7+ Secrets and techniques to Discover Cool T-Shirt Design Concepts (For Print on Demand)

Have you ever learn the tales of T-shirt millionaires spreading across the internet?

For instance, TJ Mapes and two of his mates made hundreds of thousands after beginning RIPT Attire in 2009. Now, 1000’s of individuals are incomes an excellent revenue promoting cool T-shirt designs utilizing print on demand.

It’s an effective way to construct your portfolio as a designer since you don’t want to fret about upfront prices, and you may shortly get suggestions in your designs primarily based on demand. Be taught all about print on demand T-shirts on this tutorial.

What Is Print On Demand and Why Does It Matter?

Print on Demand (POD) is a course of the place a designer groups up with a provider to print their designs on white-label merchandise like T-shirts, mugs, or blankets, each time somebody buys them on-line. 

Print on demand T-shirt designs are a rising market. A 2021 report from consulting agency Grand View Analysis exhibits that the {custom} T-shirt printing market is predicted to increase at a compound annual development fee of 9.9% from 2022 to 2030.

The one con is that you have no management over packaging, and the printing customization is restricted to the strategies utilized by stated celebration. Shopify’s put up on POD has extra details about the professionals and cons of POD. 

Print on Demand, Not as Simple as It Sounds

It’s inconceivable to inform which design will click on. A design may look creative to you, however your clients may disagree. And simply while you suppose you’ve discovered a promising design, it could be too late as a result of many designers have seen it and are already copying the pattern. 

With out information of your goal market and correct analysis, you may waste plenty of money and time designing POD merchandise that doesn’t promote. To keep away from that, this tutorial will cowl some other ways to analysis worthwhile designs for various POD niches and present you the place to search out photographs and fonts to make use of to create these designs.

7 Finest-Promoting T-Shirt Niches and Print on Demand Product Concepts

Print on demand has a number of niches. Every area of interest has its personal set of slang, causes for purchasing, and in style T-shirt design concepts, so figuring out your area of interest makes it simpler so that you can create gadgets they’ll need to purchase.

Under are a number of the hottest T-shirt concepts, plus some print on demand merchandise the place you need to use them.

1. Pets

Folks love their pets, which is why the pet trade is value billions of {dollars} a yr. For cool shirt designs, you possibly can go for the widespread sub-niches like canine, cats, or birds, however there’s additionally a marketplace for unusual pets or massive animals, corresponding to horses, lizards, wolves, and hedgehogs.

Placeit has loads of pet T-shirt templates and funky shirt concepts accessible to select from, such because the one under:

2. Jokes

Take a look at this T-shirt graphic design thought. Assertion shirts and T-shirt quotes are nice conversation-starters. Humor-related POD merchandise might have humorous photographs, punchy one-liners, nerdy jokes, and even memes. These will make cool shirt designs.

If you wish to give potential patrons a really feel of what a shirt would appear to be when worn, use T-shirt mockups from Placeit.

3. Jobs

You may hate your job proper now, however there are hundreds of thousands of people that get up each morning pleased with what they do.

Jobs could make cool shirt designs. Not all jobs are in style, although—some have extra passionate staff than others. As an example, attorneys or accountants don’t get as a lot love in comparison with nurses or firefighters.

4. Sports activities, Way of life, and Hobbies

Another excuse individuals purchase custom-printed merchandise is to indicate off their hobbies, sports activities, or way of life.

Listed below are some best-selling T-shirt niches to think about on your T-shirt enterprise:

1. Sports activities Area of interest Concepts

• Baseball
• Basketball
• Hockey
• Soccer
• Biking

2. Pastime Niches

• Crocheting
• Avid gamers
• Fishing
• Bookworms
• Gardening
• Anime/Manga
• Automobiles

3. Way of life Niches

• Digital nomads
• Entrepreneurs
• Vegetarians
• Work-at-home mothers (WAHM)
• Vacationers
• Yoga

5. Household and Relationships

Have you ever ever seen T-shirt quotes saying “World’s #1 Mother” and thought, “Who would really put on this?”  T-shirt graphic designs like this are in style, particularly on Mom’s Day. It’s also possible to discover custom-printed gadgets for single dads, newly-engaged girls (“bride-to-be”), sibling love, newlyweds, and grandparents. There’s even a T-shirt area of interest listing that features mates and associates.

6. Location and Journey

Nearly any vacationer vacation spot will provide cool hoodie designs, cool shirt designs, and collectibles designed primarily based on their native sights.

Journey T-shirt quotes, structure, native delicacies, and maps are additionally utilized in travel-related print on demand merchandise.

