ABOUT
Each year, the festival has an open call for T-shirt designs responding to the visual theme that inspires all of our festival art and visual identity.Â
T-shirt designs can be inspired by the theme or one of the prompts included in the outline. We are very open-minded about what the theme may spark creatively and are looking for concepts which explore the theme’s ideas visually.Â
It is free to submit your design concept and if selected, you will receive two Classic or two Remix passes. We ask that applications include at least one reference/design image, either pdf, jpg, or png. Selected designs will need to be delivered as illustrator files, and our merch team will work with you after selection to ensure the final design is the best representation of your concept.
Submissions are open through November 15th, and all applicants will be notified by early January.Â
Submission Guidelines
Here are a few things to consider when creating your design for the 2027 True/False T-Shirt Submission:
File Type
Although your initial file can be pdf, jpg, or png, if your design is selected, we may ask that your file be adjusted to a high resolution (.ai, .eps, .svg, or .png.) with a transparent background and at least 300 DPI.
Color Mode
Your design will allow for the highest quality print if you design in CMYK.
Location of Print
Design is typically printed on the front of the garment.
Design Size
The general print area for front of apparel designs measures around 10-12 inches. Please keep this in mind when creating your design submission. Fine lines and tiny details could get lost.
Submission limitations
Because of the overwhelming response from our communities with True/False Fest T-Shirt Designs, we ask that you limit your submissions to a maximum of 3 per artist. Employees of Ragtag Film Society are not eligible to submit. AI content will not be considered.
Keep in mind that with your consent, your design could be selected for other types of merchandise (Sweatshirts, Stickers, etc.)
Design Theme & Prompts
True/False 2027 Theme: Deep Roots/Wild Bloom
Growth is rarely tidy or predictable. Every fruit or flower, fungi, and fern is held up by a secret world we cannot see, anchored by gnarled roots underground. What happens beneath the surface can be just as beautiful, and much stranger, than what we see above. While plants grow vertically chasing the sunlight, root systems reach out towards one another, building community. It is these systems of connection that make all life on — and in — Earth not only possible but also extraordinary.
The Deep Roots/Wild Bloom theme honors that to know where you’re going, you need to show where you’ve been; to achieve our wildest dreams, we draw strength from the soil that has nourished us. True/False has grown strong, and survived years of historic and global adversity, by reaching into our past, out to our community, and up towards the sky.
By staying true to our identity and our moral compass, we find the structure and support needed to let the spirit of experimentation and collaboration burst wide open, year after year.
The 2027 festival will explore the ways we grow: individually, collectively, across generations and spiritual ancestors. This theme invites you to look deeper; to journey underground, sift through the soil, compost those fragments of memory, history, and emotion, and return to the world transformed.
We are planting some seeds here to help root you, but remember, we love to be surprised by all the wild and wonderful ways our audiences and collaborators interpret the theme and make it their own:
- Spring renewal
- Radicle is radical
- Root systems and rhizomatic figures
- Botanical and anatomical illustrations
- Evolution and metamorphosis
- Biodiversity is a necessity for survival
- Hybridity as creative provocation
- The obsessive geometry of nature: fractals and spirals
- The human plant: branching veins and respiratory trees
- Bizarre flora: venus flytraps, corpse flowers, ghost pipes
- Miraculous fauna: immortal jellyfish, electric eels
- The subterranean: caves, caverns, and tunnels
- Maximalism, excess, over-ripeness
- Mixed prints and power clashing
- High-contrast color palettes
- Artifacts of worlds past, buried underground
- Archaeology, excavation, treasure hunting
- Breaking through
- The crack is how the light gets in
- Collage as biomimicry
- Collision and confluence: natural and industrial, digital against analogue
Application
Applications are due by November 15, 2026. Fill out the submission form below (form may take a moment to load) Questions? email: [email protected]