Design by Humans
Design By Humans (DBH) is a world-wide internet-based ongoing t-shirt design competition targeting individuals between the ages of 14 and 35 who make up a world-wide community of graphic designers, artists, and everyday t-shirt consumers. Voted one of the top 100 hottest retail sites on the web for 2009, Design By Humans markets and sells competitively priced embellished premium t-shirts that are designed and voted into production by the very customers that purchase them. The Irvine, CA-based firm capitalizes on the tremendous power of the internet along with the recent explosion of the consumer movements coined “Customer-Made” and " Crowd-Sourcing". Led by a seasoned veteran of the apparel industry, Jamey Draper, CEO of Sunsports, Inc., along with Co-founders Jason and Matt Gutierrez, the Design By Humans management team delivers a highly compelling web environment coupled with a proprietary viral-marketing campaign to produce a superior quality product with a short lead-time into the hands of its customers.
Operations
The ongoing contest at Design By Humans is a daily, weekly, and monthly contest with a new winning shirt design posted every weekday. Designs are submitted and prescreened. The community then votes and makes comments on their favorite designs. These designs are typically available for voting for up to 3 months. Then, each week day, a winner is selected by the DBH staff from the entire pool of art. The selection process is based on votes, comments, creativity, and potential sell through. The winning shirt is featured as “Shirt of the Day” on our home page. These shirts are available for immediate purchase. The winning designer of each Shirt of the Day is awarded $500 cash and $250 of DBH store credit. The five winning “Shirts of the Day” then compete against each other for “Shirt of the Week.” The SOTW is chosen based upon popularity and weekly sales. An additional cash prize of $1000 is awarded to the weekly winner. The four weekly winners then compete against each other for an additional cash and store credit award of $1750 and are crowned “Shirt of the Month.” Each designer has an opportunity to receive up to $3500 of cash and prizes. The contest repeats itself every month.
The “Rock Star” Factor
Design By Humans capitalizes on a designer’s desire to gain exposure by providing high profile and visually compelling biographies on the designers. In addition, DBH provides individually catered tools and utilities to the designers to facilitate the promotion and tracking of a designs progress and success.
“Rock Star Awards Program”
Beyond simply rewarding a designer for winning the current competition, DBH capitalizes on the designer’s enthusiasm by providing them with benchmark incentives based on the number of t-shirts sold with their particular design. In an attitude of friendly competition, the designers promote their printed designs within the DBH community and through various other blogs and websites in an effort to receive cash rewards associated with their design achieving various benchmark levels of sales volume.
Printing Capabilities
Design By Humans has partnered with Sunsports, Inc. a state-of-the-art screen print, embroidery, and packaging facility, whose years of success in the garment embellishment industry have earned it a reputation for being a leader in mixed-media applications and [...]-edge ink treatments. The technology and resources made available through Sunsports allows Design By Humans to remove virtually all restrictions with regard to design. Designers are able to fully express themselves through their artwork without limitation to the number of colors used or the type of embellishment applied. This freedom to create naturally results in a more sophisticated design and ultimately a more desirable finished product.
T-Shirts
Design By Humans uses a premium, 100% cotton, custom cut and sewn blank tee designed especially for them. The t-shirt comes in 20 custom colors and is garment dyed and laundered for extra softness. The tee is available in both men’s and juniors in sizes small through 2XL.
Contests & Promotions
In addition to its regular contests, DBH partners with apparel brands, license companies, and corporations to run special contests. Each of these contests is unique in their own way and provides additional opportunities for our designers to earn cash and gain exposure.
DBH operates an on-going “music series” contest where it has partnered with several musical talents such as, KISS, Kings of Leon, Fleetwood Mac, Li’l Wayne, and Incubus.
DBH Gives Back
Design By Humans will partner with several charitable organizations in 2010 and beyond to support and assist the needs of all humans throughout the world.