Ten Awesome Threadless T-Shirts

Being a graphic designer I have always been drawn to t-shirts, and one of the best places for finding great t-shirts at an affordable price is Threadless. But the best feature of Threadless is that it is community-driven, all the t-shirt designs are created by regular users and voted on by others, then some of the best submissions are picked by the Threadless staff and printed, and the winners get handsomely rewarded. I submitted a design three years ago myself, but that did not go too well. I probably own two dozen t-shirts from Threadless, I usually stock up when they have one of their occasional sales with t-shirt prices starting at $10. Here is a list of my ten favorite designs from Threadless, sadly many cool t-shirts sell out pretty quickly, but there is always the opportunity to request a reprint.

Typographical

Starting off with t-shirts that focus on typography, I have to say that Damn Scientists (by John Slabyk) is my absolute favorite. It is one of the oldest t-shirts on the site, but it does have a special place in my wardrobe; I have it in black and charcoal. Two other interesting typographical t-shirts are The Signs Are Everywhere (by Thomas De Santis) and Poker Hand Values (by Tan Nuyen).

Collections

The next set of t-shirts I would like to call collections because each t-shirt depicts a set of similar items. To me there is an almost hypnotic quality to this concept. It is intriguing to observe the collections of items whether it is pipes in Smoking Hot (by Steven Harrington), rayguns in Rayguns (by KID_Z), or keys in A Key For Everything (by Richard Lee).

Beautiful Illustrations

Last set of t-shirts, lack of a better word, I chose to call beautiful illustrations. First t-shirt that I chose for this category is Napoleon In War Paint (by Jesse Lefkowitz) which is another one of my favorites. I cannot really put my finger on what makes this t-shirt so great, I just know that I love to wear it; it might be the unexpectedness of the illustration. The Greatest Connection (by Threadless, inspired by Anke Weckmann) reminds me of the singer Björk and the colors are striking. The Season Has Landed (by Freshfauxx) looks like a really colorful watercolor painting and it has a nice composition. And last but not least we have Liberty Nor Safety (by Jeff Battocletti). I have always been a fan of skull imagery, so who can resist a paisley covered skull wearing a gas mask surrounded skull-headed ghosts?