Popular T-shirt print designs

[Gygafo]

Please excuse me if I have posted this in the wrong place as I only joined the forum recently. Plus, I'm a total newbie to this business.

Last week I took delivery of an Oki white toner printer, WoW 7.7, and heat press system from The Magic Touch and also opened an account with Ralawise, both companies were recommended to me by members on this forum - and very pleased I am with their advice. I wanted this system specifically to print a very small number of niche designs onto black T'shirts. However, after the installation of the printer and press I realised just how versatile the whole system really is so, what I am looking to buy (even better if they are free) are copyright "legal" digital files of designs that I can load into Photoshop and print onto T'shirts using the WoW system. I'm interested more in the biker, music, goth (maybe), and clever (close to the knuckle) humour! Anything really that I can use to get experience of using the press cos I'm real bad and need the practice.

Cheers!

Nigel.

[jennywren]

The best and only way is to develop your own designs, there is no short cut, go out use a camera, or use the (close to the knuckle) the main thing is to think about the way you want to brand your stuff. There is no easy answer expect do your own work

[pisquee]

Do your own design work, or buy/license designs off someone else, or contract someone to design for you.

[Gygafo]

The best and only way is to develop your own designs, there is no short cut, go out use a camera, or use the (close to the knuckle) the main thing is to think about the way you want to brand your stuff. There is no easy answer expect do your own work

Do your own design work, or buy/license designs off someone else, or contract someone to design for you.

Thanks for the advice Jennywren and Pisquee. I have a couple of designs on the go and as a photographer I use a camera on a daily basis, however, I'm unsure (for the time being) as to the best way to convert an image and make it suitable for putting on a T-shirt. My first attempts at printing a photo image onto a black shirt were not very good, plenty of detail but the colours were muted. I'm sure that is down to my lack of knowledge and experience. My own simple graphic designs came out way better than I expected. I Guess I'm just eager to get a collection of designs together so I can offer a selective choice to customers when I start trading and I thought buying off the shelf designs might be a bit of a stop gap. Your advice has been taken onboard, thanks again.

Cheers!
Nigel.

[logobear]

Action Illustrated have a really versatile collection, about 30k vector images that are all user manipulatable.
It is a USA based collection, heavy on the goth/tribal/biker/skulls themes, but lots of sports and animals and stuff
They have just launched a European collection
You can easily make really cool designs that you can export AS A TRANSPARENT .PNG for wow printing.
They do great deals if you don't take the books and include Corel X6 and website plug ins.
I think Magic Touch can do you a special deal .....
definitely worth a look

[Gygafo]

Action Illustrated have a really versatile collection, about 30k vector images that are all user manipulatable.
It is a USA based collection, heavy on the goth/tribal/biker/skulls themes, but lots of sports and animals and stuff
They have just launched a European collection
You can easily make really cool designs that you can export AS A TRANSPARENT .PNG for wow printing.
They do great deals if you don't take the books and include Corel X6 and website plug ins.
I think Magic Touch can do you a special deal .....
definitely worth a look

Thanks very much logobear, Sounds like just the thing to get me started with a couple of designs before going live. I'll take a look at Action illustrated and see what they have to offer, TMT have been really good and I'll have a chat with them on Monday. Once I'm up and running I'll take note of jennywrens advice (already started) and concentrate on doing my own designs which is ideally what I want to do.

Cheers!
Nigel