The Perfect T-Shirt Design

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How to make a successful t-shirt design

I don´t pretend to know it all - but in my years designing for now over a dozen of my print-on-demand shops selling t-shirts, gifts and our art on posters and prints I got some idea of what sells - and how to make it.
As it happens I started designing for t-shirts as an accident. About three years ago I was looking for a way to sell prints of our art on the internet without much up-front cost and discovered the POD (print-on-demand) business. I soon realized why artists starve - our paintings just didn´t sell. What I did realize by looking at successful shops is that t-shirts did. As paintings don´t really look good on tees I made up my mind to make some stuff especially for this purpose. And by the way - you can buy the dragon design shown here in my Art Attack Store

Tubes and Graphics - the Easy Way to a Great Design!
Using Line Drawings and Other Graphics
The Vintage Effect

more...

Ugly Squares

How to make a square photo into an appealing design

Lets face it - a blunt square on a t-shirt
looks odd and ugly. At least I - and thousands like me - think so. So what if you are a photographer, want to sell your photos online, and no-one buys your prints?

If you own a digital camera you most probably own a graphic programme, so depending on what that programme can do you can add masks, soften the edges by erasing some of the photo, make it into an elipse or erasing the background so you just have the main subject as a design.

The thumbs on the left are a couple of examples I made with some photos I took - they have both been made more pleasing as a design to put on a tshirt or any other product by simply adding a mask.

Apart from using photos you can make interesting designs from scans of giftwrapping paper, colorful cloth scans, your own doodles, use your kids´ paintbox and just splash nice matching colors all over a pice of paper and scan it,make large images and fill them with an interesting texture, - the possibilities are endless, it all depends what you have at home and can make use of!

Don´t forget to work big - most design areas cover at least 1800 x 2100 px, and it´s best to save with a resolution of at least 200 dpi (I use 300 dpi myself)

Plus don´t forget to save with a transparent backgound - the best way to do this is to save in png format, which is best for quality anyway and is accepted by most POD sites. The transparent background is important, because then you can also add your design to dark apparel. The printers treat white as transparent on light colored shirts at most PODs, but for the dark shirts you´ll need your image to have a transparent background!

I don´t want to go into detail of how to achieve the different effects in a graphic programme - there´s very good tutorials for that available on the internet. And I might not use what you have on your PC so my guidelines would be useless. So check the links below for some good tutorial sites for that, please! I´ll leave the explaining the technical details to the experts.

Text Only ??

How to make a text-only design interesting and unique

Text only designs sell - especially silly sayings on t-shirts! But you have to be inventive to make an impact on your would-be customer. There are millions of boring Arial or Comics Sans text designs out there in the POD universe - make yours stand out!

I want to show you a few examples - if you look at the thumbs on your right you´ll see what I mean - I hope! These are all designs from my Silly Shirts Shop .

You can see that apart from using different unusual fonts, I have also used more than one color, set the text at different angles, or bent it. or added a little extra using a brush (I use mainly Jasc´s Paint Shop Pro - it´s a lot cheaper than Photoshop, and is easier to learn).

There are lots of places where you can download fonts for free on the internet - just be careful to check if they are free for commercial use! You will usually find a read me file that explains what you can use the font for. Respect the copyright of others - that´s the first rule of designing for commercial products!

You´ll soon learn that not every font that looks cool when you see it is perfect to put on a t-shirt. There´s some very fancy fonts out there - but if you use them for designing be careful that what you put down can also be read! Your customers want to carry a message or make people laugh, and not guess what´s written on their tee.

With my designs you´ll notice that even so the thumbs are very small, you can read everything right down to the "small print". So be aware that not every font is perfect, and not every color will stand out. You´ll never guess how many of my first designs landed in the bin after a while, most of them have been re-designed since I got wise to what looks good and what you can forget.

Also remember to pick a style of font that goes with the message - beerdrinking humor would look stupid with an elegant or medieval look font, and a silly saying comes over better if you use a crooked or comic style.

Text-only designs are the perfect way to start a POD business if you think you can´t draw or haven´t got any pictures of your own you can use (always remember: most images have a copyright, so play safe and use only your own, or images you have a licence to use commercially!)

I have included a link to daFont.com below - that´s where I get most of the fonts I use from. They have a wide range of different style fonts, I could spend days on there and have to be careful not to clutter my harddrive! Fonts can be addictive!

Grunge Elements

Go with the fashion - Grunge is in and easy to achive!

Grunge look designs are all the rage. So make some of your own - it´s easy! All you need is a few graphic elements, a graphic programme that supports working with layers and brushes - and off you go!

I have made a small example which you can view on your left. These are all brushes I made from various ornaments, pictures, drawings and textures - if you put them all together you get an idea of the effects. That´s all a grunge design really is - lots of different forms and textures, oeverlapping and overlaid. You can use flowers, ornamental shapes you draw and convert into a brush,splashes, textures - let your imagnation run free. Or you buy ready made brushes - but as always, mind the copyright factor and only use files that are meant to be used commercially!If you combine these grunge designs with words in a grunge or distressed look font you have a perfect, unique and sellable design that´s in fashion and will have your customers yearn for more!

Here´s an example. I have used DaVinci´s skull, a few grunge brushes, a pentacle brush, and then added the word "Eternity" in distressed font. Simple but effective. (Click on the picture to view the product or buy!)

Here´s another one for you: A three-dimensional heart in distressed or used look, with grunge swirls and ornaments.

The heart I made from two overlayed tubes, which I made to look used by using a grunge brush with the erase tool. Then I added a few vintage ornaments and swirls with the brush tool. Simple, but effective!

