Picking your shirt
Most big custom shirt printers offer a large selection of shirts that you can potentially print on. It's pretty hard to understand the details of each shirt and most people tend to just choose the cheapest, most standard shirt (which by no means is a bad option!). However, it is useful to know some information about the selection of shirts to ensure that your pick for your custom shirt garment is the best suited for you and your occasion.
Understanding Shirt Properties
- Most shirts you see will be made of some combination of cotton and polyester. To summarize each material in a nutshell: cotton breathes better and feel softer, but is not as durable and cannot stay as dry as polyester.
- 50/50 shirts means they are made of 50% cotton, 50% polyester, as opposed to most shirts which are 100% cotton.
- If you see the word "ultra" or "beefy" attached to a shirt, it just means heavier cotton went into making the shirt, giving it a thicker feel.
- Shirts sometimes have special collar properties. The standard is a seamless collar, but you will also find V-necks, crewnecks, and other variations.
- There are tagless shirts to prevent that annoying itch you sometimes get on the back of your neck.
- Athletic/Performance shirts tend to be made out of pure polyester.
- A Crewneck sweatshirt basically means it does not have a hood.
Understanding the difference between brands
I wrote another guide about fancy brand names vs. generic shirts which gives some interesting perspective about understanding brand differences.
Usually, the cheapest and most "standard" shirt for custom shirt sites would be the Gildan Cotton T-Shirt. Despite their very low prices, these shirts are actually surprisingly solid and don't give off any senses of low quality. They don't really differ very much hanes or champion besides the brand name. American Apparel's t-shirts are noticeably more expensive than Gildan's, but also carry a few advantages in that they offer more elaborate stitching and use finer cotton.
In regards to actually purchasing cheap custom t-shirts, I've found that ooShirts has the lowest prices and most reliable service.
If you want to visit any shirt brand websites, visit my resources page.
Now that you understand the garments, you should learn some information about printing, so that you will understand a fuller picture of custom shirts.