Interviews have always been a great way to learn tips and tricks from successful designers and entrepreneurs, making them an important learning tool. Being a successful t shirt designer or clothing line owner is no easy task so if you are serious about bettering yourself and gaining some insight into the inner workings of the t shirt design industry check out some of these awesome t shirt interviews. These interviews are also just a fun and great way to get to know the people behind your favorite brands and t shirt designs better, so dig in!

Interview With Draco

Interview With Matthew Skiff

Interview With a.mar.illo

Interview With Johnny Cupcakes

Interview With Jimiyo

Interview With Wotto

Interview With Shirt Fight!

Interview With Amir at Beautiful/Decay Apparel

Interview With Reese Imhof of 410 BC

Interview With Keaton Henson

Interview With GodMachine

Interview With Pyknic

Threadless Interviews

Interview with Jeff Finley of Go Media

Interview With Shred Clothing

Interview With Jimiyo 2

Interview With Founder of Retro Campaigns

Interview With Inkemplete

Interview With Kyle Crawford of Electric Zombie Clothing

Interview With Kevin Hartranft

Interview With Glamour Kills Owner Mark Capicotto

Interview with David Murray of SEIBEI

Day 3 of t shirt week on You the Designer is here! Today we have created a very handy list of t shirt resources for any designers looking to get into the tee design business. Our list of resources includes the top t shirt blogs, the best t shirt design galleries you can submit your designs to and some great t shirt contest sites you can sign up for to try and win very generous prizes. If you think we missed any t shirt design resources in this list, please share them with us!

T Shirt Design Galleries

T Shirt Blogs

T Shirt Contests

Today we are continuing t shirt week on YouTheDesigner.com with a roundup of some of the best t shirt tutorials on the web. If you are a designer looking to get into the t shirt design business, be sure to check out these tutorials! The t shirt tutorials below include printing tips, how to create custom stencils and how to mock up your t shirt designs. If you know of any other great tutorials please link them in the comments!

Design Process: “Sick” Metal Band T-Shirt

Go Media’s Rapid-Fire Illustration Technique

Create a Complete Apparel Tech Pack

Designers’ Guide to the Apparel Printing Industry

How to Create Photorealistic T-Shirt Mockups

Photoshop T-shirt Design

DIY vintage T-shirts

Create a Custom T-Shirt Stencil Design

Product Presentation and Packaging

CMYK Process Printing for the Emerging T-Shirt Designer

Create a Three-Color Illustration for Screen Printing

Super-Slick, Screen Printing Separations with Illustrator

How to Create Your Own Color Separations in Adobe Illustrator

How to Prepare Artwork for Screen-Printing

How to create a T-shirt from scratch

Apparel Printing Techniques

6 Great Tips On How To Prepare Artwork for T-Shirt Printing

Tutorial: creating t-shirt templates

Step by step Photoshop coloring method using halftones

Halftone Shading Tutorial

Making halftones in Illustrator

Realistic T-Shirt Mockup Tutorial

4-Color Process Separations In Photoshop

Spot Color Separations In Photoshop

Using Adobe Kuler to Enhance Your Photoshop Color Workflow

Many graphic designers dabble in t-shirt and fashion design, so this week will be t-shirt week on YouTheDesigner.com! All our posts this week will revolve around t shirt and fashion design, starting with today’s posts. Below is an ultimate roundup of t shirt templates for any designers interesting in doing t shirt designs and such.

The t shirt design community is very rich with plenty of things for a graphic designer to do. You can work full time as a designer, create freelance t shirt designs, submit your tee designs to the many t shirt contest sites out there to win cool prizes and lots of money, or even start your own clothing line if you have a bunch of cool designs! The t shirt templates in this roundup are a great way to mock up your designs to see how they will look before production.

Best Free T Shirt Template Designs

Giving away freebies has become a design blog community standard, so we have rounded up a ton of great new free icon sets, brushes and more for you hungry designers. Today’s freebies include: free website icons, new RSS icons, a smoke brush set, a new e-commerce icon pack and much, much more!

