I think its well established that I’m not good at drawing (see), but I know that there’s a fair few designers amongst you, so I thought that you guys might benefit from checking out a series on Go Mediazine called ‘15 Awful Mistakes Made by Designers in the Music & Apparel Industry’ especially if you’re just starting out in the industry and aren’t too sure about how everything works. There’s insight and advice from designers such as Rob Dobi (Full Bleed), Jimiyo, Derek Deal, and Jimmy Heartcore, amongst others, so I guess you could say these guys have been there, done that, and designed the t-shirt…. ha!

15 Awful Mistakes Made by Designers in the Music & Apparel Industry [thanks Notcot]

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Tags » advice • design • howto • resources • T-shirts • tutorials

Here’s a story from LaFraise that doesn’t leave the North American contingent of the readership feeling left out. Their Seattle-based (IIRC) blogger, J3concepts, has put together a nice round-up of Adobe Illustrator tutorials he’s found on the tutorial website Tutorialized. The tutorials aren’t necessarily geared towards t-shirt design, but they could be pretty helpful if you’re still getting to grips with the features in Illustrator. Heck, these tuts may even turn me into a t-shirt designer!

And don’t forget, you can still get 25% off your order at LaFraise by entering the coupon code LFSALES08 in the checkout.

Illustrator Tutorials Roundup @ LaFraise

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Tags » adobe illustrator • Coupon Codes • design • DIY • howto • illustrator • j3concepts • lafraise • resource • T-shirts • tutorials

If you’re starting out in the tee game, and you’ve got ideas but don’t know how to get them onto your computer screen, then A Better Tomorrow (the German design contest and streetwear store) are here to help you. Andre (which is so much cooler than my way of spelling our name) has compiled a list of t-shirt design tutorials that should be able to getting you on track to creating a design that will be horribly mocked by people in Threadless submission critiques.

Google translate has actually done a pretty good job of converting this from ABTs native German, so it doesn’t read like an abstract poem.

Shirt design tutorials on the A Better Tomorrow Blog

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Tags » a better tomorrow • design • DIY • german • howto • list • resource • tutorials

If you want to learn how to screen print from anyone, a company that makes really cool tees is a pretty good choice. I’ve never attempted screen printing, but I’d imagine that if I were going to give it a go then I’d need a fair amount of instruction, and my SpideyAndy-sense is telling me that Print Liberation team have the skills to make a pretty looking book.Costiness=$25 Link (Amazon Link)

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Tags » book • books • DIY • howto • print liberation • screen printing • screenprinting

[Picture unrelated to anything, I just think that Ames Rooms are cool]

T-shirt Island has changed its name to Cottonable, which doesn’t really change anything in terms of the blog, but it is a pretty cool name.

Shirtlog, who had their first birthday recently (huzzah!), held an interview with Filip from Allmightys recently, check it out here.

Subtraction, which is a very nicely designed blog, has posted a great description of Rumplo, in case you don’t know what it is yet.

Atticus (the brand founded by Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge of Blink 182, though Hoppus doesn’t have anything to do with it now) and Ebtm (a British clothing site) have launched a fashion blog that I imagine British emo and scene kids might like.

Continuing the music theme, Ian Watkins, who is the singer/frontman of the Lostprophets, a band who are big in the UK (I’ve seen ‘em twice), has moved on from designing the bands album covers and merch, and released his own line of t-shirts with the brand name of Made In Hell, which are actually pretty good, and to prove that he’s keeping it indie and not selling out to ‘the man’ the store is powered by Big Cartel. If you’re wondering how I’m shoehorning this piece of news into a post about blogs… ummm… here’s an interview he did with Punktastic.

You The Designer wrote up a great tutorial last year (and I just re-found it in my bookmarks) that they’ve called “The Ultimate Guide to Designing Your Own Custom T-Shirts“, that’s a pretty lofty claim, but it is a pretty good guide to be fair to them.

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Tags » atticus • blink 182 • blog • blogs • cottonable • design • ebtm • emo • howto • lostprophets • rumplo • T-shirts

That title is fairly well laced with snark, but its only meant in jest, Johnny Cupcakes is an inspiration to a lot of small clothing brand owners, and he seems like a nice guy too.One of the nice things that he does is give out advice to pretty much anyone that asks. The latest example of this can be found on Emptees, where Johnny has posted about how he runs some parts of his business. If you follow JC (the man and the brand) as closely as I do then there probably won’t be too much that is new to you, but if you’re thinking “who on earth is this man/delicious baked treat hybrid?” then click on through, but be warned, its a pretty long read.

Johnny Cupcakes lays some knowledge on Emptees [Photo Credit: Sean Future]

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Tags » DIY • howto • johnny cupcakes • resources

I know that there a few people who read HYA that want to start their own t-shirt lines (I’m one of them… eventually friends, eventually), so when I found this list on Emptees of website and MySpace designers that would probably be of help to those of you that know how to design a badass t-shirt, but don’t know the first thing when it comes to designing a website.

Big fat list of web designers at Emptees

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Tags » designers • emptees • howto • Lists • myspace