If you’re not sure what ‘Halloweek’ is in the first place, then you’re probably quite confused as to what ‘Halloweek 2′ might be.  So, for clarification, ‘Halloweek’ is the Halloween t-shirt contest being done over at Design By Humans, and as you’ve probably now figured out, this is their second annual edition.

Here’s the info from DBH:

“HALLOWEEK 2!
Calling all monsters, mummies, and ghouls! The 2nd Annual DBH HALLOWEEK is here! So get designing the scariest, most halloweeniest tee design out there! Please feel free to submit all forms of the bizarre. As usual, we reserve the right to filter any submissions we consider too over the top (dead babies and such).”

The top five winners will receive $500 cash and $250 in DBH credit.  The contest began September 16th and will end tomorrow on the 30th.  That means there’s still time to vote on your favorites designs and even submit something if you can scramble!

Winners will be announced one each day starting on Oct. 13th. We were definitely a little late to this party and wished we would have entered. It looks like we will have to set our sights on Halloweek 3.

It’s once again time for our weekly round up of the top blogs of the week.  We were really impressed with the quality this week and it took some trimming to get the list down to something we can work with!

Autumn = Embarrassment from Shirts On Sale
This amusing selection from SOS plays on the idea that in autumn when the trees begin to lose their leaves they are understandably embarrassed about their lack of covering.  Cute concept and well executed.

DBH10K 4th Place from The T-Shirt Review
This blog does a great job pointing out and reviewing Jimiyo’s “Fight the Good Fight”.  As the blog points out the detail is amazing!

Global Goodie from ILoveYourShirt
Once again ILoveYourShirt has found a truly fascinating company and done an excellent write up on them!  This blog is about a clothing line aimed at children to help teach them about food in different cultures.

Drawlimited.com Need Your Doodles from Buy-Tees
This blog points out toward a very cool website where you can submit your doodles and, if you’re lucky, hope to see them on a shirt on other people!  It’s a cool idea and some of the artwork worth printing.

I’m So Adjective from Funky Duds
I really love this awesome t-shirt…or should I say I really verb this adjective noun?  Anyway, this one’s a sure hit for any grammar nerd and it has the added bonus of helping you learn to diagram your sentences.

Micky Mouse Trapped by Addiction from Defunkd
This blog points us toward a vintage t-shirt with an amusing write-up of some of Micky’s darkest days.  If you love (or hate) Disney, you’re sure to get a laugh out of this one.

Mr. Spork from Shirts on Sale
Okay, I admit it; I love a good pun.  Explaining the shirt will of course ruin the joke, just remember that a ’spork’ is a cross between a fork and a spoon.

Cameesa – Crowdfunding Fashion from Addic[tee]d
Wow!  This is one of the most psychedelic, colorful, and all around original t-shirts that I’ve seen in awhile.  The design can only be accurately described as ‘trippy’.  Check it out.

Collarfree from T Shirt Review
This blog gives us information and a very cool write-up on the company ‘Collarfree’.  They have some really awesome designs and they’re definitely worth a few mouse clicks to scan through.  Thanks for the heads up T Shirt Review!

The Photo Guessing Game from Rumplo
This is definitely a fantastic idea and this blog was one of the most fun to read this week.  If you spend a lot of time checking out t-shirt sites you’re bound to get a kick out of this one and you’ll probably kick some butt and get most of them right!  Let us know how many you get.

New This Week at Design By Humans from Compete-tee-tion
This blog post rounds up the top new designs of the week over at Design By Humans and offers a brief review of each.  They had some really great ones this week!

Self Service from Pop Culture Tees
Wow!  I’d definitely hate to have to pay to fill up that guy!  I wonder what sort of millage he gets?  Amusing shirt, well designed, and sure to be a hit with Transformers fans everywhere!

Coltesse from The Fat Seagull
This Fat Seagull blog introduces us to the company ‘Coltesse’.  They have some really terrific designs.  Indeed if we weren’t featuring this write up we’d have brought a few more by them.

