$2000 T-Shirt Design Contest

admin    T-Shirt Contests, T-Shirt Designers     T-Shirt Designers, sci-fi t-shirts, sci-fi tees, t-shirt contest, t-shirt design contest, win money

The Curiositee Imachination T-Shirt Contest is offering a grand prize of $2000 for all you t-shirt designers looking to make some real money. It’s being run by the science and technology obsessed Phathom Tribe at Phathom.com so I think you can already guess what they’re looking for. You’ve still got until 11.59 PM EST March 15th to submit your entry, which is also when the public vote ends so the quicker you submit the better I’d say. Judging begins 16th March to the 22nd of March when the winner will be announced.

Here’s some of their blurb (complete with typo) to give you an idea of what you’re in for…

“Whether your mission is to protect John Conner Connor at all costs or you simply have an idea on how to make your flux capacitor a little more eco- friendly. This is the T-shirt design contest to melt you steel heart.“

Here’s the submission kit. You’ll be glad to know you can make unlimited entries too! So if you’re over 18, a sci-fi buff, and handy with a Wacom then here’s your chance to pay off those Xmas bills. If you want to keep up with all the latest then follow them at Twitter. Let’s hope they’ve bought the ‘Curiositee.com’ domain which is lying empty right now as hosting a t-shirt brand in a subdirectory won’t do them many favours at Google.

New Standard Clothing

admin    T-Shirt Designers, T-Shirt Reviews     New Standard Clothing, T-Shirt Designers, art shirts, artist shirts

New Standard Clothing. A slick site, a great selection of diverse art shirts and highly talented artists from around the world, a t-shirt club to receive discounts, a very simple upload process for prospective designers, free wallpapers for your iPhone, and a fun and interesting blog, the list goes on but you get the idea. NSC are serious about tees, to the core! I really like the range of shirts on offer at their store, eclectic styles, beautifully conceived, and plenty of funny/quirky designs for those with a good sense of humour. It’s not often I can browse through a t-shirt collective and like everything I see but this is definitely one of those exceptions. Collectively the brand reminds me of a high class indie store in the right side of town, the art leaps out confidently from their site, well presented unique designs by artists with strong styles and individual angles on life at large.

The R.R.P for their shirts is $25 each but if you’re based in the USA you get free shipping too. You can save an extra dollar per shirt if you join their tee club but we have a discount code for New Standard Clothing that can save you 10% with the discount voucher code BTSAVE10 – just enter it at the checkout for a great saving. In the meantime check out some hot picks at NSC…

Hungry Like A Wolf Tee

You know the tune, now love the tee. Joking and Duran Duran references aside this is a great tee – simple, bold and true. Designed by the 3-strong crew of Australians at Leon Vault – they have their own online store which isn’t up and running quite yet but definitely worth checking out. Available in indigo in sizes S-XL for guys and girls.

I Love Science Tee

I can’t believe I haven’t seen this concept before, so obvious now I can hear the echo of designers around the globe sighing with disbelief. A great take on the whole “I Heart” brigade of tee design, which I personally can’t abide. Reinventing a t-shirt standard isn’t an every day event – kudos to the artist who’s managed to evoke a lovely retro look. ‘Engineered’ by Christopher David Ryan aka CDR, a quirky illustrator based in both NY and Maine. Just for the guys this time – in all sizes.

Bonjour Tee

Crazy yet beguiling, the Bonjour Tee for girls is designed by British illustrator Gemma Correll who, all in all, has a knack for depicting rather hilarious scenes such as this one. Available in all sizes. Here’s another by her hilariously titled…

Pugs Not Drugs Tee

Embarrassment & Breakfast Tee

I’m not the biggest fan of typographic tees but I really love the chaos in this design, plenty for Brits to have fun with including a twist on the phrase “Britannia Rules The Waves” to “Britannia Waives The Rules” (except that we do neither :/). Still very a swinging tee with a nod to Brit greats like fish and chip dinners and old Two Tone tunes makes it the Best of British as far as I am concerned. Mad but rather fun all the same! Designed by graphic artist Matt Lyon aka C86 – available in all sizes for girls.

