The Art of Custom Shirt Designing
You can't just draw any picture and expect it to look good on your custom t-shirt. Custom shirt designs have unique qualities that allow certain things to look better on them than other things. In the following content I'll go over what some of those things are.
Your design is printed onto a shirt, not paper.
Most people regard designing a custom shirt like they would regard making a cool poster. You must be aware that your design will be placed onto a shirt, and with that comes some guidelines that are useful to know.
If you plan on making a large order, it is most economical to try and have your design be screen printed. If you are sure your design will be digitally printed, then you should mainly worry about having using high-resolution pictures in your design and making sure to print it on a very light colored shirt. If you aren't sure if your design will be screen printed or digitally printed, you can easily find out by checking out my guide on having an economical design. Some tips expressed in this guide will be more suited towards screen printing, though there will also be tips that apply to both printing styles.
Don't put a awkward design-background on your shirt.
Lots of pictures come in the form of a rectangle and include some sort of background. Whether its a solid color or a pattern, backgrounds tend to usually look somewhat awkward on shirts. To increase how well the design blends into the shirts, you can make the background of the design transparent with the shirt (so you would technically remove the background from the shirt design). If the background of your design is a solid color, this is pretty easily done using most image-editing softwares. If the background to the design is already white, then most custom t-shirt design labs will automatically display your background as transparent and you have nothing to worry about!
Keep it simple
When someone sees a shirt design, they usually see it on the shirt that someone else is already wearing. This means they can't just awkwardly stare at the design and take in all its fine details (unless they want to look like a crazy-stalker type person). Again, remember that a shirt design isn't going to be a poster. It will be put on a shirt that will be worn by people, not put in a museum or framed on a wall.
This means, don't use very much fine detail in your design as most of it (if not all) will go unnoticed. Great shirt designs tend to only use 3 or fewer colors. Single-color shirt designs are exellent, as they stand out (be aware of good color contrast) and are the clearest representation of your design.
Don't overflood your design with text, as most people won't have the chance to read it all. Slogans or catch phrases work exellent on shirts; paragraphs are better put on essays, not clothing. Make sure the text you use is big enough- shirt text gets hard to read when the person wearing the shirt is moving about, so make it sizeable enough to be legible under all circumstances.
Positioning
Experiment around to see what is the best positioning for your design. If it's just a small logo, placing it where shirt-pockets are often found tends to work well. If it's bigger, the design will usually look best on the center of the shirt. Make sure you don't place it too high or too low, as these cause designs to look awkward and out-of-place. Also, if you're relying on people seeing the design (like an advertisement), be aware of how positioning will affect the design's visibility.
Whether you decide to place the design on the back or front of your shirt makes a difference too. Again, think about when and where the shirt will be worn, and make the best judgement about design placement.
One last reminder is to always use high-resolution images to build your design. High-resolution images will ensure that your design comes out sharp and crisp. To maximize clarity of your design, choose a very light-colored shirt to print it on.
I hope this helps you on your endeavors in custom t-shirt ordering.