5 Avoidable Design Mistakes When Creating a Custom Shirt

Who doesn’t love a good-looking t-shirt? It’s no surprise that beautiful custom shirts are a top choice for promotional products. Companies can use them as promotional material, giveaways to employees, or foster a sense of comradeship between team members. They can also create keepsakes for an annual family vacation or college reunions. Serious, the sky’s the limit when it comes to promoting companies with bulk t-shirt printing!

However, when it comes to custom shirts, design matters the most. That’s right—design mistakes can cost you a lot with custom t-shirts! For instance, if you use custom shirts as giveaways at a business convention, you don’t want people talking about your poor design skills.

Some design mistakes you should avoid at all costs in bulk t-shirt printing are:

An Overabundance of Colors

Unless you’re making a product like a rainbow graphic on your custom t-shirt, stay away from using too many colors. It can be overwhelming to look at if you cannot justify the design. 

The rule of thumb for screen printing is this: the more colors you use, the more expensive the t-shirt becomes. The norm is to use one to three colors, max. Remember, colors are an intrinsic part of your t-shirt design. If you go wrong in this area, your t-shirt goes wrong!

Complicated Design

A t-shirt is not ideal for conveying all the information you want people to know, especially if you are hoping to communicate complex ideas. If you try to include images, text, and colors in your design, your custom t-shirt will likely be an example of "too much going on."

Instead, focus on making a few simple but straightforward points. Your bulk t-shirt printing costs will come out cheaper, too.

Poor Quality Fabric

Nothing should slip your watchful eye in bulk t-shirt printing, especially the quality of your shirts’ fabric! Ask yourself if customers would wear a tee if it itched and felt uncomfortable. Of course not! However, that’s not a problem! There are many choices for high-quality t-shirts at affordable prices. You can find just the right shirt at the right price with some research.

This is especially important if you are a company or organization that ordered custom t-shirts as promotional material. These shirts represent your brand when people outside your organization see them. Overall, the message they send should be positive and consistent with your brand. If the t-shirts aren’t reliable and high-quality, you will lose credibility and potentially spend money on replacements and materials.

Sizing Problems

Custom t-shirt orders with multiple bulk sizing in a single product are prone to problems: designers have to create different sized files for each size of the t-shirt, and care has to be taken that the design will look perfect no matter what the t-shirt size is.

The print size of the design has to match the size of the shirt it is printed on and not be too small or too large. The print area depends on both the design and the shirt. The print area is affected by the type of t-shirt it is printed on.

Turning a Shirt to a Banner

It’s a t-shirt, not a banner! Don’t copy your banner content word for word onto the T-shirt, but take a moment to select the pertinent information. Keep it concise and catchy! Ban the “bannerisms!”

Do Bulk T-Shirt Printing Properly

There are so many options to choose from when choosing custom shirts it’s easy to become confused. However, when it comes to printing t-shirts, the most important thing is to follow the guidelines above! Whether the goal is to promote your business, a new product or service, or just to get a logo out there, you’ll want to make sure to consider bulk t-shirt printing carefully.

Get bulk t-shirt printing done the right way with Certified Print Co.! We follow the above rules (and more) to create the custom shirts and apparel you want, bringing your vision from dreams to life! Visit our design lab now!

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The Proper Care and Wash of Screen Printed Shirts

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Made to Last: The Durability of Direct-To-Garment Printing