One of the struggles that t-shirt businesses and merch stores face is the constant evolution of design trends.
This relentless change can make selling t-shirts unsustainable and feel like a never-ending race.
Yes, trends can be extremely profitable when applied to your t-shirt business at the right time, but focusing solely on them can prove to be a waste of resources.
The key is to find the t-shirt design ideas that will not wear out and can prove to be profitable any day of the year.
It’s true that trendy designs can attract more customers, but only until they die out and people go flocking to the next new thing.
If you’re looking to establish a merch store that’s sustainable and would prove to be profitable in the long term despite the revolving trends, these t-shirt design ideas are worth putting more focus on.
T-Shirts for Startups and Businesses
Beyond keeping us warm and not naked, clothing boosts confidence and self-image.
Now imagine if that feeling was associated with your brand.
This isn’t just important for the potential consumer but also for employees, the folks who work with your brand on a daily basis.
One of the challenges associated with a t-shirt for a business is getting people to wear it.
Unless the design is spot-on and exceptionally creative, you’re going to be hard-pressed to find folks to put it on.
Nobody wants to waste a fashion opportunity to be your walking billboard. One helpful tip: use imagery to tell the design story.
Company names, slogans, or any kind of corporate text tend to make a t-shirt design feel like an ad.
If your company has a brand personality that lends itself to powerful imagery (and of course it does), drop the sales pitch and focus on the art.
T-Shirts for Events and Conferences
If you’re organizing a conference, you’ve already invested enough in your audience to buy a ticket, so purchasing t-shirts should be a no-brainer.
Aside from sales, an event shirt is a terrific method to produce mementos for participants to remember (and connect their experience with your brand).
If you’re not though, make use of annual repeating events to your advantage by creating a consistent design theme that “raises the ante” each year.
Every conference will be different and better than the last, according to a “new and improved” t-shirt design.
Participants’ t-shirts also become collector’s items, which encourages them to return back.
T-Shirts for Parties and Celebrations
Ever regret that Friday night you sat on the couch watching Netflix with a bucket of ice cream, and you checked your social media feed only to witness the photo deluge of your friends enjoying that party you were currently to (*cough*) busy to attend?
Yeah, me neither… Man, that FOMO feeling is killer.
Now imagine if everyone was wearing the same t-shirt.
The ultimate party shirt marks partygoers as members of an exclusive group, and it can also be a badge of honor.
After all, depending on how much alcohol is involved, epic parties need to be “survived.”
While a t-shirt for your average house rager might be a little much, it works for milestone events like birthdays or for large-scale festivities like Christmas.
T-Shirts for Sports and Fitness
Nobody—not the coaches, not the commentators, not even the players themselves—are as passionate about sports as the fans.
When you’re trying to sell a t-shirt, a total and complete obsessive fandom is definitely a good thing.
So, cater to it.
While sports enthusiasts might be willing to pledge their allegiance with a t-shirt, that doesn’t mean you get to slack off by lazily slapping the team’s logo on it.
Try reimagining your logo, like the vintage approach taken with the San Francisco Baseball design.
If you are a retailer, take advantage of equipment and other common imagery for a creative illustration that will appeal to the entire community around a particular sport.
For fitness programs, participants are striving against the most challenging adversaries of all—their own body, genetics, and plain willpower.
So consider a t-shirt design that emphasizes the kind of strength and solidarity they will need to see the kind of results that they want.
T-Shirts for Bands and Musicians
Your favorite shirt can be like your favorite song—something you go back to again and again and it never wears out.
Great music is something special, and great music on a t-shirt is even better.
Band tees are the staple of most concerts and for good reason.
Just like sports fans, music lovers want to identify themselves as fans and find others like them—especially if their favorite band isn’t very well known.
T-shirts help promote musicians, but also build the fan community around them.
Music is already art, so there are very few constraints on what a band t-shirt design can convey, though it should be more than your band logo or album artwork slapped onto it.
But similar to the album cover, you’ll want something that evokes the mood or theme of the music itself, whether it’s computerized and abstract or a design that harkens back to 70s and 80s metal.
T-Shirts for Clubs and Organizations
Clubs are filled with people that have similar interests and hobbies, and a sweet communal t-shirt can go a long way in reinforcing those social bonds—just like teammates wearing uniforms.
Giving members cool threads to wear around town or the gym can also help spread the club’s word-of-mouth.
But beware: matching designs can be a hard sell, so make sure it’s a great one.
Otherwise, a tacky group shirt is going to have your members feeling like this family.
Your t-shirt sets the tone for how you will be perceived.
If your club is seen as a little nerdy, an awesome shirt is a great step towards building a cool image.
Or maybe your club isn’t for the faint of heart. A “join-at-your-own-risk” style can actually inspire people to rise to the challenge.
Your t-shirt sets the tone for how you will be perceived.
If your club is seen as a little nerdy, an awesome shirt is a great step towards building a cool image.
Or maybe your club isn’t for the faint of heart.
A “join-at-your-own-risk” style can actually inspire people to rise to the challenge.
T-Shirts for Schools and Universities
Short of making a necklace out of your diploma, school apparel is the best way for students and alumni to express pride in their education.
You’ve worked hard for it, so why not show it off?
School pride and hometown pride often go hand-in-hand, and your design can pay homage to both with a clever illustration.
And if you really want students to take your wise words home with them, consider a t-shirt that dresses up your message with a custom typeface.
For younger kids, you’ve got a lot more creative leeway (and a lot more work to do to show them that school is more fun than the latest video game).
Harrison Schmitt Elementary School, for example, turns their students into space explorers, and—who knows—someday they just might be.
T-Shirts for Non-profits and Charities
Occasionally, a t-shirt design should make more of a statement than a fashion one.
While nobody wants to think about anything in their closet as a capitalist advertising space, a design for a worthwhile non-profit cause is a different story.
Although a t-shirt isn’t going to solve the world’s problems, its central location on the chest makes it a great space for promoting awareness.
And even if the subject matter is heavy, the design doesn’t have to be.
Nonprofits are focused on helping others, and a cheerful design can emphasize that positivity.
Where to Get Copyright Free T-Shirt Designs?
Running your own t-shirt business is a handful, especially for self starters.
While it does take a lot of work from marketing to making your own design, it doesn’t to be extremely difficult for you.
For one, you don’t have to make the design yourself, you have two options, either: hire a designer or buy copyright-free designs.
The former is ideal but it can cost a lot of money to hire a professional designer, not to mention, you only need a few designs to get the ball rolling on your merch business.
On the other hand, you can simply buy designs only through websites like Threadbasket, where you can download unlimited copyright-free designs for as long as 18 Euros a month.
The monthly subscription fee also comes with other benefits such as the following:
- The designs from Threadbasket are all made by professional graphic designers. You’ll have access to a library of unique high-quality designs.
- You don’t need to worry about copyright infringement, you can even trademark the designs as your own.
- You’ll have access to new designs every week. The design library is updated with fresh and unique designs weekly.
- A wide array of designs for different niches.
- No commitment. You can stop using the service anytime you want. If print-on-demand doesn’t work for you, or you just need a few designs for your merch store, you don’t need to continue your subscription.
- They have a free membership! You can have access to unique designs that are free to download. You don’t need to spend anything to try out Threadbasket’s service.
Thank you for reading, and we hope you found this useful. If you have any questions or want to engage in a real-time discussion with us on this matter, follow us on Twitter.
