How to create a selling text design for clothes

For some crazy phrase or word ideas you can also try online random Word Generator.

Etsy search

Since it’s a platform for artists, the Etsy marketplace is filled up to its brim with unique concepts and products. You can say it’s like a treasure trove for design ideas.

If you need a bit of a creative boost, head to Etsy and check out their ‘Tops & Tees’ sections – you’ll find separate categories for men, women and kids. If you sort the results by “Most recent”, you’ll be shown the t-shirts that have sold recently because Etsy tends to automatically re-list all products whenever they sell. To get a rough idea on how well a store is doing, click through to their profile and check the stats on the left – in most cases you’ll be able to see the total number of sales as well as the number of “admirers” (people who favorited the store).

This is in no way saying that you should go to Etsy to steal someone’s ideas, though. Please treat Etsy as the inspiration source that it is and not a quick way to come up with profitable designs. If you find a t-shirt idea that you really like, brainstorm similar concepts that would tap into that particular market segment and audience. What else could interest them? Keep in mind that people who purchase text design t-shirts do so because they can relate to and in some way support the “idea” behind the design, not because it’s a particularly fashionable piece of clothing.

Explore a topic you already know

Ultimately, to come up with something original and profitable, you must either tap into an emerging trend, need or a targeted niche. To save research time and improve your chances of finding a good-seller, you should always start from your own area of expertise. Whether you’re great at building IKEA furniture or caring after indoor plants or quoting random facts, why not turn that into a t-shirt line? A great design ‘touches a nerve’ – it’s supposed to stir up emotions or give people something they can easily relate to. However, to do that, you must know the pain points, concerns, passions and dreams of the people in that particular niche – and if you already have a sufficient amount of knowledge around a certain topic, it’s something that will come easy to you.

Think outside the shirt

It’s easy to get stuck in the thinking that to produce top selling t-shirts you must look at top selling t-shirts and reverse engineer your ideas from there. For instance, you see that feminist shirts are on the rise, so you jump on that bandwagon. And while it can turn out to be a great cash cow, it’s not necessarily the best strategy in every case.

To find untapped or underserved markets, you need to start thinking outside the t-shirt world. This means, starting with your target audience or people in your target niche in mind and branching out to other niches and areas of interest that could provide inspiration. Some of the places that could give you a good creative kick are:

>  Book trends:

This is an incredibly rich product category that breaks down into a number of subcategories, all of which are niche markets on their own. A simple Amazon search might fill your mind with a dozen of t-shirt ideas.

>  Stationary, posters and greeting card designs:

When it comes to seriously good design thinking, brands that specialise in visual communication (posters, greeting cards or stationary in general) like Ohh Deer or We Built This City, have a lot going on that could kickoff your creative process. You can look at different illustration styles, colours, fonts and design concepts to identify new trends and lay the groundwork for your next masterpiece.

> Facebook groups, YouTube cideos, 9GAG, Reddit, etc. : 

Using social media to uncover cool design concepts is one of the most obvious strategies, but its effectiveness cannot be understated. To catch a trend before it reaches the mass audience, you have to go where conversations are happening.