it just looks like they’re getting into a groove. I don’t know when the last time you have checked out their wears, but today’s shirt and a recent print called Campione really caught my eye.

Campione’s colors go together beautifully and the “little red riding hood” style goes perfectly. Throw in the standard $10 price from Ript and it’s hard to go wrong. Check it out for yourself:

Today’s $hirt is called Jumble and is a classic Greg Abbott. It has the Greg Abbott colors, characters, and overall feel. The guys style is getting to be so recognizable, which is a testament to his demand and exposure. Both good things. Here’s Jumble:

Keep rippin’ it up Ript!

With that said, a few things worth mentioning is the autumn pre-holidays so being held at Design By Humans. The tees are starting at $15 and the sale ends midnight Sunday.

I couldn’t mention Halloween and gruesome designs without including a few from Emptees. These designs are cool year-round and just feel that much more appropriate with Halloween being so near.

One design blog that isn’t T-shirt specific but occasionally throw some love our way is Vectortuts. They just capped off a Halloween Horror Fest of Vector Illustrations post and there were quite a few T-shirt designs mixed in there.

Enjoy Halloween!

With all that said, it is very refreshing to see a line like Holebrain doing the single color print and making it look good. In fact you hardly even notice the lack of color, because the design work so well with the color of the t-shirt. The style is simple and clean/cute. This is how a single color print should be done.

Creating these characters and maintaining a single color is a feat in itself. But creating them and keeping the same general look and overall feel is even more impressive. These guys are very lovable.

These new prints are available on the American apparel T-shirts with the label printed inside. A step up and in the right direction. Good job Holebrain.

None other than Emptees, of course. The thread was started by the t-shirt design guru Wotto, and it is serving as a place where any member of Emptees can hawk their goods. Selling designs on Emptees is nothing new. But having all of them in one single place that is current and fresh makes it that much easier to shop. The fact that Emptees doesn’t charge you for the listing makes it that much sweeter.

These designers have worked very hard, and it shows in each design. I’ve even thought about picking up a couple for wall art, because I like them so much. Here are a few that should not be passed up:

Answer: When a major company such as Threadless is able to partner up with a world-renowned art museum to give you international exposure.

That is what is happening in the…

Pop T-Shirt Design Challenge, created by Threadless and the Tate Modern Museum. The Tate Modern Museum recently launched a Pop Life exhibition featuring artists like Keith Haring, Takashi Murakami, and Damien Hirst to name a few. The museum has created a micro-site devoted to the Pop Life exhibition (click on the image to go to the site):

That’s what you call the real deal right there. Those are artists that we can all look up to and aspire to reach that level. This contest is a great stepping stone headed in that direction.

As for the design challenge, there will be two winners. The winners will receive:

• $500 Threadless Gift Certificate (can be redeemed for $200 cash) – approx £312 (can be redeemed for £124 cash)
• $2,500 in cash – approx £1,250
• Tate £50 Publishing voucher
• Keith Haring Figure with Heart tee
• Takashi Murakami Enamel Pin
• Robert Indiana LOVE Pin
• Pop Life catalogue and bag

And that is really just the icing on the cake. The contest runs from October 1 through October 29. The theme is to create a design that is your interpretation of POP. A quick search on Google for Murakami and Hirst should provide you plenty of inspiration. Just make sure you put your spin on it.

Click on the image below to see the Threadless page for the Pop Life Design Challenge.

There are two new tee’s that really stick out to me because of the colorways and how they stay completely true to the brand’s theme. These designs are ones that you would expect from Arkaik but are still cool enough to feel brand new. The first is the Anubis design on the teal American Apparel. Great colors and a nice collaboration with Survival.

The second is called “Not The Teeth” and is their first ever print on the kelly(?) green American Apparel. It’s bright and has a monster eating a skyscraper. What’s not to like about that?

So where’s this coupon code you ask? You’ve earned it for reading this far. It’s for 20% off and is FML. Use it at checkout when you load up on the new wears.

When the Black Axe write about t-shirt design, we pay attention. It’s plain and simple. These guys know a thing or two about designing t-shirts. They have designed for some of the freshest names in the music industry and their work continues to get better with experience. They just released a short video tutorial on masking and transparency in Illustrator…

and it’s a must-see about a very effective design trick. I have embedded the video below but I encourage you to also visit their site to see what they are about if you haven’t already done so.

Masking & Transparency in Illustrator from The Black Axe on Vimeo.

This seems like an ideal shirt for a future related company. The bright colors on the black shirt are definitely striking and it’s a good example of using the shirt as part of the canvas of the design.

Cool oversized print and it gets bonus points for being readable even if the wearer is upside down. All in all it’s sure to turn some heads.

I’m not sure what a future company is doing tackling an event from so long ago, but regardless their rendition is pretty cool. There’s a whole lot of detail done in that solid white print. It’s pretty cool

“turn back the clock with shout outs to eclectic moments and personalities in sports, music, politics and popular culture. From Larry Bird to Kris Kross, our tees tell stories of triumph, individualism and hustle, preserving the old school and creating new legacies. Pay Homage.”