Vertigo Tee

More one for fans of Roy Lichtenstein than Alfred Hitchcock I love the cocophony of retro graphics, half craziness is always a treat and the perspective of the guy at the top of the stairs tops it off nicely. Designed by Tomo77 who’s a mainstay character in a lot of the big contest sites like Threadless and DBH. Available for guys in all sizes.

Panda Rock Tee

A cool graffiti style funny tee for girls and guys with some nice splatters and drips to keep the urban crowd happy. Kiss has a new frontman and he’s totally wild. This one’s by Concrete Rocket - an old favourite here at Buy Tees. Nice to see some new stuff! Available in all sizes in white for guys and blue for girls.

Ursus Maritimus Discoteque Tee

Last but definitely not least, well, let’s say at least the most silly, I can’t help admire this design, it’s out and out daft but still I like it. Even with a swanky Latin/French name it’s still daft as a brush, if not more. Philip Tseng is known for his cute yet slightly mad illustrations, if you love cartoons, rainbows, and animals wearing clothes he’s the guy to see! Available in all sizes for guys (though definitely worth NSC considering printing this one up for the girls!).

Set yourself a new standard in t-shirt fashion at www.newstandardclothing.com.

Are T-Shirt Communities A Rip-Off?

admin    T-Shirt Articles     Design By Humans, T-Shirt Designers, Teextile, Threadless, cafepress, crowdsourcing, spreadshirt, t-shirt communities

I love t-shirts, that should be pretty much apparent to anyone who reads this blog, and I alongside a vast majority of fans of t-shirt arts was excited by the development of Threadless and other t-shirt communities out there across the world. But, and it’s a big but, as with almost all business sectors, there’s good practice, bad practice, and quite a wide range in between. Now, I know how it feels to be ripped off, we have all, in our lives from time to time, experienced a “poor deal” at the very least, and sometimes downright theft. There are charlatans across the globe, pervading all kinds of product and service based industries, who’s sole intention is to grab your money and run. Fortunately the vast majority of companies realise that without long term customer loyalty there’s little chance of them going on a “rip off” rampage and getting away with it, not including those that have almost sole or shared monopoly of a retail sector, banking being a good example of bad practice.

As with the rest of the business world, the t-shirt sector has its “bad apples”, one of the first to come to my attention following an initially positive review here at Buy Tees was Teextile.com. They still remain the worst offenders in poor if not non-existent customer service, sending out t-shirts late, sometimes never at all, and even neglecting to pay their designers. Today I received another comment at my post Teextile – A Rip Off? which highlights all the crimes and misdemeanours of this relatively young venture into the world of t-shirt crowdsourcing. Here’s what the designer Warren Hart had to say on the matter:

“I let them use one of my designs ( SLF ryu shirt ) (http://www.fourninjas.com/shop/product/1006828) to sell in January of 2010. They have yet to pay me a dime for the amount of shirts they sold. In total they owe me about $300. For months I’ve asked and asked for my money and nothing. Just one sob story after another. They were quite rude to me as well. Now they don’t even respond. P.S. Tanga.com have ripped off my design as well.“

A few days ago I also received a comment from a reader complaining about the French t-shirt community site Wordans.com:

“Wordans has very poor business skills! I ordered shirts for a festival I was attending, their web-site claimed it would take 5-10 days and it took my shirts over 16 business days to reach me. When I cancelled my order they said they would not give my money back and I should have put a rush on my order even though I ordered with more than sufficient time!“

Now, despite the awful example of Teextile, perhaps the most crooked and conceited t-shirt community on record (read these comments to see why!), I might be blowing things out of proportion. Although I have a suspicion that most t-shirt buyers experiencing problems with customer service and shipping times may simply be on the receiving end of companies that are a victim of their own success. For every Threadless, Design By Humans, Cafepress and Spreadshirt out there, obversely there are dozens (if not hundreds) of failing t-shirt companies and ‘Print On Demand’ t-shirt sites, and it’s simply a matter of under-manning and underfunding. Without enough staff and a decent contingency fund there’s little most t-shirt companies, or any company for that matter, can do when demand outstrips supply.