New Design Freebies – Free Icon Sets, Brush Packs and More

1. Free Fresh Slick RSS Icon Set from CreativeNerds

2. Free E-Commerce Icons from IconShock on Designm.ag

3. Free Website Icons from Graphic River

4. Free Smoke Brush Set from qBrushes

5. Free Electronic Devices Icons from Designer-Daily.com

6. Free Keep Fit Vectors – Give Your Designs a Workout!

7. WooFunction: 178 Amazing Web Design Icons

8. 40+ Free Vector Stickers

9. 130 icons for iPhone applications

10. Free Texture Tuesday: Old Film II

11. Sixpack Status – Free Icon Pack

12. A Set of 32 Free Sketchy Icons

13. Car Icon Set

14. Back to School Icon Set

15. Social Bookmarking Characters

16. Sushi Icons

17. Think RSS Version 1

18. Vectorwellen – Photoshop Brush

Green web design is on the rise and every designer needs the right resources to meet the demand. In June, we released a green website inspiration post entitled 15 Grandiose Green Website Designs and today we want to continue on that theme by showing you 66 awesome eco-friendly vectors from GraphicRiver.net, the latest website from the Envato Network (Tuts Plus, FreelanceSwitch and more). GraphicRiver.net is an online marketplace where designers can buy and sell layered Photoshop files, vectors, icons and more! Prices start at just $1 dollar.

UPDATED on 08/31/2009: Comment on these vectors & Sign-up for an account at GraphicRiver.net for a chance to win $20 in credit! 5 Winners to be chosen by September 2, 2009.

UPDATED on 09/2/2009: Winners have been selected! The 5 winning comments are RAE-D8 Design Firm, Mare Downs, islandartist, Bethany Fief  & Chethan!

66 Vectors for Eco-Friendly Green Website Design

To buy these vectors, visit graphicriver.net or simply click on the image! For print designs, try Eco-Friendly Printing for business cards, brochures, posters, postcards and more with UPrinting.com.

Tis the seasons to use Holiday Icons and today we bring you the ultimate collection of holiday icons! You can use these icons for a variety of projects such as adding a nice holiday touch to your website or blog, including them in your holiday postcard designs and much more. Thanks to all the great designers who took the time to create these amazing free holiday and Christmas icon sets!

Holiday Icons

Smashing Christmas Icon Set

Dellixmas Christmas Icon Set

Christmas Holiday Icons

13 Christmas Icons

Christmas Social Bookmark Icons

Christmas Buddy Icons

Santa’s Set

Christmas Icons 2

Christmas Surprise (4 In 1) Icons

Christmas gift icons 1.0

Christmas Dock Icons

Xmas Feed Icons

Xmas Pack

Christmas Icons 2007

Tired of those same old fonts and looking for some new custom and cool fonts? Then you have come to the right place! We have put together a great collection of cool fonts from freelance designers and typographers who were kind enough to take the time to create these fonts. Be sure to check the usage rights of these fonts before you start throwing them in your projects. If you have created any cool fonts yourself, be sure to lets us know about your font in the comments below. Enjoy the cool fonts!

Custom Cool Fonts

1. HisMannerMild | Download

2. Merrily | Download

3. Dirt 2 Death | Download

4. Bus Led Display Small | Download

5. Fresh Bold | Download

6. Evan and Estrya | Download

7. London 2012 | Download

8. Estrya’s Handwriting | Download

9. Nathaniel | Download

10. Opus Pix | Download

11. Fat Marker | Download

12. Ver Army | Download

13. Vuur | Download

14. Black Blocckks | Download

15. Sunday Morning Garage Sale | Download

16. Homeboots | Download

17. Ultravioleta | Download

18. Bobsmade | Download

19. Evan and Estrya | Download

20. At the Window | Download

The amount of free vector art coming out each day is astonishing, most of which are created by professional freelance vector artists or design studios! Many designers and studios will give out free vector art as a way to showcase their talent and gain exposure. This is a great way to get traffic, but its also great for designers who need fresh design elements for websites and other graphic design projects.