7. Seasonal Designs

Christmas sweaters aren’t the one POD merchandise you possibly can promote on holidays. Seasonal designs for cool shirt concepts additionally embody Thanksgiving, commencement, Valentine’s, Halloween, and different holidays. Non secular holidays like Hanukkah or lesser-known holidays like Nationwide Pasta Day even have their place out there, however provided that you time your promotions properly.

The way to Select Finest-Promoting T-Shirt Niches

POD shirts, jewellery, sneakers, and different custom-printed merchandise are what individuals name impulse buys, so one of the simplest ways to promote them is to faucet into individuals’s feelings.

Folks buy these things as a result of they need to showcase their individuality, whether or not it’s their job, pet, passion, sport, or a rustic they only visited—the design exhibits one thing about them. Maintain this in thoughts while you’re on the lookout for T-shirt area of interest concepts.

One other issue to think about when selecting a distinct segment is the market measurement. You would have a distinct segment you are extraordinarily enthusiastic about, but when there aren’t sufficient individuals there, you’ll shortly run out of shoppers. One technique to verify a distinct segment’s viewers measurement is to make use of Fb’s Viewers Perception device or verify the key phrase search quantity on your viewers on Google.

Learn the next tutorials to learn the way to analysis T-shirt area of interest concepts:

Deciding on an enormous area of interest additionally offers you room to department out into sub-niches. If you wish to promote job-related shirts, you possibly can break it down into completely different classes corresponding to nurses, firefighters, and lecturers. From there, you possibly can even break it down additional into smaller niches corresponding to pre-school lecturers or ER nurses.

The way to Conduct T-Shirt Market Analysis for Your Chosen Area of interest

Now that you just’ve chosen a distinct segment, it’s time to analysis what to place in your designs. You should utilize your most popular technique for amassing info, be it bookmarks, Pinterest pins, or an Excel file. The essential factor is that you just discover a technique to save and manage the data you acquire throughout this analysis.

Under are other ways to analysis T-shirt graphic designs to placed on a shirt and different print on demand merchandise, like cool hoodie designs.

1. Discovering Cool T-Shirt Design Inspiration By way of Amazon Merch

In case you’re on the lookout for cool shirt concepts, Merch by Amazon is Amazon’s very personal platform for POD T-shirts.

A free device from Merch Titans means that you can search the cool T-shirt designs uploaded to Merch by Amazon primarily based on key phrases, {the marketplace} it was uploaded to (i.e. Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk), and the kind of merchandise (i.e. shirts or hoodies).

The search outcomes will present:

• Design picture
• Objects offered
• Value
• Model

The outcomes aren’t 100% correct as they’re primarily based on the tags and descriptions retailer homeowners use on listings. If a design is listed with a number of or associated key phrases, they’ll present up in your outcomes. 

2. Looking With Pinterest and Fb

Fb is a social platform, however it’s a great way to search out print on demand T-shirts as a result of that is the place opponents are selling their designs utilizing Fb advertisements.

Simply kind your area of interest’s key phrase and the phrase “T-shirt” or no matter print on demand merchandise you’re promoting into the search bar. It’s also possible to use promotional phrases like “on sale” or “restricted time provide.” Some individuals search primarily based on POD platforms, so that they use search phrases like “Teespring” or “Redbubble” so that they see all posts with that platform’s URL or title.

It’s also possible to filter the search outcomes primarily based on the date of the put up, so that you solely see the newest designs promoted on Fb. 

The identical technique can be utilized to search out cool hoodie designs and T-shirt design concepts on Pinterest, besides on this case you’ll use the variety of “pins” to gauge a design’s reputation. Pinterest may also assist you to slim down your search by displaying in style key phrases related along with your preliminary search.

This cool shirt design discovered on Pinterest comes up on the primary search web page, an excellent signal that cat lovers would buy a shirt with the same design. 

Searching for cool and distinctive designs for shirts? You don’t even want to attract a cat from scratch to create one thing just like this design. There are many graphic choices for cat T-shirts on Placeit so as to add to your cool shirt designs:

3. Search Distinctive Mug and Shirt Design Concepts through Etsy

Etsy is a market for hand-crafted merchandise, however you’ll additionally discover print on demand merchandise there. To seek out artistic T-shirt design concepts, simply kind your area of interest’s key phrase within the search bar. It’s also possible to strive completely different key phrase combos like “area of interest + joke” or “area of interest + one other area of interest” to get distinctive shirt design concepts.

Be aware of the designs with a lot of opinions, however ensure the opinions are for the merchandise you’re viewing and never for one more design. Some gadgets have opinions under for a special product. 

