826 National T-shirt Design Challenge


Threadless challenges its community to create an inspirational t-shirt design around the mission of exploring students’ creativity and improving their writing skills.

Since its founding in San Francisco in 2002 by award-winning author Dave Eggers and educator Ninive Calegari, 826 National has sparked students’ imaginations. The nonprofit, which runs centers in Ann Arbor, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, DC, offers a variety of inventive programs that provide under-resourced students ages six to 18 with opportunities to explore their creativity and improve their writing skills.

Each of the centers operates a street-front retail store filled with unusual products, entertaining signage and books for sale. The organization believes every future superhero, secret agent, space traveler and pirate has something in common: a good education and strong writing skills. To create awareness of its mission, 826 National is partnering with international community-driven company Threadless to challenge the public and Threadless’ community of 1.5 million artists to design a t-shirt for the organization.

For the design challenge, artists are asked to create a design inspired by 826 National’s mission of exploring students’ creativity and improving their writing skills with type-based tees encouraged. For inspiration, artists can check out the organization’s gallery featuring the best student writing from workshops, field trips and tutoring sessions from 826 centers across the country.

Continue reading