We’ve been working hard in the background developing something which is really exciting and very cool – a new feature to the Graphic Tide site. We’ve listened to feedback, researched what our new and existing customers really want and found ways to improve the ‘typical’ t-shirt buying and selecting process. We’ve been building and thinking of various prototypes and ideas to push the clothing sector to the next level and we think now is the time to do that, putting t-shirts at the forefront.

So why do we think now is the time to push forward a new and exciting wave of creating, selecting and buying great t-shirt designs? Well with the build-up of next-gen games consoles just around the corner, super fast 4G mobile broadband rolling out around the country and now the launch of the curved ‘Imax like experience’ OLED TVs – it’s only right the clothing industry moves to the next stage. So today we are really pleased to announce the launch of Graphic Tide’s social t-shirt voting platform – a new, community powered and social collaboration platform, that let’s the community choose the best and most popular t-shirt designs from around the world.

Now Everyone Can Get Involved

Our new social t-shirt voting platform gives you the opportunity to vote for your favourite t-shirt designs submitted to us through our t-shirt submission process. More importantly we’ve removed our final approval step, the step that many designers considered as the biggest reason why they don’t submit art to be printed onto t-shirts. So this means that every t-shirt from today will be 100% selected by you – the community. Unlike other t-shirt business models, designs (even the most popular ones) have to go through staff approvals before hitting the shops. We’re different.

We don’t believe anyone has the right to decide what should and shouldn’t be printed. If the community loves a t-shirt design, why does it have to jump through more hoops in order for customers to buy it? The truth is, it doesn’t, so that’s why we’re changing all that. So as well as letting you choose every design that gets printed, also from today, every new submitted t-shirt design will be able added to the t-shirt voting pages on Graphic Tide.

It doesn’t matter if you have been an artist for 15 years, 5 years or 5 weeks, we think everyone should have an opportunity to showcase their work. So as long as your design doesn’t break any copyright laws and is completely your own work, the t-shirt design will be immediately accepted and added to the t-shirt voting section.

Simple Voting Means Better T-shirts

Once a t-shirt is active, voting takes place using two easy to use voting methods. Firstly, the quickest and easiest way to vote for your favourite t-shirt is by using your Graphic Tide account. It’s free and you’ll be setup within minutes. The second way is to tweet about the design. A tweet to vote is as the name suggests, a tweet that contains the website URL of the t-shirt you want to vote for.

Our systems will pick it up from the Twitter feed and will add this towards the t-shirt’s vote count. We take these plus votes cast on Graphic Tide and merge the two together to create an overall combined score. Once a t-shirt reaches a combined score of 100, the voting will be complete and the design will be sent directly to the printers ready for purchase in store. No if’s or but’s and certainly no more of these final ‘staff approvals’ steps. So if you think you’ve got a design that people will love, submit and vote today!

The Power Of Twitter

Twitter t-shirt voting or tweet-tee as we like to call it, makes it easier for designers to showcase their work to bigger audiences. That’s always been our main goal, to help designers get heard. With Twitter we think we can make this connection even stronger. We believe we are the first to help give designers free exposure both online and offline using a powerful social community platform.

So to recap, you’re allowed two votes per t-shirt design, one via Graphic Tide and the second via Twitter. We know that not everyone has a Twitter account – but don’t worry you can still vote on Graphic Tide too. You can tweet as many times as you like for the same design but only one vote will be counted – that’s to keep it fair. So we hope you will be as excited as we are to see what kinds of designs will get submitted over the coming months and more importantly which designs you guys will love and to vote to 100.

There is a selection of designs already submitted, so why don’t you add your design today or vote on those t-shirts that you would like to buy.