25 Free Free Vector Art Downloads

1. DressUp! Avatars Icon Set | Download

2. The Graphs: A Free Icon Set | Download

3. Feed Me Animals: A Free RSS Feed Icon Set | Download

4. Heart: A Free Social Icon Set | Download

5. Finance and Applications: A Free Icon Set | Download

6. The Leaves Fall: A Social Icon Set For Bloggers | Download

7. Dellipack 2: A Free Icon Set | Download

8. Bright! Icon Set | Download

9. Rocket Girl | Download

10. Golden Glamour Frame | Download

11. Night Angels | Download

12. Blue Vector Summer Vista Icons | Download

13. Vector Design 3 | Download

14. Winged Heart | Download

15. Ferrari | Download

16. Ecology Vector Set | Download

17. Heart Vector Illustration | Download

18. Beauty Girls | Download

19. Free Vector Social Bookmark Icons | Download

20. Icon Style Vector Graphics | Download

21. Food Icons | Download

22. Money Icons | Download

23. Singing Birds | Download

24. Dog Care Vector | Download

25. Flowers and Plants | Download

Interviews are an amazing way to gain insight into the design community and quickly tap into the experience of others to better prepare yourself for challenges ahead, plus they’re just dang interesting! Design blogs often publish interviews with well known and respected people in the design community and this year has been no exception. Below is a collection of 25 great interviews of 2008, that you should not miss!

25 Must Read Interviews From 2008

1. Interview With James White

James White is a graphic designer working in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. By day he does corporate design and by night he works on various personal art projects.

2. Interview With Jeff Fisher

Jeff Fisher is an author, branding expert, identity designer, blogger and much more!

3. Interview With Kate McInnes

Kate McInnes is a freelance illustrator and graphic designer who is currently working for Nitro PDF software in Melbourne, Australia.

4. Interview With Alberto Seveso

Alberto Seveso is a talented self-taught freelance illustrator and designer living in Rome.

5. Interview With Alex Dukal

Alex Dukai is an amazing illustrator, originally from Puerto Madryn, Patagonia Argentina who now mostly works on illustrations for children’s books.

6. Interview With Jeff Kulak

Jeff Kulak is another graphic designer and illustrator with a unique freehand-looking style currently living in Montreal, Canada.

7. Interview With Adelle Charles From Fuel Your Creativity

Adelle Charles is an art director for the CBS and Fox affiliates in Rochester, New York and has been working in the broadcast field for over 5 years now.

8. Interview With Collis Ta’eed

Collis Ta’eed is an extremely well known graphic and web designer, who is one of the co founder of Eden Creative Communities, known for its popular websites such as FreelanceSwitch and PSDTuts.

9. Interview With Adrian Diaconescu of Rubiqube

Adrian Diaconescu is a freelance web designer based in Bucharest, Romania who has a variety of skills including flash animation, web programming and print design.

10. Interview With David Airey

David Airey is a well-known freelance graphic designer and blogger who currently resides in Edinburgh, Scotland.

11. Interview with Chris Spooner

Chris Spooner is a popular illustrator who runs the large illustration blog Blog.SpoonGraphics.com which features free downloads, tutorials and much more.

12. Interview With Caroline Murphy

Caroline Murphy is a great designer and self proclaimed geek-girl from Newcastle, which is in the North East of England.

13. Interview With Lauren Marie

Lauren Marie is a designer and blogger who runs the beautifully designer graphic design blog called creativecurio.com.

14. Interview With Jacob Cass

Jacob Cass runs the great design blog JustCreativeDesign.com and is also a freelance graphic and web designer.

15. Interview With Cristiano Siqueira

Cristiano Siqueira is a digital artist and illustrator from Brazil who combines both 3-D and Photoshop to create amazing works of art.

16. Interview With Tessar Lo

Tessar Lo is a wicked artist and illustrator whose works combine Asian elements with themes such as nature.

17. Interview With Rik Oostenbroek

Rik Oostenbroek also known as Nkeo is  graphic designer who abstract designs were once featured on Computer Arts Magazine.

