Our Favourite Resources for New T-Shirt Design Inspiration in 2018

When those creative juices are running dry, it can feel as hopeless as trekking through the desert searching for an oasis. Creative blocks can often get the best of us. Thankfully, you need not feel like this for long.

There are so many ways to quickly fire up your t-shirt imagination. So in an effort to help out our hungry TeeSpys, we’ve collected our favorite resources for tee shirt design inspiration. In fact, we can almost guarantee you won't be able to leave this page without a new idea.

Sound good? Let's go!

10 T-Shirt Ideas to Get You Fired Up

You may already be familiar with some of these ideas but a quick revision is sure to get those creative juices flowing. Here are 10 types of t-shirt designs you can mull over to get you started:

Sports T-Shirts

When it comes to passion, sports fans are number one. Fandom can even become borderline obsessive in some cases. Fortunately for us, sports T-shirts have long reined a staple for fan merchandise. So you'd be mad not to get in on the action!

Many crazy fans can seem blinded by their love; don’t use this as an excuse to churn out boring, unoriginal designs. Go further than a simple logo and team colors. Be the t-shirt brand that goes further, getting creative with illustrations and creating something unique.

Tap into the soul or spirit of the community or sport to achieve this.

Fitness T-Shirts

Fitness is another area that's simply overflowing with passion. If you can tap into this audience and create expressive t-shirts, they'll almost sell themselves!

These individuals you'll be marketing can be drawn to motivational, positive and willpower inspiring designs. Remember, they are battling with their bodies to conquer in their chosen areas.

Identify different fitness communities, understand their unique struggles and triumphs and unite them using your t-shirt designs.

Start-ups & Business T-Shirts

Creating business and brand t-shirts can unlock new ways and channels for revenue growth. Perhaps you could start designing t-shirts for their team members or as customer merchandise. It's a great way to get a name for yourself as a brand and make some extra income!

You'll need to get creative with your t-shirt designs because no one wants to sacrifice style to become a walking billboard! Using attractive imagery to tell the brand story often works well. If you can inject brand personality into these t-shirts, people will love to wear them.

Drop the boring corporate sales pitch; focus on expressing personality through art and creativity.

Event & Conference T-Shirts

Again, this opens another opportunity to partner up with businesses to drive increased revenue. Designing t-shirts for events can be a real win-win scenario. People are likely paying for tickets and feeling enthusiastic about attending, so well designed t-shirt memorabilia can fly off the shelves!

If you do really well, you might be able to take advantage of recurring events with new styles for each event. Each t-shirt could then become an improvement on the next. This could be a real good earner!

Try to tap into the spirit of the event, work with their enthusiasm and keep it fun.

Party & Celebration T-Shirts

When there's a big party or celebration, everyone loves to get in on the action. Epic parties, raves or even birthdays are all great occasions where fun, matching t-shirts are well suited.

What's important is that you really capture the spirit of the party if you want your t-shirts to sell like hotcakes. If you pull this off, it could become a regular gig too.

Try to design t-shirts that are both to wear at the party and will serve as a fond memory afterward.

School & University T-Shirts

School apparel is another area of great passion as students express pride in their school and hometown. There is a vast range of different audiences and ways to unite these individuals together.

Designs will need to be highly tuned to the audiences. For example, elementary schools may have a more playful, creative and simple approach than high-end universities, who may prefer wise words dressed up with a custom typeface.

Make sure your designs tap into the pride students feel and serve as a way to express their passions.

Band & Musician T-Shirts

Band t-shirts have long reigned king of t-shirt merchandise. Fuelled by incredibly passionate fans, many famous bands t-shirt have become immortal retro fashion statements.

Go to any concert and you’ll see band tees. Music lovers want to show the world and identify themselves with their favorite bands. But this can work even better with lesser-known bands.

Try to design expressive t-shirts that not only promote these bands but also unite a community surrounding them. Music is already art in itself, so the sky is the limit in terms of design. Try to go further than just playing off the existing logo or album cover.

Evoke the feeling or mood of the music itself with creative t-shirt designs.

Club & Organization T-Shirts

Clubs, organizations and other social gatherings are filled with like-minded individuals coming together. Club member t-shirts can become a great way to strengthen social bonds as well as spreading their message through word of mouth.

When creating matching designs, take care not to come off as tacky. These t-shirt designs should carefully reflect the tone and theme of the clubs themselves. Perhaps it could be nerdy, exclusive, comical or daring.

Graphic T-Shirts

Graphic tees are an awesome way to show off your best artwork and creativity. By capturing imagination, hearts and minds, you'll also gain loyal customers.

You really can be as creative as you want here. There’s no need to constrain your design to the front and center, you’ve got a whole shirt to work with.

If you've got some artistic flair that's dying to get out, this is where to let it out.

Non-Profit & Charity T-Shirts

Want to make more than just a fashion statement? Perhaps spread a worthwhile message to the world? This one is for you. Designing t-shirts for non-profit causes can be a very rewarding experience.

These t-shirt designs shouldn't scream too loud trying to solve the world's problems. Focus on promoting awareness in a cheerful, attractive and creative way. Even if the subject is heavy, focus on positivity to catch people's attention.

Where to Look For T-Shirt Inspiration Right Now

How's your creativity feeling now? If you’re still hungry for more inspiration here are some great places to check out for hot new trending t-shirts.

T-Shirt Websites & Stores

Design By Humans – awesome selection of graphic tees selected by a community of creative and unique designers.

TeeFury – an amazing source of new Pop Culture, Geeky, or Nerdy T-shirts. Features new designs every 24 hours.

TeeSpring – one of the largest t-shirt fulfillment services and markets. It's always worth coming back here to check what's hot.

Threadless – awesome t-shirts, art prints, iphone cases, home decor, and more featuring unique designs by a global artist community.

Spreadshirt – huge community of designers selling custom t-shirts, personalized shirts and other customized apparel.

Mintees – an online t-shirt and apparel design community. Promoting tee designers, clothing brands and tee enthusiasts. Home to some of the most talented apparel designers in the world.

T-Shirt Contents

What better place to draw inspiration from than heated t-shirt competitions. Witnessing top designers going head-to-head in order to win competitions or contracts is always inspiring.

Our favorite so far is the T-Shirt Contents held on 99 Designs.

Pinterest

This wildly popular, image-powered social network is one of the best places to top up your t-shirt inspiration. You'll find an incredible range of creative designs, as well as insights on how they can be marketed too.

Check out extensive Pinterest Research post to discover our top strategies for finding new killer t-shirt designs.

Spy Tools

Looking to quickly hack your way to the top? Start by looking at what’s selling like crazy.

Spying on successful sellers and finding designs that are already killing it is the fastest way to start profiting yourself.  Now, what’s the best way to find popular designs? Using TeeSpy of course!

But we've also covered another wickedly powerful tool for Facebook research, Audience Analyzer. Check out our dedicated blog post to see exactly why it rocks!

Now Over to You

We really hope this article helped to get your creative flow back on track. Please feel free to come back to the blog and top yourself up anytime!

If you've got any other places you like to use, please do share with us in the comments below.