# Design or text?



## WhatsYourBurn (Mar 1, 2006)

I find it interesting that so many t-shirt sites sell shirts that consist of mostly if not soley text. It seems to me that after a while people would want to push the envelope a bit more and provide better quality design. However, sites like T-shirt hell have tons of shirts with nothing but text and they seem to do very well. My partner and I are getting ready to launch our own pre-print line of t-shirts called identityburn and our main focus is on design. I guess my question is why would anyone want to pay 18 bucks for text?? What do you guys think?


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## Twinge (Apr 26, 2005)

Different for different customers. Some people really like the simple witty one-liners, other people want some crazy complex design. I like both, and we offer some of each (though I'd like to get a few more design shirts going soon myself).

In other words, both will sell.


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## monkeylantern (Oct 16, 2005)

As Twinge said,

However, the text market is *hard* to do very well in, mainly because there are lots of people out there doing it (some of the best frequent these boards). It's not an "easy route" as unique slogans do not grow on trees.


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## WhatsYourBurn (Mar 1, 2006)

Well I understand that clever slogans can be difficult to think up but why write it when you can illustrate it? Don't get me wrong, I'm not ripping on anyone who makes shirts that way I just feel that a little creativity would go a long way.


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## skibum (Feb 19, 2006)

WhatsYourBurn, I agree 100% with you. I think you would sell a lot more shirts if they were illustrated along with the text. This would give you the edge-up on the competition. I would suspect the reason so many folks just write simple text is the time factor. It's much faster (and easier) to just slap some text on a shirt versus illustrating the design as well.


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## Twinge (Apr 26, 2005)

skibum said:


> WhatsYourBurn, I agree 100% with you. I think you would sell a lot more shirts if they were illustrated along with the text. This would give you the edge-up on the competition. I would suspect the reason so many folks just write simple text is the time factor. It's much faster (and easier) to just slap some text on a shirt versus illustrating the design as well.


But what about all those hours taken choosing the correct font!?

(Mostly kidding, though I do spend a lot of time working out a good font for each text design, so they at least have some personality to them)


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## aokusman (Jul 22, 2005)

Is there any way to prevent people from copying your unique slogan?


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## identityburn (Feb 24, 2006)

aokusman said:


> Is there any way to prevent people from copying your unique slogan?


It's really difficult to copyright text. Now if it's a label name like Billabong it's easy, but just some goofy saying on a shirt is really hard to prevent from anyone else stealing it. I've seen the same slogans on shirts on a variety of sights. Thats another reason why adding an illustration is better, you can copyright illustrations much easier than text.


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