As I am just getting settled back in from the Pubcon Conference in Vegas, one of the top priorities on my to-do list is to give credit to Raven Seo Tools. These guys and gals took the trade show t-shirt giveaway practice to a whole new level. They should be the text book example for going above and beyond the standard giveaway tee and knocking this one out of the park.

When you are giving away a t-shirt at a trade show, you want to accomplish two things. You want the traffic it brings to your booth and then you want the residual advertising of the shirt being worn/seen in the future. Raven nailed both.

Here are three things that Raven did that blew me away:

1. Printed on American Apparel (top notch shirt that costs more but people LOVE them)

   They went for it with this one. The target audience at Pubcon knows a high quality shirt when they see American Apparel. It goes a long way with their prospective buyers.

2. Did a Design that Wasn’t Logo-Centric
   A lot of companies can’t resist the urge to splash their logo all over a giveaway. Raven created a catchy design that the conference attendees couldn’t wait to wear. They unobtrusively included their logo on the sleeve and the branding has just as much effect.
3. Did Two Different Colored Shirts
   It was Olive for Men and Plum for Women. What’s not to like about that?!?

View the images below from their blog to see what the shirts looked liked:

Here is a shot of the Raven team rockin’ their wears:

Heck of a job Raven!

In our industry, there is an overabundance of the used t-shirts. Whether they be misprints, stained shirts, or shirts with holes… there are too many wasted shirts sitting in every screen printing shop in America. Now there’s a solution for all those wasted or retired shirts with the list that Andy at Hide Your Arms recently created.

Yes, for those shirts that aren’t good enough to even be donated to Goodwill, there now is an answer. In fact, there are 50 answers. Click on the image below to follow through to the list of 50 Ways to Recycle Your Old T-Shirts:

Looking for some high quality vector artwork to add to your toolbox? One place that you may not know about that we’d like to suggest is Mr. Vector.  It doesn’t take long browsing through the sample images of the vector packs to see how much value you’ll receive.  The packs cover a variety of categories, including but not limited to, crosses, crowns, banners, backgrounds, etc..

Liz at Pop Culture Tees is behind the site and you know how good her sense of design is.  Just look at the design of PCT and Mr. Vector and the content speaks for itself. Everything meshes perfectly together, adding to the credibility of these vector packs. We definitely suggest buying a pack or two, you won’t be disappointed.

A t-shirt blog that we are a big fan of here at You Design It needs your help.  Andy, at Hide Your Arms, is offering a great deal on Threadless gift certificates.  He has some $25 gets certificates to Threadless and he is selling them for $17 each.  The guy needs a new computer, and quite frankly, we want him to make his goal.  We don’t want to imagine the t-shirt blogosphere without Hide Your Arms. .

He is raising money to get a new laptop, because his current one is on its last leg.  It is nice when someone is raising money and they are offering a heck of a deal, because too many times people just ask for handouts.  This would be a great buy even if there wasn’t a good reason behind it.  Good luck Andy, we hope this helps!

We are proud to announce the launch our new t-shirt videos aggregate site You Design It TV. We recently put the finishing touches on the site and thought there was no better place to make the announcement than the official You Design It blog.

The site will be updated often with embedded videos from video sites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Blip and more. They will cover a wide array of topics that are all t-shirt related. We hope you can learn, laugh, or be inspired by the videos we are hand-selecting from the web for posting on the site. Please let us know if there are any videos of yours that you would like for us to feature on You Design It TV. We will be more than happy to do so.

Signs are pointing in the direction that the worst is behind us in terms of the poor economy! We have a long way to go but we’re glad everything is moving in the right direction. Even so, we’ll still be known for cheap custom t-shirts because you shouldn’t have to pay a lot to get high quality. Please let us know how You Design It can help you out with your next t-shirt project.