Then again, I’d like to see a single instance of say a car designer, a commercial architect, or a governmental advisor in a quango who hasn’t received monies for their services. The truth is that certain t-shirt communities out there are getting a very bad reputation amongst designers, far worse than they will have garnered through a dissatisfied clientèle. Without design, the lifeblood of all t-shirt communities, there is no community, there are no t-shirts, no customers, no profits, absolutely zilch. It seems extremely short-sighted for any company, no matter what they sell, to cheat their own designers, do they think we are all fools?

The time is at hand, I believe, to stand up against the commercial bullies, the cheats, the crooks and the thieves in the t-shirt industry, and the best place to start is with the current worst offenders, Teextile.com.

Above is a button to include on your own blog, site, or social network page if you want to help stop this ever pervading problem. If you wish you can link to this post or http://buy-tees.net/2010/03/teextile-a-rip-off

or not, the choice is yours. I simply think it would be a good idea to make it clear that we’re not going to take this s*** off any t-shirt community again. In the UK we have something called Trading Standards that to a degree can guarantee customer rights, along with our own Statutory rights. In America the best they can offer is the Better Business Bureau which seems to be something of a voluntary organisation with little legal clout and a tendency to ignore those companies that haven’t signed up to their register. Useless.

What we really need is an independent body, funded by all the major t-shirt sites as mentioned before, i.e Threadless, DBH, Cafepress, Spreadshirt etc. This body would essentially provide a seal of approval for new and old t-shirt communities, including a ratings system that is recognised world-wide by the industry and the buying public. The ball is in their court now, who knows, if we all stand together on this it might just happen.

Buy Tees Relaunch

    T-Shirt Reviews     Baines, Cottonable, Rangga, T-Shirt Designers, T-Shirt Reviews, buy tees, buy tees relaunch, buy-tees.net

It looks like www.buy-tees.net has had (yet another) reprieve in the form of Rangga from the highly respected fashion blog www.Cottonable.com – he’ll be taking over the reigns in writing reviews from now on, so keep your eyes peeled over the next few weeks as we get the party started one more time.

There are already changes underway, the blog has had a revamp, is proudly wearing a new logo, is opening up space for advertisers, and offers a new featured category called T-Shirt Designers, which will hopefully feature plenty of new, views and interviews with all the freshest brightest new and established stars in the t-shirt design industry.

I will of course be giving a hand where I can, offering up suggestions and the occassional post if time permits, but all you need to know is no matter if it’s Rangga, myself, or what will in the future most likely be a team of writers in the industry, you can expect only but the best in t-shirt reviews, news, events, features, discounts, contests and much much more.

So, let’s all take a deep breath, a sigh of relief, and await the forthcoming relaunch of www.Buy-Tees.net

Stick in there, it will be worth it ;)

Matthew Skiff @ Randr Tees

admin    T-Shirt News     Matthew Skiff, RANDR, Randrtees.com, Skiff, T-Shirt Designers, limited edition t-shirts, t-shirt design

You may remember our post about a RandrTees.com sale back in June, well it seems that Randr have been taking the leap into the world of limited edition t-shirt production. What’s most exciting about their new direction is that the first artist they’ve teamed up with for the project is the celebrated t-shirt designer and illustrator Matthew Skiff. Teehunter.com who specialise in interviews with the greats in the teedustry conducted a great interview with Skiff back in June that’s well worth reading!

Skiff has worked with many notable bands and t-shirt brands such as Panic At The Disco, 410 BC, Family Force 5, Electric Zombie and many others, his skills are well renowned amongst those in the know, both within the business and fans alike. His influences range from kid’s cartoons to horror, the skater culture, in fact you name it it’s probably in there, but always with that slight classic Stan Lee style you’d more expect to see in a vintage X-Men issue.

