thread's not dead - doITlab

It Pleases the Audience
This sums up all the points above. In every scenario, the factor for determining
a good t-shirt design is whether your audience likes it and is buying it. If you
feel you have a great design on your hands but it’s not popular or selling, you
might not have discovered the right audience for it yet. There are “bad designs”
that defy logic and are ignorant to clichés and typography but they seem to sell
well. Why? Because the owners understand their audience. That is key!
This shirt design by “Gunter” ironically was very popular in the Emptees community
THREAD’S NOT DEAD • Jeff Finley
Sometimes a design you might not expect to do well becomes a hit, like this
“USA Great” t-shirt that struck the right chord with the Emptees community.
If your design is good and you have the right audience, but it’s still not doing
well, then what? It’s likely that your audience doesn’t even know about your
design, or, if they do, there’s something else holding them back from liking it or
purchasing it. This gets into marketing, branding, and selling your tees, which
is something we’ll get into later.
Is the Idea Solid?
Is the design backed by a good idea? What’s the meaning of the design? Do the
elements in the design have significance or is it just a collage of meaningless
junk?
A good design has a solid idea and purpose behind it. Sure there are top selling
t-shirts that exploit the popularity of stylistic trends like ornate flourishes
or SFSS (skulls for skulls sake). But the point is, designs with a solid idea that
mean something to your client or customer favor better.
It could be argued that there are plenty of generic “idea-less” t-shirts out there
that we use to decorate our bodies with graphics or thematic images. People
are walking into a department store right now to buy a “graphic tee” with some
wings and scrolls on it. On the surface, the meaning behind such a common
design is unclear. But somewhere, a customer is buying that because those images,
and the way they are arranged, mean something to that person. Maybe
the shirt makes them feel kinda cool or helps them fit into a certain crowd. Or
maybe the person associates those images with a particular idea that does
have meaning to them.
Again, we go back to your audience. Does your t-shirt design have meaning to
your client and customer? What moves them and makes them feel good? How
do you come up with these good ideas?
Additional Reading:
• What makes a design good? (Design by Humans)
• What is “good” t-shirt design? (t-shirt forums)
• Art Doesn’t Sell: How to Design for the Apparel Market
Designing for Tees 35