPG format submissions, which leads me to believe their tees are printed using Direct to Garment machines, which means no vectors, something that can really slow down the design process for me. I couldn’t imagine anyone physically cutting out pieces of flock or screen printing at this level of detail! I’m going to try out a design on them and see what happens, hey maybe you could vote for mine (if it’s good enough!).