4. Seek for Cool T-Shirt Designs through POD Platforms

You don’t have to create an internet site to promote your POD designs as a result of there are dozens of marketplaces that’ll will let you add your designs on their web site, so you possibly can earn when somebody purchases your merchandise from them.

Not solely can these websites assist you to promote your cool shirt designs, they’ll additionally assist in your POD and T-shirt market analysis. Simply kind the key phrases on your chosen area of interest, after which filter the search outcomes primarily based on scorching T-shirt designs or the latest listings added. You may get loads of artistic T-shirt design concepts.

Under are different POD marketplaces the place you could find design inspiration:

It’s also possible to seek for T-shirt concepts on TeeSpy, an internet site that consolidates designs from Teespring, Sunfrog, and Teezily.

5. Trying to find Distinctive Shirt Designs through Google Pictures

Lastly, there’s the tried and examined technique of trying to find artistic T-shirt design inspiration utilizing Google Pictures. Go to https://photographs.google.com, after which kind the area of interest you’re making an attempt to analysis.

Strive a mixture of various key phrases, corresponding to:

• Area of interest + humorous
• Area of interest + joke
• Area of interest + quotes
• Area of interest + slang

Google Autosuggest may also present you different phrases to make use of in your analysis.

The search outcomes might not be restricted to shirts, however a few of these quotes are brief and snappy sufficient that you would be able to simply match them right into a mug or hoodie. 

Warning: Lots of the photographs you will discover on Google photographs are copyrighted. Watch out to not use an artist’s photographs or copyrighted gadgets to keep away from a lawsuit. Use the outcomes of this seek for inspiration solely. 

Mix a number of the quotes right here with a professionally designed working T-shirt template design on Placeit, and also you’ll have some wall decal or T-shirt concepts prepared for a promo check.

6. Looking T-Shirt Design Concepts through Reddit and Different Social Platforms

Your area of interest doesn’t should be information or politics for this tip to be helpful for you. No matter is trending in your area of interest, there’s an excellent probability that you just’ll discover a intelligent quip about it on one in all these platforms.

Platforms the place you possibly can search trending, viral, or meme gadgets:

• 9GAG: An internet site and social web site the place you possibly can publish and curate jokes and memes for a wide range of niches.
• Reddit: The location is split into completely different communities, and a few communities may have sub-groups (a.ok.a. “subreddit”) to additional manage the conversations. The most effective posts get essentially the most replies and votes (a.ok.a. “upvotes”) from group members. 

Not every part you discover on these web sites is relevant to POD, as nearly all of the data you’ll discover right here is not commercialized. These are simply individuals speaking about all types of issues, so that you’ll want some creativity to think about how the data could be translated to a hoodie or POD blanket design.

The connection class on 9Gag is filled with jokes and complaints about relationships. However there are posts the place the picture’s idea or a textual content model of it would work properly on an attire design.

Yow will discover many distinctive quotes on subreddit threads, and nearly none of those quotes are trademarked as a result of these are from atypical Reddit customers being their sarcastic or humorous selves. Sadly, digging into Reddit to search out puns and jokes is a chore as a result of there are such a lot of energetic conversations to trace.

Simplify your analysis simpler by trying to find “pun trains,” the time period used when customers play off on one another’s puns. One other manner is to lookup Reddits devoted to jokes. It’s also possible to discover a detailed tutorial about utilizing Reddit to go looking T-shirt designs on MerchPursuits.

7. Combining Niches to Create Cool T-Shirt Designs

Combining niches means that you can hone in on a extra particular goal buyer, whereas giving your designs a singular and genuine really feel.

One typical instance of that is the “Area of interest + Born in (month)” combo, the place you mix a optimistic trait or area of interest with a goal purchaser’s title. Designs like this make the customer really feel particular, as a result of they suppose they’ll be one of many few with an merchandise prefer it.

Right here’s a mixed area of interest thought: Mermaids + month through Etsy. Use a special picture or icon, mix it with a singular typeface, and you’ll get a singular design able to promote.

It’s also possible to mix relationship and job niches, like this design for a “Firefighter Mother I Solely Increase Heroes” shirt from Etsy.

A Phrase on Avoiding Copyright Points and Utilizing Mashups or Parody

Some designers and POD entrepreneurs use mashups and parody to keep away from copyright issues. Since concepts are too obscure to copyright, a special execution of 1 thought from a well-liked franchise or trademarked character, as occurs in parodies and mashups, presents a grey space for designers.