Now Randr Tees have managed to get Skiff to work his magic for them, and as you’d rightly expect, with some stunning results. What’s more right now Randr are giving away a free matching belt (designed by Skiff) with each and every limited edition tee and are even holding a freebie contest. A grand give away for a top prize of each shirt from their upcoming Series (7 shirts in total). Plus two second prize winners will also receive 3 shirts each, selected randomly from the series. To be eligible, order before 10/18/09 for your chance to win! Winners to be announced on 10/25. read more

Brand Battle Royale

admin    T-Shirt Marketing     BOA, T-Shirt Designers, T-Shirt Votes, bad as hell, new tees, someone clothing, syditty, t shirt blog, t-shirt voting, urban apparel, urban clothing, urban tees

Once again teemocracy is in full force effect at AlwaysUrbanBlog.com – come and join in the fun and vote for your fave t-shirt label in AUB’s latest brand battle! At present there are four t-shirt brands up against each other; Bad As Hell Clothing (who we’ve featured a few times at Buy Tees), Breathe On Apparel (who we’ve not come across before), Syditty Clothing (who offer a rather snazzy selection of designer women’s tees) and Someone Clothing (who we will definitely be featuring in the future!).

You don’t have to sign up to vote but AUB will need an email addy, of course they say it’s to make sure there’s only one vote per person but:-

If you had a 100 different emails you could probably cheat.
I.P address tracking is a far better way of preventing cheating.
It’s a sneaky way of building up their mailing list, still can’t blame them I suppose.

Anyway it’s a great chance for your favourite t-shirt brand to get a heap load of exposure, well I say that but looking at AUB’s traffic statistics right now they’d all get around ten times more with a review on our blog but hey, the more the merrier. (Yes I’m not being as kind as I could but I had a rough night last night hah).

So here are the rules:- By voting in the Brand Battle, you are opting into the AlwaysUrban.com email list. Expect results and a pile of other emails to boot in your inbox?

Vote For Your Favourite Brand
You must enter a valid email
You only get to vote once
Voting ends 03 / 16 / 09

So let’s take a look at the tees AUB featured to entice you to vote… read more

Teextile – A New T-Shirt Community

admin    T-Shirt News     T-Shirt Designers, Teextile, Threadless, designers, t-shirt community, t-shirt designs, t-shirt voting, textile, vote for tees

WARNING: Teextile seem to be ripping off their customers and designers! Read our latest post http://buy-tees.net/2010/03/teextile-a-rip-off/

Teextile.com is a brand new t-shirt community site created by Franco Galvez. Even though the site has just got started there is definitely an inrush of high quality designs at Teextile, which to be honest on average takes a lot longer than mere weeks to build up, but somehow Franco has managed to create exactly the right environment to encourage the brightest and the best to his little corner of the Net.

Perhaps it’s because Franco is a desigber himself, born in Peru but im now living in San Diego this 20 year old graphic design student and professional told Buy-Tees he “started the site because to be honest its an awesome job, I’m not one for office work, dont really see myself strapping on a tie every day and going to work in a cubicle for 9 hours…”. I asked him why he’d started Teextile, he agreed that “perhaps there are too many of these type of sites already (t-shirt design voting sites such as Threadless.com) but as he states “there are so many awesome designs out there which aren’t being printed” Franco knew that the world could do with one more – and by the looks of it he’s right!

As the old saying goes, the proof is in the pudding, and there are plenty of servings to go round at Teextile, some of the tastiest shirt designs you’ll see in a long while, so come on and tuck in, because you can never have too many great tees. read more

Spring Is In The Air – Leap Over To SpringLeap T-Shirts

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     Spring Leap, Springleap.com, T-Shirt Contests, T-Shirt Designers, design t-shirts, springleap, t-shirt community, t-shirt competition, t-shirt store

I’ve been a fan of Springleap.com for quite a while now, and I must admit they’ve gone through leaps and bounds (excuse the pun) over the last year. Springleap are based in South Africa, the only t-shirt contest / fulfilment site on the continent, and it’s fantastic to see that the major players in the USA have finally found themselves some real competition on their hands. For a start it can only drive up the quality of t-shirt designs across the whole market.

