★ How to Design & Tag T-Shirts for Cafepress | Beginner's Guide - Part Two ★
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How to Create Your Own T-Shirt Designs
This is a beginner's guide, so you don't necessarily need any prior experience of designing to use Cafepress, although obviously practice does help quite a lot! If you want to see part 1 of my beginner's guide (how to open a shop), click here.
The golden rule with any designing is of course DON'T COPY! You can get into big trouble for copying, whether it's a celebrities face, a TV programme name, a brand slogan, or someone else's original idea or design. So always come up with your own original designs, thank-you :-)
My Shop Products
Just an example of the range of products available to design on Cafepress.
Click here to visit my shop.
Tutorials & Help for Designing an Image
If this is your hobby and therefore don't want to spend much (if any) money on software, then there are many free programs available to you which will provide all the tools you need for great graphics. I personally use an old-ish version of Photoshop Elements, which I got off Ebay for £10. If I have drawn a design, I have a scanner to transfer it onto the PC, then I edit it in Photoshop Elements. So really you can spend as much or as little as you like :-)
Learning to use this software requires a lot of trial and error, and you can find tutorials on the Internet to help you create just about any design on any software. I make a lot of text designs, so I find DaFont a brilliant source of fonts, but you MUST make sure that you have permission to use the font commercially before you download any.
There are two type of software; those where the image is created using pixels, and those where the image is created using vectors. Vectors may be better for crisp, clean lines, but I have never had a problem using Photoshop Elements (a pixels program) - just try not to 'scale up' images too much i.e. create the image the size you want it to be on the t-shirt, no smaller, straight away. Don't create a smaller design, then scale it up/make it bigger later if possible.
Here is a Pixel vs. Vector comparison article.
Always save your images as a .png file (rather than .jpg or .bmp for example).
If you want to use clipart images, search for clipart on the web which is free for commercial use. Always follow the rules.
The following are the main graphics programs you can buy:
Photoshop
Photoshop Elements
CorelDraw
Illustrator
Paint Shop Pro
The following links focus more on the free software available, as there are more available books and online tutorials for the above programs which are easy to find.
- Free Graphics Software
- A list of free programs you can use.
- Cafepress Product Templates & Workshop
- A list of the sizes you need to make your designs for each product.
- Loads of Software Tutorials
- Which are used by current Cafepress members.
- CorelDraw Help
- Some frequently asked questions.
- Designing Cool Graphics
- Using Photoshop and Illustrator.
- Hand Drawn to Digital Illustration
- Turn your hand drawn illustration into a computer image.
- Design for Dark Apparel
- Use a transparent rather than white background for designs on dark t-shirts.
- Using Inkscape
- To create simple text designs.
- Adding a Transparent Background on GIMP
- An essential action for all designs.
- HUGE List of Image Help
- All software available plus tutorials.
- Tanith Tutorials
- Brilliant designing and selling resource.
- From Sketch to Vector Illustration
- Advanced tutorial to go from drawing to computer art.
The T-Shirt Revolution
The T-Shirt Revolution: Building Your Business Using a Digital Apparel Printer
Amazon Price: $10.32 (as of 05/23/2012)
Organizing Your Image Folders
- After you have created your design and saved it as a .png file with a transparent background, you will need to upload it to your Cafepress account.
- Sign in to your Cafepress account.
- Click on the 'Media Basket' tab (labelled 1 on the above picture). This is where your images will all be stored.
- Click on 'Edit Folders' (labelled 2 on the above picture). This is where you can create different folders to keep your images in, so you can keep them organised and easy to find.
- You will see a text box after 'Add New Folder'. Enter the title of a folder you wish to create. This could be something like 'Funny text designs' or 'Cartoons'. Click 'Add'.
- Go back to the 'Media Basket'.
Uploading Your Design - Step 1
- Click on the drop-down menu in the image basket and choose the folder you would like your new design to go into.
- Click on the green 'Upload New Image' button.
Uploading Your Design - Step 2
- Click 'Browse' and select the image file you wish to upload. You can upload upto 5 images at a time.
- Take note of the image guidelines listed to the right. Check that your image complies with the rules.
- Click the check-box next to 'I agree to the terms & conditions stated here and as outlined in the
Terms of Service'. You can select the other tick box if you'd like the selected image files to be grouped together. I don't ever use this feature as I don't think it is necessary, but you can try it if you like.
- Press 'Upload'.
Uploading Your Design - Step 3
- Wait for your file to upload.
- You will see a page that looks like the one shown above. If you hover over each of the 3 small squares under your image (labelled 1 in the picture), you can see how your image will look with a transparent, a white or a black background. Click the one you think looks best. I usually stick with the white background.
- Next you can change the name of your image (labelled 2), add tags (labelled 3) and choose the most appropriate category for your design (labelled 4).
- The tags are very important, as these are the only way for a customer to find your design in the marketplace. You can write upto 20 words or phrases, each separated by a comma. Only write words which are relevant to your image, and try and think about what words someone could use to find a design like yours. Click here for more tagging help.
- Press 'Done'. This image is now ready to use. See my beginner's guide part 3 for how to add the image to products.
Ideas for What to Design?
- It's always good to stick to what you know, so why not create designs that you would buy, perhaps based on your own hobbies or interests?
- Design interesting patterns and cool graphics which have no meaning but look awesome!
- Base your designs on current events, stories, infamous quotes or the latest trends - for instance, years ago there were LOADS of t-shirts about George Bush's latest faux-pas or silly quote. Bear in mind though that these may only be popular for a very short amount of time i.e. until the trend dies down.
- Click here for a list of TV programs and movies which you can create designs about. Only create designs for items in the lists, and be sure to follow the guidelines for each, since Cafepress has got special permission to design for them.
- Design lots of designs in the same niche, so you focus on a particular target audience. Try and pick something that people haven't designed much for, such as girl drummers, knitters, lacrosse players, physics students etc.
- Create designs for holidays such as Halloween and Christmas.
- Funny text designs, or funny one liners for bumper stickers. New humor is always in demand. Try and be original.
- Sayings or quotes. Be careful about trademarks/copyrights on these especially though.
- Create a new slant on an already popular type of design. You can join the masses creating Obama t-shirts for example, but make sure you create something a bit different to the rest to make you stand out.
- Draw a picture, or use a photo for a design.
The Rest of my Cafepress Beginner's Guide
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Please Leave a Comment!
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DallasNicole
Jan 15, 2011 @ 2:12 pm | delete
- I was searching for a page just like this one.. I am trying to find somewhere to create my designs for free. Lovely lens! Thanks!
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