Tees Me Bro – The Shirt of the Day Phenomenon

As nerds, we like to let our geek flag fly and one of the easiest ways to do that is to wear shirts portraying our favorite movie/TV character, comic book hero, video game logo (cough) or pretty much anything from pop culture. Personally, I have quite a few different ones, but there a few favorites that combine different elements of geek culture to form a perfect mash-up.  Case in point, my Vote Smuggler shirt from artist Ian Leino. It’s my favorite and I get stopped by people EVERY TIME I wear it out.

There are countless websites and stores that you can purchase nerd appropriate attire, but where can you find the good stuff? You know – the original shirts that nobody else will be wearing.  I was just lucky enough to stumble onto Ian’s work (while hunting for the perfect shirt for SDCC 2012) but that lead to a bigger discovery.

Enter the Shirt of the Day

I don’t know where it all began or when, but during my hunt for the perfect shirt I stumbled onto riptapparel.com.  At least, I think that was the site that introduced me to the phenomenon known as “shirt of the day.”

In short, there are a bunch of websites that allow users to submit artwork.  The website owners choose a design and then offer it up as a shirt for the masses to consume.  The twist – the shirt will only be available for one day, then poof! It’s gone forever (or at least the foreseeable future). There are different variations on this type of site, but they all operate in basically the same way.

There are several reasons that I LOVE the shirt of the day concept, but none better than price (usually they are only $10 or $11 + shipping) and artwork.  The designs that are submitted are hit or miss, but at some point you WILL stumble onto a shirt that hits you straight in your nerd heart and you’ll find yourself entering credit card digits before you know what happened.

Want to see what I’m talking about?

Pineapple Brigade | Save The Clock Tower | Serenity And Beyond | Super Fiction | Burton's Imaginary Friends |

You can also head over to our Pinterest board for more examples > http://pinterest.com/nerdfu/shirts-creative-awesome-tees/ (we update this regularly with new shirts)

What Are These Wonderful “Shirt of the Day” Sites

There are dozens of these sites out there and more seem to come on line every day (we aren’t mad about that), but we can tell you a few of the ones that we visit regularly.

TeeFury – “TeeFury was started in 2008 by a bunch of artists who love limited edition t-shirts. At TeeFury you will find a new amazing tee every 24 hours for just $11.”

RIPT Apparel – “1 NEW DESIGN. 24 HOURS. 365 DAYS.”

Shirt Punch – “ShirtPunch is your home for limited edition, pop culture merchandise… but there’s a twist! Our designs are only available for 24 hours and then they’re retired.”

popuptee – “We open at random for three-day intervals to showcase and offer similarly themed t-shirt designs. The theme of the designs is temporary and the t-shirts are limited. Once the sale is over and the countdown clock hits zero, the designs will no longer be available.”

Day of the Shirt – “We take a bunch of t-shirt sales from different websites and aggregate them all in one place. Refreshed every day.” (great for those who just want to visit one site a day, but it doesn’t index every site out there)

Do you have a favorite shirt or website that you wear to show your nerd pride? Share it with us in the comments.  We’d love to hear all about it.