We are pretty excited about it because we are growing up! We will be posting pictures soon and giving more information because right now….we are in the middle of the move. We are still printing custom t-shirts and will not experience any downtime. Stay tuned!

The other day, we were windowshopping at a local t-shirt boutique in the morning as we got our coffee from Starbucks.  It was well before the T-shirt shop had opened, and I could see a t-shirt book for sale through the window.  It’s not every day that you happen to see T-shirt books, while windowshopping so I knew I was going to have to come back once they’re open to make that purchase.

The name of the book was Vintage Rock T-shirts and it couldn’t be more interesting for the niche it is covering. You can find the book here at Amazon and here is a screenshot of their order page:

The T-shirt book essentially covers the 60s, 70s, and 80s rock bands and the T-shirts they sold at concerts.  And it really isn’t a “reading” book as much as it is a “looking” book. This suits us just fine, because the images are top-notch and the layout is beautiful.  We definitely recommend it as a must-have on the shelf of your office or home library.  That is with the assumption that you are as much of a t-shirt geek as we are.

One thing that we thought was really cool was the image that was used on the front of the book. They borrowed the image to show the author’s name from the bass drum in an image for the Beatles Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Here is the album cover:

Why is that so interesting?  Because we just printed a large amount of shirts for a big customer of ours that was creating a new club for their employees.  Here’s the artwork for those shirts:

Now that was a long story, and we’ve got to get back to t-shirt printing…

As we have noted previously in this t-shirt blog, we just entered the Design By Humans t-shirt design contest with artwork that we named Shooting Stars.  We promised that we would show you just how easy it is to accomplish that t-shirt designing effect.

First, we are going to begin with the shooting stars artwork.

As you have seen us do before, we need to group the artwork so we can make everything easier to move and manipulate.

One of the most important parts of making this t-shirt design effect really pop and happen, is to choose the right colors.  Now the colors don’t have to be that particular, they just need to be bright and with a lot of contrast.

Next we are going to make a copy of the artwork, move it a little bit down and to the left, and then color it a bright pink.

We’re going to repeat this step, one more time by copying the artwork, moving it up and to the right, and coloring it bright yellow.

We always suggest you play with the artwork a little bit and change the depth until you get it right where you want it.  It shouldn’t take a lot for you to be able to get this technique and make it better than we can. 

When we get orders, our customers are very clear on what they want on the t-shirt, but aren’t so clear on what kind of shirt they actually want.  You may have a fantastic design and a really clever message, but if you put it on the wrong shirt, it won’t bring you the finished product that you’re looking for.  A few things to take into consideration is the:

1. Type of product: Do you want a standard short sleeve shirt?  What if you live in an extremely cold place and only wear short sleeves for one or two months out of the year?  You might then consider getting a long-sleeve t-shirt instead.  Another great option would be to choose one of our hoodies or pull-overs, and get them screen printed with your logo and text.
2. Style: We have several different styles just in t-shirts alone.  Do you want a more fitted shirt or would you prefer something looser?  Are you looking for 100% cotton or a 50/50 blend?  Do you want your tee to have a pocket?
3. Color: This is one of the most important considerations.  For example if your design is dark you probably don’t want to put it on a dark t-shirt.  However, it’s also important to consider how well the color of the shirt will go with the color of the design, even if you do make sure to find a good contrast.  Finally, are you getting a color that’s appropriate for the purpose?  If you’ll be working outdoors all day in the sun, you’ll probably want to opt out of that black shirt in favor of a lighter color.  You might also get more everyday use out of your ‘beach colored’ tee if it’s still a color you’d be comfortable wearing on a daily basis.

These are just a few of the considerations to take into mind choosing the correct t-shirt for your design and needs.  We hope this entry got you thinking more carefully about what type of shirt you want.

We came across a few good t-shirt blog posts recently that we wanted to share with everyone. These are just a few of the many we read over the past week so be sure and check them out:

1. Cottonable highlighted the cool v-neck tees being offered by Urban Outfitters this summer.
2. Color Overload created a great guide for converting your old t-shirts into a quilt.
3. Hide Your Arms compared the new t-shirt per day site TeeFury with Shirt.Woot.
4. MilitantGeek showed us the funny Caps Lock t-shirt.

This is the 2nd day since the approval for our t-shirt design submission and we are having a good time studying the process. We didn’t put our best foot forward this go-round because we wanted to make sure we learned the game first. As of early Saturday morning, we have received 2 votes and are barely hanging on to the first voting page. As with our experience with Digg and making it to the home page there, we are going to assume that falling further down in the voting system will ensure less votes over time. In other words…..it should be over soon for us on our first submission.

Here are a few of the improvements that we can make next time:

1. Make better color selections for the shirt as it relates to the artwork.
2. Polish the design and add more detail.
3. Stick to the theme. We liked the idea of shooting stars and went with the 3D look because of the stars. Looking back now, we feel like the stars were appropriate for 3D but the guns and floral weren’t. We will probably fix the design up more and make it more western/darker for the next competition.

So it is back to the drawing boards for us. We have the next theme picked out and need to get to work. We have also learned a few secrets to the process that we will post later after we test them out some more. In the mean time, visit our site where you can custom design t-shirts for your next event.