The 2014 Spartanburg T-Shirt Design Contest

You don’t have to look too hard in Spartanburg to find artistic talent.

Whether in the pages of a book published by our local, award-winning independent publisher, Hub City Press, or at a performance by the fantastic Spartanburg Philharmonic Orchestra, creativity is in Spartanburg’s DNA.

So while other city governments might balk at the idea of holding a contest to design a T-shirt for their town, this is Spartanburg. We’ve got this.

That’s why today we’re announcing the first City of Spartanburg T-shirt design contest. Starting today and running until Monday, Nov. 10, we will be accepting designs from local artists and designers for a shirt that highlights what our city is about. What does that mean exactly? Well, here’s local artist Cody Roberts’ (Hoondirt in the art world) interpretation on a shirt we printed last year.

Pretty cool, right? And with our first-in-the-state bicycle sharing program and bicycle-friendly designation, it’s definitely a shirt that says something relevant about Spartanburg. Beyond that, this isn’t your garden-variety city shirt. This is a shirt people would actually want to wear. The quality and fit of these American Apparel shirts were outstanding. And the shirt design was both relevant and creative, and yours will have to be too if you want to have a shot at winning. What won’t cut it? Anything that features this guy:

We love The General here. In fact, it wouldn’t be Spartanburg without him, but don’t think that our affection for Daniel Morgan and his statue downtown can serve as your ticket to Spartanburg T-shirt contest victory. Ditto for the clock tower. You’re going to have to do better than that.

So get your ideas submitted for a chance to win the envy of friends and rivals who weren’t cool enough to have their designs chosen for an official City of Spartanburg T-shirt. Submit a copy of your design (or multiple designs if you’re really into it) via email at [email protected]. After the deadline, a small group of people will trim the initial submissions down to a group of finalists, which we will share with the public. The ultimate winner will be chosen by the public via online voting (more on that later).