Our CEO Jana Eggers recently met up with designer Daniel Casarella from Barking Irons in his New York studio. He revealed what designers should keep in mind when creating a good t-shirt design. He essentially points to three things which are important for a successful design:

1. Balance – how and where the parts of the design are placed on the shirt
2. Typography – the choice of font and its proper use to effectively communicate your message
3. Research – a good design should always be able to tell a story and stories are much easier to tell when you really know about the history behind it.

P.S. The Barking Irons apparel in our Exclusive Collection is still in stock and Summer is certain to bring along some new stuff.

Custom-tshirts.eu is a partner shop based right here in the UK. It has a snazzy and creative new layout and a wide range of designs and slogans for men, women and emos. We ask Maria about the story behind her shop and the connection between France, Bristol and t-shirts.

What inspired or motivated you to open a shop and how long have you run the shop?
As a graphic designer I wanted to put my skills and creativity to use. I moved to Bristol from France and found in this alternative city that t-shirts were definitely the perfect media to let people express original ideas. I opened the first version of my shop in September 2007. I recently launched the second version, which based on the idea of a large t-shirt where the content appears, making it look nicer and more user-friendly.

How did you learn about Spreadshirt?
I came across Spreadshirt while searching for customised t-shirts on the web. I saw it was one of the biggest providers with a large range of t-shirt styles, which also offered the possibility to open my own shop.

continue reading ‘Interview with Custom-Shirts.eu’

Shop partner Romibello’s question yesterday as to whether our servers were down unfortunately had to be answered with a “yes”. Our provider was faced with a power outage and, more specifically, its aftermath. That’s why we were sitting there with our hands tied behind our back and crossing our fingers hoping they would get the lights back on a.s.a.p. in Cologne.

Our platform was back online in the late afternoon, but there were still certain parts of the site which were having hiccups. As of now, there shouldn’t be any more problems. Since power outages can sometimes bewilder databases, there may be a few odds and ends on our platform which could appear as a result of yesterday’s outage.

If anyone comes across any irregularities – just comment here. We’ll gather them together and forward them to the right people. Thanks for your understanding and, once again, sorry about what happened yesterday.

Sjeurt is a Spreadshirt partner shop from the Netherlands – a shop with humourous and graphically sophisticated designs which certainly work on the international stage. And because others could learn a little something about shop design and marketing from Sjeurt, we thought we would take a look at the man behind the scenes, Marcel van Wijk.

How long have you been using Spreadshirt?
I opened my shop in 2006 and started right off with a premium account because I saw its potential.

What inspired or motivated you to open a shop and how did you learn about Spreadshirt? continue reading ‘Interview with Sjeurt.nl’

One of the questions we often get is: what are the best-selling products at Spreadshirt? Since this question is pretty easy to answer and the results are relatively constant, we came up with this nifty image of the top 10 products for you. The image also shows the top colours which sold best for those products in the first quarter of 2009 (in order of their popularity).

Here are the products with links to their detail pages:

1. Men’s Classic T-shirt
2. Women’s Girlieshirt Classic
3. Men’s Hooded Sweatshirt
4. Men’s Slim Fit T-shirt
5. Men’s AA T-shirt
6. Cooking Apron
7. Men’s Contrast T-shirt
8. Men’s Hooded Jacket
9. Men’s Retro T-shirt
10. Women’s AA T-shirt

Just because these products sell so well doesn’t mean you should immediately flood the Marketplace with these products our apparel assortment has much, much more to offer.

(original foto by cayusa)

Tomorrow on 10th of April we are starting up the first spreadshirt twitter parade! And what might that be, you ask?

- Every European Spreadshirt shop which is named more than 10 times by different twitter users between 10th and 20th April will receive a 10% discount for their shop for one week long.

- Every European Spreadshirt shop which is named more than 20 times by different twitter users will receive a 20% discount for their shop for one week long.

- If a European Spreadshirt shop is named more than 100 times by 100 different twitter users, we will do a photoshoot for the partner and print 10,000 flyers which will go out with our regular orders.

- The cherry on top: we give away 20 vouchers worth 20 EUR (18 GBP) to use in the own shop to all shopkeepers who participate and reach the 10 mark.

So, hang on and let’s go through this one more time in detail. Please read carefully if you would like to take part in the parade: continue reading ‘Join our twitter parade and win 10,000 flyers to promote your shop!’

A few months ago, we sent one of our test lab employees over to the relatively young Berlin fashion label Emperor’s Clothing. They have been working hard on developing a new fabric and we thought that “Earth Month” would be the right time to introduce, drum roll please, the “Revolutee”! The name might sound a bit presumptuous at first glance, but give it a chance. We are definitely expecting a lot from this product, especially since the most common reasons for shirt returns are: wrong size, wrong colour or that the cut doesn’t fit.

Those are exactly the points which our test lab teamed up with Emperor’s to solve – and they hit the nail right on the head. Their shirt is not only unisex and available in every colour imaginable, it is also suitable for every occasion – and it is the first unisex shirt which has truly earned that title. What does this mean for you? Simply add a design and order it. There’s no more need to find the right style and size, washing it is elementary and it’s 100% organic. Note: the Revolutee(on) is expected to be available this coming Monday when we roll out the other new additions to our assortment. Stay tuned!