Custom T-shirt design that sells your brand

Everything you need to move to production. Your T-shirt design will be uploaded in the correct formats to send to a printer. Typically this means a production-ready Adobe Illustrator file, Adobe Photoshop file, PDF file or EPS file. 

Plus, you’ll get the full legal copyright, so the design will be all yours.

Yes. If you have any specific images (like a logo) that need to be included on your T-shirt design, please submit them to designers with your brief.

Unless you request otherwise, your designer may also use stock images (purchased from a third party) in your design. If a designer uses stock art in a design, they’ll tell you which images they are and use watermarked versions of them in their entries. Once you choose the winning submission, you’ll need to purchase the stock art and provide it to the winning designer so they can complete the design.

Absolutely (and we love it when that happens)! When your T-shirt design contest has finished, you can start a 1-to-1 project with your winning designer.

We guarantee that you’ll get a great T-shirt design at any pricing level, but our higher-priced packages give you more design options and better support.

Here’s how it works: When you pay more, the prize for the winning designer is bigger, too. More experienced designers participate in your contest, so you get more high-quality designs to choose from. More options means additional time that's needed to review your designs. That’s why our Gold and Platinum packages offer dedicated managers to help streamline that process by writing creative briefs and giving your designers feedback.

When selecting your custom T-shirt contest package, think about how much time you’ll have and what experience you have writing briefs and working with designers. If you're still unsure, contact us for a design consultation.

We offer a 100% money-back guarantee within 60 days of payment on all T-shirt design contests, except those with a guaranteed prize and those that have entered the Final Round. You can also call us anytime to help you rewrite your brief, reopen your project and help you pick a winning design. Remember, if we refund your contest, you aren’t legally entitled to use any of the designs submitted to your contest.

It’s easy! Once you’ve chosen a winning T-shirt design, you’ll receive ready-to-go files to send to a printer.

We recommend VistaPrint for all your printing needs — shocking, we know. They’ve printed billions of business cards (literally), so they know a thing or two about fast and easy service. Of course, if you want to use your own favorite printer, you can do that, too!

Lots of ideas! Get inspiration by searching for past T-shirt design ideas created by our design community.

Bring as many specifics as you can, too. Include T-shirt sizes, style, number of colors, printable dimensions, printing requirements and any other specifications that would affect your design.

The more you give the designers, the better they can design a T-shirt for you!

Your custom T-shirt design contest includes one winning shirt. If you need a second T-shirt design, you have a few options. You can award multiple winners to your contest. You can run a second contest. Or you can start a 1-to-1 project with your winning designer to create additional assets.

On 99designs, designers agree to upload only original artwork, so each designer owns the rights to their design submissions until you choose your contest’s winner. During the design handover stage, the designer agrees to transfer the rights, and you become the owner of the copyright of your winning T-shirt design.

Choose “Make your contest private” from the “Contest options” section before you launch your T-shirt design contest. This will prohibit designers from using their designs elsewhere, and your contest will be unsearchable on the web.

This will automatically attach a standard NDA template to your contest. If you prefer, you can also upload your own NDA.

In a design contest, designers from all over the world submit concepts unique to your brief. You choose finalists, give feedback to hone the designs, and ultimately award your favorite shirt as the winner. If ideation and seeing a variety of different design styles is important to you, we’d recommend a design contest.

On the other hand, if you have a clear idea of the style and direction you’d like to take with your T-shirt, or if you have a more complex design project, it’s best to start a project with a freelance designer.