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There are tons of tools for designing and printing custom shirts these days, and making the right choices can be quite overwhelming. Whether you want a banded shirt for employees, a gift for a loved one on a special day, or a booming custom shirt business, there’s no shortfall of options.
You can easily master the learning curve if you have some prior design experience. But even if you want to outsource your custom shirt design and production, you might still need a good grasp of some basic concepts.
This simple guide lays it all down for you. We’ve broken everything down into easy-to-follow steps. We’ll show you how to plan and implement your design choosing the right material, design and style, and printing method. From start to finish, you could have your stunning custom shirt ready to ship in a couple hours from now following our guide.
Let’s giddy up!
Designing a Custom Shirt in 4 Easy Steps
To avoid overwhelm from the sea of choices you’ll face when creating a custom shirt, here are a few simple steps to help you get off the ground. Once you make up your mind on these steps, everything else falls into place.
Step 1: Planning Your Design
You may or may not have a clear idea of what your custom shirt should look like. But when starting out, it’s imperative to first establish the purpose of the custom shirt. The purpose guides everything else, and will help determine whether your custom shirt is a success or not.
For instance, if it’s a one-off project or routine print for you business, you’ll need corresponding choices in various areas of the process.
With your shirt’s purpose clearly in mind, you can begin assessing your different options. This requires brainstorming. Here, you need to put your technical and creative skill to use. Your technical thinking will help you make choices that align with your unique needs – budget, target audience, timeframe, etc., while your creative skills will help you coordinate those options in a manner that generates the most desirable outcome.
For more inspiration, look around for similar ideas that have been done already. You can look into similar designs from artists and printing companies as well as current trends.
Start experimenting on custom shirt design software, simulating your design ideas to find the perfect combination.
Step 2: Choosing Your Material
Now, your custom shirt ideas are beginning to take shape. Next, you’d want to start making more concrete choices like the type of material. You’ll have plenty of options to choose from here. The most popular materials are cotton and polyester, a combination of both, or tri-blends.
Cotton is the best choice for comfort and breathability. It wicks moisture and also makes for a snug fit. Combed cotton comes with extra tenderness and snugness – ideal for soft-touch tees. Polyester is a better moisture wicker and is also breathable and stretchable. However, it’s less ideal for embroidery designs compared to cotton.
Blended materials combine cotton with polyester and or other materials in varying proportions to harness their qualities for a unique output.
Step 3: Choosing Design Elements
Now, your design might come out different than the original plan when finally implemented because of certain things you might notice along the way during the implementation. That’s why it’s important to keep an open mind throughout the process.
The basics you need to establish first include the style of shirt, the graphics and or texts, the color scheme, and the size/fit. When choosing colors for a branded shirt, you’d obviously want to pick your brand colors, but other colors might also make sense depending on the specifics of the shirt’s purpose. For instance, you might want to use different colors to differentiate those in different departments. So, high-ranking officials can wear different colors than low-level staff.
Besides choosing the color and design, you also need to consider the design placement. You can choose to place the design in the center chest, left or right chest, left or right sleeve, or upper, center, or lower back.
The size of your shirt also requires serious considerations. Choose your shirt size based on factors like your target audience, the appropriate fit, and budget. For instance, if you’re targeting a low-budget production, plus sizes might put a hole in your budget.
Step 4: Deciding on the Print Method
Here also, you have multiple choices, each with its pros and cons. The right choice will depend on multiple factors, but here are the most important things to note:
Screen Printing
By far the most common printing method, screen printing transfers a design onto a shirt using a fabric ink and a mesh screen. An ink is impressed onto the fabric through a woven screen that bears the design, resulting in a neat, smooth imprint. However, screen printing is only useful for simple, monocolor designs.
Heat Transfer
With this method, a heat transfer paper is heat-pressed on a shirt and then gently removed leaving the design embedded on the custom shirt. Heat transfer allows for more lively multicolor designs.
Embroidery
An embroidery printer uses a mechanized needle to stitch the design on the shirt. It allows for highly realistic, multicolor designs. The embedded design is textured and highly durable.
Direct to Garment (DTG)
The DTG method uses a special printer called a DTG printer to spray the design directly on the fabric. Also known as full-color printing, DTG prints just about any type of design, from real-life photos to digital artwork and everything in between.
Wrapping Up
That’s it, folks, all you need to know to bring your custom shirts to life, whether you’re DIY or outsourcing to pros. Start by getting clear on the purpose of the custom shirt. Then brainstorm ideas for the design – look around past works for inspiration. Next, get into the finer details – choose the style, color, material, size/fit, and the printing method. You can simulate your choices using custom shirt software before finally producing it.
And always keep an open mind when implementing your design. Try to be as flexible as possible when implementing. You’d want to find it easy to adjust your original design ideas as the need arises to ensure a highly desirable output.