18. Interview With David Fuhrer, AKA Microbot

David Fuhrer, AKA Microbot is a digital artist and digital painter who creates amazing concept art and scenery that is often futuristic and semi abstract.

19. Interview With Peter Jaworowski

Peter Jaworowski is a super designer who has created amazing artwork for many large companies and is a true Photoshop guru.

20. Interview With Greg Martin

Greg Martin is a master photographer and digital artist who combines both talents to create truly inspiring digital photography masterpieces.

21. Interview With Daniel LuVisi

Daniel LuVisi is an illustrator and digital artist from California who work is so dazzling its hard to compare it to anything else.

22. Interview With Enjin

Enjin, whose real name is Peter Maciocha is a graphic design and artist from Poland who produces some inspiring work including great photo-manipulations that often use people as the focal point.

23. Interview With Chuck Anderson
Chuck Anderson is a design mastermind who runs the site NoPattern.com. His work is often featured on design blogs and in interview for good reason, its bad-ass!

24. Interview With Nik Ainley

Nik Ainely is a design guru who has been the inspiration for countless designers. His works become graphic design trends that inspire thousands of creations.

25. Interview With Chris Leavens

Chris Leavens is a top-notch illustrator who creates incredible vector artwork thats is colorful and very detailed.

Graphic Design Forums are a great way to really immerse yourself into the graphic design community. You can meet other designers, ask questions, talk about the latest design news, ask for critiques of your work and much more. Being active in a design community is also another great way to promote your own work and get your name out there. If you are an active member and you contribute quality posts most forums will let you add a signature after your posts linking to your portfolio.

Don’t spam forums with links to your site or most forum moderators will ban you right away. If you are going to join a forums, join with the intention of becoming part of a new community. Most forums tend to have their own unique environment, depending on the users, the layout and the forum categories, so be sure to explore each forum to see which fits you best!

Top Graphic Design Forums

1. GDF

GDF is one of the oldest and biggest graphic design forums around with over 20k members. The community is very active, very large and consists of a a variety of general categories.

2. HOWDesign

The HOWDesign forums are great for showcasing your work and getting constructive feedback from other designers. They also have a very active business and freelance section where you can ask questions and find a lot of useful tips.

3.  Estetica

Estetica is very popular, but tends to lean more towards chatting for enjoyment rather then for knowledge. Their off topics section is perfect for chatting with other designers about anything, but design. So if you are looking to chat with people who share common interests, than this is the graphic design forum for you.

4. All Graphic Design

The All Graphic Design forums are very old and have an extremely active general design section where members chat about all kinds of design news and articles. They also have a great pre press section for designers looking for advice on printing and setting up files.

5. Your Design Forums

Your Design Forums is You the Designer’s official Graphic Design Forum. YDF is one of the newer graphic design forums in the design community, but is growing quickly and has a very active core user base that is quick to respond to questions and other posts.

Photoshop brushes are one of the most useful and often under-rated aspects of the program. All you have to do is download these Free Grunge Photoshop Brushes and upload them to Photoshop and you will open up an entire new design arsenal!

Below is a collection of some of the hottest and newest free grunge Photoshop brushes from a variety of brush sites. Many of these grunge brush sets come with several different styles of brushes and tend to vary in resolution. For even more Photoshop Brushes check out Qbrushes.com

Grunge Free Photoshop Brushes

Know any other new free grunge brush sets? Link us in the comments!

The grunge style and (Vector Grunge Packs) have been around for a long time and continues to play a large role in many design projects. Its often very time consuming to create your won vector grunge elements for designs, but thankfully many vector artists have come to the rescue!

Below are 10 of the best free vector grunge packs around. Some of the type of vectors included in our list are grunge borders, grunge skulls, grunge floral designs and much more. Enjoy!

Free Grunge Vector Art

1. 50 Free Vector Grunge Corners

This incredible vector grunge borders download is way better then any grunge brushes out there. Since its vectorized they can be scaled as large or as small as you want!