For a starters they’ve been generous enough to supply us with a couple of excellent deals for all you lucky readers!

Firstly a whopping 20% off all orders for the next month and a permanent 10% off all orders FOREVER!

Furthermore they provide a unique and refreshing view on t-shirt design and graphic design in general, the truth is the standard of design at this unique t-shirt label has rocketed over the past 12 months, and I have to tip my hat to them (if I had a hat) for the incredible achievements they’ve made in their eventful rise to the top. Not only has their presence on the Net exploded, with an enormously popular Alexa traffic ranking floating around the 40K mark at the moment, and almost 10,000 listings on Google, plus a phenomenal amount of press coverage. They’ve even branched out in to wholesale now and have started selling at two stores in South Africa.

If you’re looking for intelligent design, a progressive attitude to community building, extreme quality in both product design and production, then Springleap are a major contender, ignore them at your peril! This is one of the few t-shirt stores I actually enjoy rolling around, sure they have great tees, but there’s a superb amount of customer interaction here too, but first let’s take a look at some of their fabulous shirts! read more

UStrendy – an unfulfilling experience

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     Black Sea, Linty Fresh, T-Shirt Designers, UStrendy.com, criticism, design, retail, t-shirt fulfilment, t-shirt showcase, t-shirt store, web design

So, we’ll start with a fashion site called UStrendy.com – Steve C. a fan of our blog asked us or the heads up on this site – here’s what Steve said to us…

“You guys have really pointed me in the right direction on some of your past reviews of t-shirt fulfilment sites but I can’t make heads or tails of this one.
Thanks, Steve C.“

Well our first criticism is that UST aren’t purely a t-shirt fulfilment site although thinking about it there are plenty of those out there already! What would make the site a far more attractive prospect for designers of all kinds is a clearly laid out categorised theme, some way for both producers and consumers to track down what they want without having to sift through heaps of handbags and shoes and beaded necklaces to find it.

I’m convinced the whole site is actually based on a WordPress blog, I even recognise the theme which funnily enough seems to disappear the moment you hit their store. Looking a little more closely I’d say they’d forgotten to add a background colour or a .png there, I can just about recognise the logo faintly through the glare of an expanse of white, and all in all I’m starting to suspect that the whole site is the work of a desperately underfunded amateur with ambitions beyond their budget. The store seems to be filled with lots of products entitled “Coming Soon” and priced at $0, if they maintain those prices I’m sure there will be a lot of demand :/ read more

A Rendezvous With The Affair

admin    T-Shirt Reviews     London fashion, T-Shirt Designers, T-Shirts, UK tees, affair, edgy, intellectual, intelligent fashion, street wear, the-affair, the-affair.com, urban wear

Back in 2007, somewhere amidst the grimy boozers and back alleys of London’s East End, began a secret exchange of ideas and broken dreams, a contract of substance over style, a pact was made between Zoltan Csaki and Dave Black. Two intellectual fashion renegades, who vowed to change the face of street wear forever, they made a promise to themselves and the neglected savoir-faire of the urban wear industry that things must change, and thus The-Affair was born. An artistic partnership that has gone from strength to strength, as each new design is release under a cloud of mysterious expectancy, raw talent and shameless egotistic aspirations bucked the trend and defied logic, creating what maybe one of the most intellectually inspiring collections I’ve ever come across.

Inspired by a plethora of influence, deep within the left-field of political and social unrest, classic style and edgy post-modern whim collide in a spectacle of high-brow t-shirts that punch and kick our complacent C21st society below the cerebral belt. Delving deeper than the usual gamut of pop reference, into the nether regions of lost kudos, salvaging the best of the worst in life, turning diatribe on its head, formulating without a formula a series of head-turning, head-scratching t-shirts designed to shock and inspire in equal measure.

Each shirt is made as a limited edition run of 200, screen printed on succulently soft American Apparel tees for a luxurious and stylish cut to suit the most discernible of t-shirt aficionados, veritably the thinking man’s t-shirt designer. read more