The Blazersedge T-Shirt Design Contest
by Dave on Aug 8, 2010 11:00 PM PDT
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PrintI'm taking today to travel back home from vacation. I'll have some reflections tomorrow, but in the meantime...
It's been a while since we've had official Blazersedge T-Shirts go up for sale. We had numerous designs in the past, all of which have long sold out. (If you have one at home, WOOT to you!) Instead of just fabricating and ordering a design whole cloth this time (see what I did there?) I've decided to open up a contest for the best design, the winner of which will be chosen by popular vote in a run-off and will become the official Blazersedge shirt for 2010-11. The winning designer will get something cool too. I don't know what yet.
Here are the guidelines for designing a shirt. Please read them carefully. If you don't follow them your design won't be considered.
1. You can use any readily-available design process at your disposal. Cafepress is fine. Other reputable websites are fine. If you have connections with or own a screen-printing service that's fine too. As long as the production process is reliable we'll consider it. Most online sites have design tools and photos at your disposal as you create shirts. Just send the final photo plus the name of the site you created it on to the e-mail listed below.
1a. Note that a theoretical design detached from an actual t-shirt producer means nothing, as there's no way to determine practicality or cost of the design. Use a pre-existing company to design your shirt and send the name of the site you used along with the design photo.
2. You may not use any trademarked logos, including and especially the Trail Blazer logo. The only exception is that I believe I can get permission to use our current (not former) site logo if you want to include elements of that.
3. Shirts must be made of decent material and must cost no more than $20 at final purchase and under $15 will earn you STRONG preference for getting in the finals. (If it costs $20 it had better be the shirt to end all shirts.) Keep the dollar figures strictly in mind. In the past people have come up with all kinds of ideas that looked great on paper but ended up as a $30 t-shirt. We don't have that kind of market. We want to give away some as prizes without going bankrupt. Try to do more with less.
4. E-mail your design submissions to blazersub@yahoo.com. DO NOT post your ideas on the site in comments, Fanposts, Fanshots, Junk Drawers, or anywhere else. We don't want the sidebar gummed up with 100 shirt ideas and we don't want people rallying personal support. We just want to compare the best shirts. I probably won't even include names of designers until after the shirts are voted on so we get a pure vote. E-mail submission is the ONLY valid form.
5. Submissions are due by August 31st. Try to get them in earlier if you can.
All of you budding fashionistas are invited to have fun with this! Enjoy!
--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)
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are we allowed to send in more than one submission?
I’m not talking like 10 but if I have a couple that I want to enter would that be ok?
Deep V only.
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by Y5k on Aug 9, 2010 4:31 AM PDT up reply actions
can you give us an estimate
Of how many we might expect to sell/print? If we hook up with a screenprinter, I’m fairly certain I can get a better deal if I print over a certain quantity, but I don’t want to print 1000 if we could expect to sell 100. (I have no idea what the actual quantities might be, just putting in a wide range.)
Also,
what are the benefits for submission? A cut of the t-shirt sales would be nice… What happens to the designs? You guys don’t maintain rights do you? My design, my tshirts, my sales? Better be a good “prize” if you guys make thousands off it…
by IheartPDX on Aug 9, 2010 9:59 AM PDT up reply actions
Assumptions (please correct if wrong)
- You get nothing but respect.
- Dave will probably lose more money giving T-shirts away then he makes selling them.
- You’ll have to give Dave permission to use the design, but it probably doesn’t have to be exclusive.
Disclaimer: everything I know about basketball I learned on Blazersedge.
The winning designer will get something cool too
Oops, I missed that, but don’t expect something extremely valuable.
Disclaimer: everything I know about basketball I learned on Blazersedge.
"The winning designer will get something cool too"
probably a date with dave and ben and dirty socks at a dirty bowling alley
#88
Answering all of the questions in one:
We’re talking low hundreds, not thousands. Also we sell at cost, so nobody makes a profit. We lose money every time we do t-shirts because we give them away. If you’re looking to make money you’re in the wrong place. If your design is picked you may not sell it separately from the site’s use, as that would be co-opting our name for your profit when we don’t even make a profit.
—Dave
Great Idea!
This could be so much fun, I am pretty sure anything that come out of here will be ten time better than what they sell that those Blazer games… another site that does this… www.rosecityhooligans.com
by IheartPDX on Aug 9, 2010 9:55 AM PDT reply actions
So a few tips for amateur designers:
The more colors, the more money, generally speaking. Four colors are necessary for printing full color (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). But even two colors multiplies the difficulty for screen printers. A good idea is to start with one color on the T-Shirt (red, for example) and printing another color (say black) on it. It will cost a little more for the initial T-Shirt, but it cuts the printing costs way down, generally speaking.
Also, intricate designs are a little trickier for screen-printing, especially if you want to keep them cheap. You may notice that T’s with more intricate designs have an underprinting: something that can be printed upon besides the cloth. Cloth will blur fine details if printed directly on, but it also keeps costs low. Letters are rather basic shapes, for example, where the hair of Oden’s beard is quite detailed. But there is an old photography trick called posterizing. Photoshop would allow you to do that fairly easily, if you have access to it. There may even be some free websites that may let you do that as well. You lose the detail while keeping the basic shape recognizable, well, at least in theory.
There’s probably some other time/money/headache saving tips, but these were the first ones I could think of.
"[S]ince men enjoyed very great leisure, they used it to pursue many kinds of commodities unknown to their fathers, and that was that first yoke they placed upon themselves without thinking about it, and the first source of evils the prepared for their descendants. For, besides continuing thus to soften body and mind, as these commodities had lost almost all their pleasantness through habit, and as they had at the same time degenerated into true needs, being deprived of them became much more cruel than possessing them was sweet; and people were unhappy to lose them without being happy to have them." -Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I'm hoping Oden will be "posterizing" lots of people this year.
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by Y5k on Aug 9, 2010 3:01 PM PDT via mobile up reply actions
Good tips, btw
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by Y5k on Aug 9, 2010 3:04 PM PDT via mobile up reply actions
as a screenprinter I would say if you go intricate at all make it just one color.
Also, intricate designs are a little trickier for screen-printing, especially if you want to keep them cheap
another way to keep the price down is to try and use a color that won’t need a base underneath it. A base color(often white) is used to make sure the other color shows better. What it also does is add another screen to be burned and more ink being used. To avoid using a base try dark colors on white and mostly avoid using black t-shirts(as the black seeps through most colors). I’m not sure how much of a cost difference this makes (because I only print not sell) but these things do nothing but make the process take longer and, depending on how intricate the design, can make the print look worse.
by HD on Aug 9, 2010 5:14 PM PDT up reply actions
I know we're not supposed to share our ideas
But I was thinking about having like a Blazersedge on the front that goes dim if you don’t hug someone else with a Blazersege t-shirt. And it should be red and black hypercolor.
On the back it should say, “I honked twice and all I got was Andre Miller for RLEC.”
The technology is real. We can build it.
http://www.trendhunter.com/photos/13653
by tominhawaii on Aug 9, 2010 6:02 PM PDT reply actions 1 recs
Just submitted my shirt idea.
Come on folks lets do this!!!!
by Jomo D. M. Greenidge on Aug 10, 2010 6:26 AM PDT reply actions
me too...
Let’s go!!!!! =)
"Kingdom livin' is a full-time job; every day, I be clockin' in."
by JelaniGNatural on Aug 10, 2010 10:01 AM PDT reply actions
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