2. Go Media’s Sample Vector Pack #2

Go Media is well known for its incredible vector packs and also their generous free sample packs such as this great sample grunge vector pack that has skulls, a crown, a spider, weapons and all other kinds of cool grunge looking vectors.

3. Ben Blogged Skulls

This is one of the best grunge skull downloads around, where the grunge skulls come with wings, paint splatters, arrows and other cool grunge design elements.

4. Wicked vector skull illustration

This is a great sick skull vector that also includes many other reusable vector art elements.

5. City of Angels vector illustration

This cool grunge looking city of angels would make a great background for a piece of artwork and has a lot of pieces in it that can be mixed and matched.

6. Floral Grunge II

A cool floral grunge design that can be used for borders or as part of a bigger design.

7. Grunge Banner

A high quality grunge banner that you can add any text into.

8. Grunge Set 2

A cool grunge set that has splatters and other grunge looking marks.

9. Fear Grunge Vector Illustration

Sick grunge skull vector illustration with other swirls and lines in it that makes for an awesome background.

10. Free Vector Grunge Splats

A pack of quality vector grunge splats and brush marks that can be scaled to any size.

Open source software is software in which the source code is available to the general public for use and/or modification from its original design. These three open source software downloads are all free and can be great additions to your site, making for a better user experience, more return visits and more unique visitors per month.

Free Open Source Software

1. Vanilla – Forum

Vanilla is a great free open source forum software that you can install on your site to allow people to start discussions. It comes with all kinds of features such as customizable account profiles, anti spam measures and pretty much anything else you could dream of. Its so easy to customize and is a great option if you are looking to increase traffic to your site and give your readers a place to chat.

Download Vanilla

2. Pligg – Rating Systems & User Generated Content

Pligg is a great content management system that allows you to create sites similar to digg.com where users can submit links which can be rated by users. Their are some good pre-made templates available, but most people design and implement their own unique templates. Its easy to set up and its a good option for a stand-alone site or as a way to add more content to a pre-existing site.

Download Pligg

3. jobberBase – Job Board

Job boards can be extremely difficult to create from scratch, but with this awesome open source software called jobberBase you can get your own slick looking job board up and running in minutes for any niche you can think of. This is a super way to get people coming back to your site and can be turned into a great way to monetize your site even further.

Download jobberBase

Know any other kick-butt free open source software? Let us know below!

A collection of the latest graphic design resources, adobe tutorials, inspirational posts and more from all around the graphic design community. Enjoy!

1. Ornate, Floral, Swirly and Curly Vector Roundup

Flourishes are one of the most popular current trends in graphic design, ranging from simple flourishes to extremely intricate combinations of swirls and flourishes combined with photographs and typography.

2. Classy Personal Portfolio in Fireworks

In this tutorial Fabio Sasso teaches you how to design a modern looking one page graphic design portfolio in Fireworks.

3. 40+ Killer Typographic Posters, Photoshop Effects and Tutorials

The title explains this one pretty well, this is a great inspirational post mixed in with a few solid tutorials.

4. 12 Realities of Pricing Design Services

Pricing your services are a freelance designer or studio can come with many stressful situations and pitfalls. This article will help prepare you for the world of pricing!

5. Photoshop: How To Make An Awesome Grungy Paper Texture From Scratch

Bittbox has developed a useful tutorial for taxing a stock paper texture and giving it a great grunge appearance.

6. How a Change on Design Improves Usability and Visits

This article gives an example of how even the most minor changes in a website’s design can improve the user experience and number of returning visitors.

7. 400+ Swirls, Curls, and Fleurons

Another spectacular collection of useful design elements including swirls, curls and fleurons.

8. Photoshop: Hand Drawn Design

In this tutorial you will learn how to add and color sweet hand-drawn sketches into your graphic design work using channels.

9. Accountants, Lawyers, and Doctors, oh My! A Designer’s Guide to Business.

A great starter guide to the business side of running a new graphic design studio.

10. 101 Design Resource Sites

A large list of useful graphic design resources for any designer interested in the online design community.