The Raw Feed T-Shirt News Roundup from Tcritic
Wow!  Karl Long really took his time and brought us some truly amazing designs and some awesome reviews.  This is a must-check-out for any t-shirt lover.

Sullen x Nikko, Skull Head T-Shirt from The Daily Tee
This is a pretty dark, twisted looking design.  In fact, it probably would have gone well with last week’s Twisted round up.  Unfortunately that list is completed so we’re throwing it in here as a belated bonus.

A few weeks ago we had the honor of guest blogging at Pop Culture Tees, a t-shirt blog that we frequently visit. The first thing about the blog that got my attention was the sick design with some cool contrasting colors. Liz took the blog design to another level to say the least. The thing that got me hooked was the strong content. Liz definitely has a right brain to match the left. Her design and copywriting skills are equally advanced.

Our article was about taking good artwork and making it great for t-shirt printing. Just some simple tips on cleaning up artwork to ensure the best possible t-shirt print. Here are a few screenshots of the post and you can read it here:

Thanks to Pop Culture Tees for the opportunity and we encourage you to start following their work if you don’t already.

We want to give a quick shout out to a really talented designer with a lot of great t-shirt prints.  Sven Palmowski, aka a.mar.illo, has a new shirt over at Design By Humans called ‘The Prophecy’:

As you can see this terrific oversized print features a futuristic city scene with details that seem both sharp and somehow blurred and muddled at the same time (which often makes for more ‘realistic’ future scenes since no one’s actually seen them ).

A.mar.illo has quite a few other awesome designs as well.  Check out his site at http://www.palmowski.eu/.

I love this one because the glasses are SO prominent.  He definitely took artistic rights by calling the thing wearing the glasses a boy.  The font used is cool because it looks homemade.

We’re looking forward to seeing more great work from a.mar.illo in the future!  Be sure to check out his site and let us know your favorites.

Over the past few weeks we’ve created a series of blog posts to assist people in creating their own t-shirt line.  The past blogs have acted as an introduction to the process, help with design, and knowing your audience.  Today we would like to focus on a topic which goes hand in hand with knowing your audience, knowing your competitors.  This is something which we’ve touched on lightly in our past blogs and today we would like to nail down a few more of the specifics.  We hope that you’ll find this helpful and we encourage you to check out the other blogs in the series as well.

Knowing who your competitors are is essential.  It lets you know what you’re up against.  If your customers repeatedly mention ‘XYZ T-Shirts’ or compare your products to ‘XYZ T-Shirts’ then you can bet that getting to know a little bit about ‘XYZ T-Shirts’ is a good idea!  If possible, find out:

-how long they’ve been around
-how large are they in terms of sales, capital, and profit
-how large they are in terms of employee size
-where they are based
-how much they spend in advertising sales
-how many products they offer

This is certainly not an exhaustive list of the possible information you’ll want to find out about them, but it’s a good start and it’s general enough to be helpful in most cases.  Basically the function of all of these different questions is the same; they questions will help you learn about your competitors and it will put everything into perspective for you.

For example, you might be bummed out after your first year to find out that you only made a fraction of the sales that ‘XYZ T-Shirts’ made.  On the other hand, if you know that XYZ has been in business for many years, that they have a huge staff size, that they spend tons in advertising and other overhead, then you might not feel so bad about your own first year.

Knowledge about your competitors will also help you know what you need to do to set yourself apart. Remember, you want to continue to successfully appeal to your target audience like they are (presumably) doing, but you also want to find a way to brand yourself and find a competitive edge.  Without knowing about the competition in the first place, that becomes impossible.

Finally, knowing about your competitors will help you figure out what you need to do to successfully market your line to your buyers.  If you’re producing similar items and selling them to similar kinds of people then it stands to reason that you will want to employ a lot of similar strategies for advertizing and marketing.

Remember doing your homework and learning about the competition and the market will be invaluable to you in the long run!

In keeping with our past installments of the top blogs of the week, today we bring you another edition with a twist. In fact the twist is that they feature ‘twisted’ tees. Check them out!

