Top 5 Design Trends for T-Shirts

With the abundance of t-shirt design sites such as Threadless and Design By Humans, it’s easy to trendspot themes that are popular. Each site and its community has their own taste and it makes gaming the vote a lot easier. Here is a list of our top 5 design trends that are sure to give you a few extra votes in t-shirt competitions:

Skulls

T-Shirts with skull designs are arguably the most popular theme on the internet and in retail. Something about death just gets designers and t-shirt lovers united.

Skull T-Shirts

Trees

Trees are one of the most symbolic pieces of design and probably the reason for their popularity. They can equate to life, growth, green living, reunion, and much more.

Tree T-Shirts

Birds

Birds definitely win the versatility award for having the ability to range from cute to scary and from large to small. They can be the focal point and make the whole design or just be an accessory and play a small part in the big picture.

Bird T-Shirts

Splatter

Splatter is a pretty simple effect that can be useful for the majority of t-shirt design concepts. There are many resources on the internet for photoshop brushes and vectored image packs with splatter to add to a t-shirt designer’s toolbox.

Splatter T-Shirts

Floral

Floral artwork is another wildy popular component of t-shirt design because of its all-purpose usability. It usually sits in the background and can act as polish for the featured portion of the artwork.

Floral T-Shirts

As with anything else, what is hot today can be cold tomorrow but these 5 design elements and concepts have been in high demand for some time now. Our guess is that with the increasing amount of platforms for t-shirt design, these design elements will reach saturation at a faster rate than ever before.

Hopefully these designs are inspiring, because custom t-shirts can be a great and fun form of promotion, whether it’s for a business, band, freelancer, etc. Aside from that, they’re awesome to come up with just for the sake of creativity and design.

Author of this post: youdesignit

Blake Poutra works for a company called You Design It where you can design t-shirts and maintains a t-shirt design blog. See all posts by:

51 Comments (Leave a Comment)

  1. thanks to all visitors to my web pagw

    Reply
  2. Some very nice designs here. These are certainly some of the most popular trends out there, but when done with originality can come off very refreshing and unique.

    Reply
  3. I like the trees ^___^

    Reply
  4. Great Collection

    Reply
  5. Cheers for this excellent. I was wondering if you were thining of writing similar posts to this one.

    Reply
  6. Nice collection, thanks for sharing.

    Reply
  7. great pattern ,I like your art

    Reply
  8. fits

    can you make a cool tshirt design. for us accounting students??

    Reply
  9. This article seems to be from a couple years back. Wondering if the top 5 trends is still valid today?

    Reply
  10. nice post :) thanx

    Reply
  11. Ron

    Cool shirts… these trends tend to move from the streets to mainstream print before they disappear for while and are reborn in another form. Who knew? Florals and Trees on T’s?

    Reply
  12. Love seeing these t shirt prints & designs. I am getting inspired to create and print more. We have taken advantage of DTG printing and are able to create heaps of unique designs easily and quickly. So inspiration from designs like these is awesome. Custom T shirt prints are starting to become a hot area.

    Reply
  13. Sandra

    Very good artist t-shirts selection here : http://teeshirtblog.blogspot.com/

    Reply
  14. As T-shirt design is something Ive just started to get into, its really interesting to see these ideas. Cheers for the post.

    Reply
  15. pengpeng

    i like it!!

    Reply
  16. nice collection of t shirts. i love the tree design

    Reply
  17. Haha wow, this is pretty on point. It’s amazing how quickly trends catch on, and before you know it, every shirt looks the same!
    .-= Ryan Cowles´s last blog ..East Zoo T-Shirt Designs =-.

    Reply
  18. Great article thank for this ..

    Reply
  19. i love this ! thank for info.

    Reply
  20. Thank for sharing !!
    .-= bird t shirt´s last blog ..Bird Angel =-.

    Reply
  21. I hate skulls on shirts! so many people jumped on that bandwagon it made me sick! thats why we went a whole different direction with out line! bird and tree they are ok though
    .-= heartfelt t-shirts´s last blog ..Heartfelt-ASL "love has no language" v-neck (drew blue) – $35.00 =-.

    Reply
  22. such a creative work .. i have also designed some stuff in past … but its a creative stuff…took some ideas from this… :)

    Reply
  23. Rod

    Yeah, some of those floral T’s are really out there. Any blue in that style?
    Thanks.

    Reply

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