How to Generate T-Shirt Ideas Every Day

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Why Do You Need So Many Designs?

Print-on-demand is a funny ol’ world. It’s one of those rare opportunities where you get the chance to experiment with ideas free of charge, with the potential to make serious money. It’s a case of seeing what works until you hit a goldmine, and exploiting.

Merch by Amazon is where all the action is happening right now. It’s the place where print-on-demand t-shirt specialists are able to share their designs to the UK’s biggest online marketplace. In order to make serious sales on the platform, you have no choice but to list in large volumes.

The mega sellers are the ones with mega inventories. The ones making lots of sales have an awful lot of designs (assets) on the market, sat waiting for customers to stumble upon them. They’re tapping into as many niches as they can fathom. They’ve got a t-shirt out there for every significant keyword they can think of. It’s a matter of time before someone ended up finding a design that they want as their own.

You’re going to need a lot of designs to make a big splash in this game. Here’s how to do it.

Daily Brainstorming

First things first is to set a rule on when you’re going to stockpile these ideas. My advice is to make it a daily thing. The brainstorm doesn’t have to be a pad-and-pen thing; all you need to do is write out a single line concept and see if you can come up with any more based on this.

I try to come up with x2 designs each and every day. I will see if on my daily task list each morning. If something comes right then and there, then I’ll push for another. If it’s not happening, it gets shelved until later on in the day. Reminding myself to do it daily means it’s always at the back of my mind at any time – if I find inspiration at any point in the day, I can note it down.

Check Your Competition

It’s an obvious one and it’s most likely the one that you do most often, but your competition is doing something right. If they weren’t, you wouldn’t even notice them. It’s time to do a deep dive on some of these brands of theirs and mine it for as many ideas as you can.

Check if there are any prevailing themes running through their goods, and whether there’s any room for you to get in on the action. So long as you’re not making direct copies of what they do, they’re unlikely to notice your activity. Anyway, we’re just at the ideas stage; you’ll figure out what to do with your concepts later.

Look at Alternative Print-on-Demand Products

Once you’re in the t-shirt zone, you’re stuck looking for things that you believe people would probably want to openly wear in public. Once you’re in that mindset, it’s easy to forget that there’s lots of merch that people would want to buy, but might not want to shout about with a t-shirt.

Take a step back and think about how you might design a card in the same theme. Would the wording be different? Would the graphics be presented in a different way? What about a towel? It completely changes the perspective and it will end up inspiring a change in your t-shirt designs.

Return to Old Designs

When you’ve had success with designs in the past, remix them. The core concept of the design must be a winner, so see whether a slight spin on it will perform as well. There’s clearly demand for it, so use it as the foundation for even more designs.

Some people like to keep creating fresh, original things. While that’s a great trait to have, it’s not necessarily going to be the best way to make more money. Ultimately, that’s what you’re trying to do here, so keep your head on the prize.

Use Opposites

Flip everything on its head. It’s often taught that you should focus on creating products that play on people’s passions. Dogs are often used as examples. Rather than a t-shirt that declares its unconditional love for canines, make something for those who can’t stand them. Or those who are indifferent to them.

Designs don’t have to be one extreme or the other, but by thinking of things in the complete other way, you’ll be able to come up with concepts that completely differ from your usual output. It’s bound to get your mind reeling out whole lists of potentially profitable ideas.

Browse Social Media

I feel like 80% of my social media use these days is to hunt for inspiration to either:

Create social media content for my online brands
Find inspiration for print-on-demand products

It’s really got to that stage. For the latter, it’s a case of searching keywords based around a particular niche I want to target and usually finding funny content around it that I can turn into a print-on-demand design. Viral tweets are obvious places to start, but general conversation including particular keywords (particularly on Twitter) can be fruitful destinations to find inspiration.