‘T-Shirt For The Broken Heart’ from The Daily Tee
This t-shirt features a bloody and damaged looking, realistic style heart. The band-aids make it clear that this is a ‘broken heart’. This is definitely a shirt you’ll want to check out if you want to make someone feel guilty…or slightly disturbed.

‘Clash of the Titans T-Shirt by Pyscho Reindeer’ from Tcritic
When part of the blog title features the word ‘psycho’ it’s a pretty safe bet that the blog will make the freaky list. In this case the featured shirt depicts a certain creepy robot owl and links to a very cool, very freaky t-shirt company.

‘A Code of Honour Amongst The House of Thieves’ from Buy-Tees
Creepy, ghoulish arms, a half-dead looking girl, and plenty of skulls for good measure. Another blog that was a definite in from the get go. This one does a fantastic job proving information and a review of The House of Thieves company.

‘Inidivisual Have a New Tee and a Lovely Coupon Code’ from Hide Your Arms
A bit less creepy than most of this week’s picks, this one makes it in the merit of the freaky looking nature man with the red eyes and the flowers growing out of his mouth. An added bonus is that this shirt is eco-friendly!

‘A Vintage Pink Floyd Shirt That’s All Wright’ from Defunkd
Check out the pigs and the psychedelic Pink Floyd symbol and it’s easy to see what this blog is doing here as well. Not to mention the fact that Pink Floyd is iconic and the designs are just plain cool to begin with.

‘In Black We Trust’ from Addic[tee]d
Check out the creepy skeleton man with the long rocker hair and the crazy looking, semi-face design on the last tee. There’s no way you’ll fail to make an impression wearing those. We can even forgive the too-fast flashing animation this blog employes.

‘Ambiguous Shady Tee at The Urban Shop’ from The Fat Seagull
The Fat Seagull made an excellent selection with this blog. The design is a terrific all over print with a pair of textured sunglasses. Everyone knows sunglasses are a common tactic for disguising evil and thus this very cool blog makes the cut too.

‘Tomorrow Will Be Fine’ from Funky Duds
Maybe it’s just me, but that face – although definitely cute – looks a little freaky to me. Check
out those eyes and that smile. Don’t they seem to be hiding malicious intent? In any case tomorrow will be fine with this nifty shirt.

‘12 new tees over at No Star Clothing’ from Hide Your Arms
These shirts are pretty cool. Most of them are definitely on the funny side, but the campfire heart
and broken toothed lips are definitely enough to tilt into the twisted category. The very amusing ‘hoo’ and ‘Maybe Partying Will Help’ are high quality bonuses!

‘Barcodewood’ from ShirtFind
There’s certainly a healthy dose of symbolism and plenty of room for interpretation with this shirt. Are we destroying nature for consumerism? Will it ultimately overshadow everything else? Who cares (forgive the stolen owl shirt pun) when it features an adorably cute but twisted looking creature encountering a creepy barcode forest?

‘Beautiful Decay T-Shirts and Hoodies On Sale’ from Tcritic
The company Beautiful Decay is practically synonmous with creepy, but well-designed clothes. Just take a look at the first shirt featured in this blog and you know right away that these shirts are no exception. A skinny, pale sleeping girl who seems to be engulfed in a combination of her own hair and a dark, shadowy essence…well I’m freaked out!

‘When Animals go Wild’ from The T-Shirt Review
This blog is definitely the epitome of our creepy collection (way to go The T-Shirt Review!). We have an incredibly morbid statement written in blood red ink, a bloody ninja monkey, rabbits holding everything from bloody axes, deadly carrots, and chainsaws, a cat running away with a bleeding dismembered tongue, and finally what is, in my opinion, the ultimate in gore a blood-soaked Hobbes crouching over a mutilated Calvin….WOW!

‘New T-Shirts from No Star Clothing From WTF to McCain’ from Cottonable
I know we already mentioned a blog that listed these tees, but Cottonable has some great write-ups to go with the fewer shirts they featured and the designs are larger and more visible. Our favorite is the WTF pill dispenser. Yeah that about sums up what we were thinking after seeing this week’s featured blogs.