Let your imagination run wild - you can´t really go wrong with this method - nearly anything that looks interesting enough can be used, and you don´t have to be able to draw well. You can make shapes and swirls in your graphic programme, or use paper napkins, giftwrapping paper or such - scan it and convert it into a brush. The possibilities are endless!

Tubes and Graphics - the Easy Way to a Great Design!

Make your own or buy commercially licenced tubes and graphics for your dream design!

When you get into designing some day you´ll run out of ideas to draw. Also, if you can´t draw, or - like me - can´t take a decent photograph to save your life, tubes are the answer. Not your small tubes, made from different graphics and drawings that people offer online for use on homepages and scrapbooking sites. These are usually too small and not of a good enough quality. Also they are mostly made from scans of copyrighted material, which excludes for use in your projects - after all, you are hoping to sell your designs!

I mean so-called poser tubes. Images rendered in 3D. There are a few sites offering high quality, large graphics that you can use. You might have to pay a small annual fee to use them commercially - but it saves you time if you can draw, and gives you good material if you can´t.

Also there´s a few people out there that offer good quality pixel paintings large enough to use, digital paintings and folk art graphics are also a good thing to use. There are a good few sites that offer these.

There´s lots of things you can do with them, and lots of styles like fantasy creatures and characters, cute folk art stuff or artistic digital paintings. I have provided a few examples from my own shops - just to give you an idea of what you can do.

I don´t usually use just the graphic as is - I either combine several elements, like on the mug, or I add other graphics or brushes, like on the mousepad and the Chinese dragon design.

I have started to make my own 3D renders a year or so ago - mainly because I often didn´t find just the right thing I wanted for my idea. For my cute kids designs and the folk art and artistic designs I often buy graphics and combine them with elements I make myself. This makes them unique - I´m not the only one to buy these graphics, and there´s lots of artists use them in the POD universe. And I do like my designs to be unique and just that little bit different, so I don´t use them "raw".

Another graphic element I use is the Celtic Font from Clan Badge - it´s addictive! Make your own Celtic patterns right there on your pc, without having to draw them on paper first! It´s quick and easy, and you have nice, clear and clean patterns which will print beautifully. You can use different colors, fill them with textures, and use your graphic programme to make them look like stone, metal, wood inlay. It´s one of my "toys" that I really enjoy playing with!

Below you´ll find some links to sites where you can buy graphics that are licensed for commercial use. I´m sure there´s more, if I forgot anyone please add the link!

Of course you can click on the pictures - they take you to the shop(s), so you can view the product and/or the design in it´s natural surroundings so to speak! And I won´t be mad if you buy one, or tell your friends where to find me, either!

Using Line Drawings and Other Graphics

Convert small black & whites into cool designs!

Especially for my Aztec and Mayan section I use small black and white drawings of ancient symbols and art and convert them into cool, colorful t-shirt designs.

For the Hunab Ku glyph on the left I used my favourite plug-in, liquid metal from AutoFx Dreamsuite Series 1. I enlarged and tidied the small black and white you see on the top, and converted it into the two-tone metal textured design you see on the bottom.

For the Aztec Snake design I tidied up the drawing as before, then used a gold metal fill and put the whole thing as a layer over a grunge metal orb. With a bit of touching up here and there it now looks as if it´s a gold inlay on a rusty metal orb.

You´ll have to see what texturing possibilities your graphic programme has. You can fill with a color or texture and then use 3D effects to sculpture the graphic afterwards for instance. You´ll have to play around with the tools you have on your pc, these are just a couple of examples what can be done to produce a design that´s unique. Use different graphics, combine them, layer them, make collages - endless possibilities again.

If you click on the pictures it takes you to my shop, and you can see the products made with these designs!

The Vintage Effect

How to make the popular "used look" with fresh graphics

I have lots of grunge brushes, there´s several places where you can download them, also it´s quite easy to make them yourself. Check the ressources links for some sites, and some tuts on this subject.

For this example I took a country style tube, added a blue background and a scroll, plus some vintage font text to make a "vintage ad" design. I always make my own "ads" - for one like that I make sure I don´t tread on anyones´toes copyright-wise, and also I want to make sure my designs are truly unique!

I work with a transparent background of course. To get the "used" effect I now use the erase tool, and one or more of the grunge brushes. I play around a bit until it looks good, and save with transparent background as png file. You see on the example that it works both on light and dark shirts!

Another use for this method is making your square edges soft or ragged on your photos or other rectangular designs that would look better a bit rough aroud the edges!

With grunge brushes you can also make cool vintage look paper if you use them with a slightly darker and/or lighter shade of your background color. With a bit of practise you can achieve a cracked or vintage paper look - these can be used as backgrounds for 3D-renders, or for greeting cards. If you add some graphic elements like swirls, florals, ornamentals or lines you´ll have a unique background for many purposes!

Graphics Ressources on the ´Net

Sites with Poser Tubes and Graphic Elements for Commercial Use

Please report any broken links to me. If you own a site that offers graphics for commercial use, please add your link!

The Perfect T-Shirt Design

How to make a successful t-shirt design

Contents at a Glance

Contents at a Glance

Ugly Squares

How to make a square photo into an appealing design

Text Only ??

How to make a text-only design interesting and unique

Grunge Elements

Go with the fashion - Grunge is in and easy to achive!

Tubes and Graphics - the Easy Way to a Great Design!

Make your own or buy commercially licenced tubes and graphics for your dream design!

Using Line Drawings and Other Graphics

Convert small black & whites into cool designs!

The Vintage Effect

How to make the popular "used look" with fresh graphics

Graphics Ressources on the ´Net

Sites with Poser Tubes and Graphic Elements for Commercial Use

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Links to Sites with Useful Tools and Tutorials

Some Links to Graphic Programs and Other Tools as well as tutorials

Books on Drawing, Sketching and Design

Links to Shops

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