As an example, the concept of a hilarious dad can’t be copyrighted, however the plot and character particulars that make up the character’s persona could be protected by copyright. That’s why Peter Griffin of Household Man can’t be thought of a copyright infringement of Homer Simpson. No matter similarities they’ve, additionally they have variations in storylines and character traits, which makes each of them unbiased, and so they might individually be copyrighted.

That’s why ‘honest use’ is a typical protection in opposition to copyright claims. In fact, you need to keep away from moving into courtroom within the first place. Teespy has a number of pointers that may assist you to keep away from that on this put up.

The place to Discover Pictures, Fonts, and Mockups for Your Chosen Designs

Former graphic designer and present Bootcamp Media CEO Jimi Shabir, says, “It’s all the time higher to create distinctive photographs, particularly when you’re creating one thing to be offered. However typically, utilizing inventory photographs is a mandatory shortcut to multiply your design output.”

Shabir has some extent. In case you spend days perfecting one design, you’ll discover it exhausting to check new designs quick, and your designs could already be a saturated pattern by the point they hit the market. Utilizing inventory photographs creatively will assist you to design extra gadgets sooner.

Vladimir Gendelman, founder and CEO of Firm Folders, Inc., additionally works with clients who use inventory photographs on the gadgets they need to print for his or her enterprise. Due to this, he all the time advises shoppers to get their inventory picture from a good supplier. He provides:

“Most inventory picture providers label their photographs so you recognize which of them you possibly can and can’t use commercially, or if further safety or ‘rights’ ought to be bought. Utilizing a service is not going to solely defend you from breaking the legislation, however you’ll additionally get high-quality photographs that can print properly in your merchandise.”

5 Should-Have T-Shirt Designs From Envato Parts

You’ve got bought a great deal of sources and inspiration to create cool T-shirt designs. However earlier than we go, I would like to indicate you a collection of superb T-shirt designs accessible on Envato Parts. You may discover a great deal of distinctive T-shirt designs to impress your mates and shoppers. 

1. Typographic T-Shirt Design (AI, JPG)

Are you a typography fan? This shirt design is for you. The most effective T-shirt designs are normally easy and daring. With this obtain, you will get the fonts used so as to change the quote, and you may as well experiment with colours. Utilizing a cool phrase about energy and confidence, and that is a kind of T-shirt designs that promote. 

2. Japanese Samurai Masks for T-Shirt Design (AI, EPS, JPG, PNG, SVG)

That is a kind of nice designs to placed on shirts. Working with distinctive T-shirt designs will make your model look particular. A Japanese Samurai Masks is an authentic illustration so as to add to your artistic T-shirt design. Modify the dimensions and proportions in Adobe Illustrator. 

3. Turtle Mandala T-Shirt Design Vector Illustration (AI, EPS)

Searching for cool designs to placed on shirts? Check out this vector mandala illustration on your subsequent artistic T-shirt design. This is also an excellent reference for {custom} shirt concepts. This vector design can be used for posters, notebooks, or any form of dwelling ornament. 

4. Highway Journey Vector Patch: Mountain Camp Retro Brand (AI, EPS, JPG, PDF, PNG, PSD, SVG)

That is undoubtedly a kind of T-shirt designs that promote. This might even work as a cool brand shirt. Have fun your love of the outside with distinctive T-shirt designs. It’s also possible to use this vector design for a patch, mug, or poster. As a substitute of going for generic photographs, discover inspiration in {custom} shirt concepts like this one.

5. Pink Oni Classic Japan Tattoo (AI, EPS, PNG, SVG)

Searching for cool and distinctive T-shirt designs? That is proper up your alley. Get some superb graphic tee concepts with this cool tattoo model drawing. The illustration works as a cool shirt design and is able to print on some other media.

Discover Extra Attire and T-Shirt Design Concepts

Now you are an skilled on T-shirt graphic design and the way to decide on the best-selling T-shirt niches. Searching for designs to placed on shirts or graphic tee concepts? We have cool hoodie designs, cool brand shirts, cool shirt concepts, and tutorials on the right way to use our on-line mockup device, Placeit. Verify them out: 

Why Wait? Get Began Now

Bear in mind what the well-known author Austin Kleon wrote: “steal like an artist”. Don’t copy different individuals’s designs; use them as inspiration to create one thing higher. I hope you have gotten loads of inspiration from this tutorial.

Within the case of designers, this implies making an attempt a special font, angle, icon, coloration, or picture. With correct analysis, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to provide you with a singular and worthwhile design. Strive the analysis strategies talked about right here, and don’t neglect to make use of photographs which might be secure for business use, corresponding to these discovered on Placeit.

Editorial Notice: This put up has been up to date with contributions from Janila Castañeda. Janila is a employees author with Envato Tuts+.