How to Design a Great Shirt

A great t-shirt and a great design go hand in hand. When deciding how to design a shirt, there are a few things you should consider to help you create an amazing design.

• Designing for your audience. Make sure your design makes sense to the audience you are designing for. If you are creating a design for a rock band, an elegant cursive typeface and flowers may not be the most suitable design. Take time to research your audience to learn what works and doesn\'t work. See what is trending now, and what design elements have stayed timeless for that audience.
• Picking an overall color scheme. There are so many different colors to choose from. When picking colors for your design, stick with colors that create a uniform feel to your design. Complimentary colors, cool colors, or colors opposite each other on the color wheel are great options. If you need help picking the perfect colors, check out Adobe Kuler. This site helps pick colors with an overall scheme in mind so you can focus on other things in your design.

• Don’t overdo it with color. Once you pick a color scheme, it may be tempting to use as many colors as possible in your design. Make sure to consider how detailed your design is and what you want the main focus to be. For a highly detailed design, we suggest using up to 3 colors. Keeping the colors to a minimum can help draw attention to certain areas and not overwhelm your audience. If your design does not have a lot of small details, feel free to use more colors! This can add some more detail and interest to a simpler design.

• Choose a great typeface. A great typeface can really bring a design together. They can even become the main focus. Take some time to find the perfect ones for your design. With so many amazing options, it may be hard to pick just one. We recommend using no more than 3 typefaces in your design. If you have one really decorative typeface, balance it with a more simple one, like Helvetica or Arial. Make sure to check out Font Squirrel for some amazing downloadable type!

• Specialty Elements. Add interest and depth to your design with foil, metallic ink, or glow in the dark ink. Rather than using them for the whole design, use them in small areas to accent your design 

• Creative a cohesive design. To make sure your t-shirts have a polished retail quality look to them, create a cohesive design throughout the whole shirt. If your design has a distressed and vintage look to it, make sure your printed tags, sleeve print, and hem tags do too. Check out our free texturing resources to get started! 
  
• Use the shirt color to add interest to your design. The color of the shirt can be incorporated in the design and used as an additional color. It can also help to complete the design and create a uniform feel. See what your design will look like on different shirts with our image uploader!