You gotta love the clever marketing strategy: “Pay Homage.” What would you be paying for though? Check out these example shirts:

Anyone who’s ever been on a basketball court has probably heard of Pistol Pete (Ok, that’s probably an exaggeration, but the guy is pretty famous). I’m a big fan of the print with the pistol tilted over the basketball displaying his number of career points above the barrel. This shirt is a good example of Homage’s style when it comes to sports figure shirts.

This shirt is a perfect example of their efforts in the category of vintage style pop culture elements. Again, who hasn’t ever tried to solve a rubik’s cube? The product description supplies the little known fact that as of January 2009 350 million cubes have been sold and the rubik’s cube is the world’s top-selling puzzle game.

Another type of shirt you’ll find an abundance at Homage is shirts that are in support of specific states and cities. With this shirt, and the description given next to it Michigan and its beautiful landscape, who wouldn’t “Say yes to Michigan?”

Check out this cool, vintage style t-shirt company and decide for yourself whether or not you want pay homage.

Vectortuts just released a new tutorial from Chad Holmes about creating color separations in Illustrator for use with screen printed t-shirt designs. It’s an excellent article and goes into an amazing amount of details taking the reader from selecting the skull, adding strokes and layers and then finally doing all the color separation for a crisp, clean screen printed t-shirt.

A while back I authored a similar article on Vectortuts on the process of color separations in Illustrator for printing to film. IMHO, both will take the reader on an easy to understand process of color separation for their design. The main difference between the two is that Chad went into much more detail and encompassed more steps in the design process whereas I focused primarily on the color separation aspect by itself.

For example Steps 7-10 of Chad’s tutorial feature the step of adding black outlines and other detail to the skull while steps 17-22 feature information relating to reducing the number of colors in the design for cost and production concerns. These are great additional details and are sure to help out tons of people who face these challenges and wonder what to do next.

I think they both have a place in the tutorial world because they bring different perspectives showing “more than one way to skin a cat”. I hope you can learn from both of these and gain a new some new tools for your design toolbox.

The designs themselves remind me somewhat of Wotto’s style or Lowdtown. Check out this fella who almost looks like he could have been pulled right out of the Wotto’s portfolio:

It’s definitely another case of the oversized cute monster style that’s so big right now. And you gotta love the monocle:

My favorite shirt though is “Snug”:

I actually didn’t get it at first until I read the description, “Seals don’t like Polar Bears, but they do make a pretty snug hat… mmm… snug.” Knowing that, it fits pretty good.

Another really sweet shirt is “Creamy Goodness!”:

Who can resist a nice, big serving of ice cream, especially when it’s served in a monster glass? One thing that seems to be present in all of the Holebrain designs is the very round, “creature” style eyes. It’s a pretty cool theme that ties them all together and a subtle way of identifying the shirt as uniquely Holebrain.

He posted his work on social sites, created a website, used html snippets, etc. I don’t want to give it all away. Sure enough, he has made it to the top 10 finalist list! Go to Coty’s site to read all about it.

Invader packs a lot of punch with its bright colors on a black v-neck. The alien’s uniform and medals look sharp and it’s pretty cool that they run all the way down to the hemline. The expression on the general’s face appears like his eyes make him seem annoyed with the wearer.

Roll ‘Em is the first specially designed ladies’ shirt that Arkaik offers. I love the giant one-eyed creature that takes up the entire front of the shirt and this tee is sure to turn some heads for any girl who wears it.

This shirt seems to exemplify the Arkaik brand. It features an “Arkaik” animal, the T-Rex, growling out the company’s name all done in bright colors for an over-sized design. It also has the company’s signature mammoth skull and cross tusks logo on the back.

According to the founder, Joseph Stein, the one word that sums up Fabrik Addict is “Attitude.” This would explain the abundance of attitude in their designs. Check out the spin they put on the philosophy hero, Descartes:

I like the whole disembodied brain thing and Descartes certainly has a tortured, agonizing quality to him that one would imagine was his general mood. The “Everything You Know is Fake” tagline does a nice job of modernizing his message and giving the shirt a more contemporary feel.

Currently there are only four other designs being marketed by Fabrik Addict with “Pirated Pinup” seeming to be their unofficial trademark design. Check it out:

All in all, Fabrik Addict is off to a good start and promises more high quality, creative designs to come.

Robobubbles is a pretty good example of the kind of stuff they do. I love the oversized design and the “would be scary if they weren’t so cute” style of the monsters. The robot toward the bottom of the shirt seems to have created the scene with an old fashioned bubble blowing set. The orange bubble in the top right rounds everything off nicely. This design also comes on a yellow American Apparel hoodie.

Jasonosaurus is another fascinating design featuring a robotic looking monster. This one is giant size and seems to be taking a stroll through the middle of a city. This design really shines because of the expressive quality on the characters’ faces and the subtle details like the skyscrapers in the background.

This design comes on a basic white tee or a baseball tee. Personally I like the baseball tee better because it seems to work better with the overall design. The design features a giant size ice cream cone about to stomp on a cherry (making Cherry Sauce no doubt). I love the menacing \expression on the cone’s face and the brass knuckles are a cool touch.

This last one, Imagination Vs Toys, is my favorite. It features a kid holding a couple of dolls – a monkey and a banana – that are battling it out in the background. It really does feel like something a child would imagine and the imagery is beautifully executed. The color of the shirt is ideal for this particular design as well as the Cherry Sauce brand in general.