There are increasingly more business models being conceived on the web when it comes to selling t-shirts. While most sites are focusing on the bottom line, it is becoming more popular these days to shift the focus to those in need. Design Give is one such site where a portion of the profits becomes a charitable donation to the organization chosen by the purchaser. Some t-shirt sites have taken on the noble cause and forgot to come up with pretty cool t-shirt designs in the process. Design Give is not guilty of that.

Take a minute and check out their wears. Their chief janitor is a friend of ours named Darren Ansley and he definitely has a strong eye for design. Here are a couple of screen shots of the site for preview:

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.

We enjoy great t-shirt designs and we admire great designers.  That’s why we wanted to take this opportunity to spotlight one of the hottest t-shirt designers in the industry at the moment, Wotto.

Wotto has been on a streak recently and he’s racked up winning t-shirt designs over at Threadless, Design By Humans, and several other sites.

He has a very original, creative, and distinctive style. His designs usually incorporate images of living beings and monsters who are done in a sort of ‘hideously cute’ style in bright colors.

Check out these two popular designs he produced:

He has a ton more where those came from so be sure to check out his site.  We’re looking forward to seeing what he comes up with next!

We have been a fan for a while of The Dirty Coast and their t-shirts based out of New Orleans, Louisiana. They capture some pretty heavy issues with strong design and humor and print them on t-shirts to spread the message. We feel like this design sums up the anticipation of yet another hurricane that we are all hoping dies out in the Gulf:

Yep, with hurricane Gustav bearing down on Louisiana it’s time we all showed the weather-battered state a little sympathy.  As the shirt itself points out much of the country’s oil production comes from, or at least through, Louisiana and the last thing we need right now is an even more limited, expensive supply!

Our thoughts and best wishes are with the people of Louisiana and their family as they brace themselves for potentially another hurricane! Wherever Gustav decides to rear his ugly face, please make sure and do everything you can for those in need.

Here at You Design It we appreciate good t-shirt art. That’s why we wanted to take a moment to give a shout out to one of the best designers in the industry – Jimiyo, and help support his t-shirt print effort.
Jimiyo has an extensive and impressive portfolio of work and he is one of the top designers over at Design By Humans. He has a real knack for capturing the beauty and elegance in any rendering he makes. His work usually features dark, mystical, satirical, or just plain off the wall designs, but it is consistently strong. Check out this popular and colorful design he created for Design By Humans:

One of the reasons we wanted to spotlight Jimiyo, apart from his amazing talent and dedication to creative design, is because he currently has a new project in the works. He’s created an excellent design featuring the adage “Eat, Drink, Be Merry” and he’s looking for pre-orders to help fund the printing of the shirt! Check out this great design:

So what can you do to help support this artist and snag one of these awesome shirts for yourself? Simple, you can make a $20 pre-order donation to the fundraising event via paypal. Jimiyo is using tough concept of pre-order donations to help offset the costs of manufacturing the shirts and to generally gauge interest. Here’s how it works. The goal of the t-shirt fundraising event is to raise $881 in free pledges by August 30th. As of this writing he has currently secured $160 in pledges. If he reaches the goal of $881 he will email you to find out your size then ship out the shirts by the tentative target date of September 8th. If he does not reach the goal of $881 then your $20 pledge will not be drafted and you’re not out anything (except for missing the opportunity to own a terrific shirt that is).

Help support this terrific artist and his dedication to great design!

At You Design It, we do have a design studio where you can create your t-shirts all online.  But that isn’t the only way to get screen printed tee shirts from us.  A lot of the t-shirt printing that we do comes from graphic designers uploading their artwork to us.  This can be just as fun for us, as it is easy for them, because we love to see the high quality t-shirt designs that they can produce.

A few of the graphic designers that do business with us come back regularly, because they have clients that need shirts or they are designing stuff for their own line.  We are able to have a really good relationship, because we can give them suggestions and they can make changes on their artwork as needed.  It is also much easier for us to push the envelope.  When we have graphic designers who are willing to give us the blank canvas for printing their artwork on.

This was the case for this next design, because it is one that is right up our alley.  A few things that we want you to notice is the amount of colors, the brightness of the colors, and the location of the print on the t-shirt.  Here’s the design:

We had a great time with this one, because we were printing it on black t-shirts and still needed the colors to pop off really vibrant.  One of the main things that we did to create the brighter colors was to print a white under base underneath the artwork.  We love the final result and will let you be the judge as well: