Generating good t-shirt ideas | SMBELAL.COM

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How to come up with good T-Shirt Ideas

• Ideas that dont suck

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Table of contents
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Getting Started
Becoming an effective t-shirt idea machine
Some practical tips on becoming the T-Shirt Idea
Generating Machine
Conclusion
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1. Getting Started
1.Getting Started
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Every T-Shirt design starts as an idea. And it
doesnt matter if youre an independent artist
trying to make sales on Redbubble, or a brand
owner sending Facebook traffic to a Shopify
store, or an Instagram influencer selling Merch
to your million followers  we all need
ideas. The better your t-shirt ideas are, the
better your T-Shirt designs will be and the more
sales youll make
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Difference between T-Shirt Ideas T-Shirt Designs

• T-Shirt Ideas are intangible they are concepts,
  or briefs, that could be articulated in a few
  words, or in a simple sketch.
• T-Shirt Designs (on the other hand) are finished,
  print-ready artwork (PSDs, Ai files or PNGs).
• T-Shirt Ideas come first, design comes second.
• Design is the act of taking an existing idea and
  turning it into something real and visible.
• and just like a T-Shirt design can be good or
  bad (eg. poor illustration or bad font choice)
  a T-Shirt idea could also be bad (eg. poor
  phrasing or no appeal to buyers).

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As the world gets smaller, and the cost of decent
design and illustration work comes down it is
often your T-Shirt ideas that will set you
apart. Better T-Shirt ideas will give you a
stronger connection with your potential customers
.To put it another way an average
T-Shirt design can still be successful if the
idea behind it is strong. But even tip-top
design work wont help a T-Shirt IDEA that is
terrible.
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Dont trust your subconscious when generating
T-Shirt Ideas
Sometimes great ideas will just pop into your
brain . That may happen pretty regularly, and
its great. However, in order to improve as
artists, designers or illustrators and in order
to maintain or increase our sales and our income,
we should be continually creating new
designs. And that means having a lot of
ideas (from which we create new designs). More
T-Shirt ideas more designs  more sales. Better
T-Shirt ideas better designs  better sales  
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• But how do we come up with better T-Shirt ideas
  if we cant rely on a steady stream of them from
  our subconscious or semi-conscious brains?
• Well I believe it is actually possible to
  generate original ideas on demand so that you
  always have a healthy pipeline of potential
  ideas.
• (and not just any old ideas but
  really good ones ideas that turn into designs
  that are much more likely to sell).

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2. Becoming an effective T-Shirt idea machine
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• There are a few key principles to mastering
  on-demand T-Shirt idea generation and they
  include
• intentionally trying to come up with new
  ideas (not just leaving it to your subconscious)
• developing systems to store new
  ideas, research those ideas, and develop those
  ideas
• understanding that there are different types of
  T-Shirt designs and understanding why, when and
  where they work
• If you put those fundamentals to work, I
  think youll be surprised how many great T-Shirt
  ideas you can come up with, on-demand.

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3. Tips on becoming the T-Shirt Idea
Generating Machine
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• I want to give you some practical tips and
  advice to help you become the T-Shirt Idea
  Generating Machine that you need to be.

1 Save your idea

• Use Evernote (or a similar, simple note-taking
  app) to save ideas, whenever and wherever they
  strike.

• Set aside time each week (or even daily) to open
  up Evernote and revisit your ideas. Try to
  evaluate each one using Google to help you
  discover if (a) this idea has been done
  before, (b) if theres any kind of existing
  market for such and idea, and (c) to figure out
  the best way to render this design.

• Once youve been saving ideas into your
  note-taking app for a while, try occasionally
  taking a break from scrolling Facebook or Twitter
  (!), and instead scroll back through your old
  ideas.

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2 Build Your Own Personal T-Shirt Ideas Swipe
File Or Cheat Sheet

• Whenever you see a T-Shirt design that you like
  save an image of it to a folder on your desktop,
  or a Google drive folder or something like that.
• After a few weeks (or once you have, say
  20-something images saved)  open your folder and
  start analysing, categorising and reverse
  engineering these designs.
• After a while you should begin to spot patterns
  in these designs, and you can begin making a list
  of T-Shirt idea categories. Then the next time
  you have a topic, trend or subject you want to
  create designs for you can open up your list,
  and start running through it to generate new
  ideas.

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3 Become A Pun Connoisseur

• Take note of any puns you see. These could be in
  memes, in TV adverts, magazines, movie scripts,
  marketing emails, on twitter wherever. Try to
  analyze what makes these puns work and then
  come up with your own puns based on the same
  subject.

• Like the Cheat Sheet idea above begin
  building out a list of popular T-Shirt
  sayings (like Death Before Decaf or Worlds
  Best Dad)  and begin categorising those. Over
  time youll have a list of text-based ideas you
  can re-engineer and adapt to any trend, topic or
  subject you throw at them.

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• Everything begins with an idea."

• Earl Nightingale

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Wrapping up!
If you practice the techniques above youll
begin to develop those systems (and skills) that
will help you come up with original, funny
T-Shirt design ideas whenever you need them. Ok
thats all I got on this one so until next
time  Happy Idea Generating!
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