CraigLandes
Common Mistakes When Making Custom T Shirt Designs
Creating custom t shirt design is one of the most enjoyable things to do, mainly because:
- You get to select the type of t shirts yourself.
- You are in full control of the colors involved in the design process.
- You can decide to change the overall design at a moment’s notice.
- You can design a shirt for any event or occasion and it will not cost you more.
- You can print as many or as few shirts as you want, depending on what your exact needs are.
- You can be as funny or witty as you want. No holds barred creativity is coming your way.
Though custom t shirt design may be easy, there are still some design pitfalls that you may want to avoid if you want to create better shirt designs. Here are some of them:
I. Not balancing your colors
The principles of color balancing are not that difficult, and yet people fail to see sometimes that using too many colors or too many unrelated colors can end up harming the design in the end.
When selecting colors, be sure that the first three primary colors that you are using are all complementary, and that the second set of colors (these are usually secondary colors) complement the first set.
This way, you can be sure that not all the hues in your design will clash with one another, and this will not affect the overall aesthetics of your design.
Colors affect everything in your design, including the text, images, and the background art/color. Here are some tips to prevent you from damaging the design with bad color choices:
1. Decide which elements will be in the foreground, or the layer of the image that will be seen at the ‘front’ of the design.
2. Make sure that you know what the background of the design is. Large images are often used as background, but this is not set in stone at all.
3. Use different color tones to adjust the projection of the background of the design.
For example, you can lighten some parts of the image at the borders, while intensifying the image toward the center where a white text is. The difference in tones (effectively affecting the contrast of the image) can help improve the visibility of the central design.
II. Not emphasizing elements
Emphasizing any element in the overall design is imperative if you want to guide the viewer’s eyes toward certain important elements that truly make the design stand out.
If you want to make your text stand out more, the trick is to create what is called a “cut out” effect on the text. This can be done by outlining the text, or changing it to an intense or stand out color like white, black, red, or deep blue.
The purpose of creating a cut-out effect is to guide the viewer’s eyes to the elements that have the effect so they would look at these first before viewing the background.
Your background can be as ornate as possible, but the cut-out effect will continue to create a suitable impact on viewers, and the background will not dampen the central elements that have been emphasized.
III. Not reading the moods of fonts
Font typefaces have different moods in their default state, and this can change as you scale up or down, or when you change the color of the text. Not all font typefaces are suitable for all designs.
For example, if the shirt design that you are creating is for an official event of your company, wacky font typefaces are a definite no-no, unless the event is informal (like a Halloween party) and people expect their shirts to be fun.
The best way to discover which typeface is suitable for the design that you are creating is by first listing down the things that you want to be associated with the design. List down three to five dominant moods or thoughts that you want people to think or feel when looking at your design.
Next, look for font typefaces that you can use. If you are using an online app like Canva, you will already have access to lots of font typefaces for free.
There are also free downloadable typefaces online, that feature samples before you actually download the files and install them. And finally, we custom t shirt websites that have online design software. This software would also have some available fonts in them for you to use.
Experimentation is key to grabbing the best possible typeface for any t shirt design project. If you do not experiment with different fonts, you are going to end up using plain or inappropriate fonts that do not project the right type of message to viewers of your design.
IV. Not taming your design
The easiest way to tame your design is by creating blocks of text, or applying lines to the design to ensure that everything is neat and orderly. Apply a line to the left or right of a text can ‘box’ it in, making it more orderly to look at. Boxing individual phrases, lines, or words within a design can also separate them properly, allowing you to further balance and harmonize the disparate elements on the page.
And finally, take a good, hard look at what you are creating and ask yourself: is there anything here that does not belong to my design? It’s important that you do not fall in love with your design too much, because it is essentially a work of art, and art doesn’t need ‘love’ or too much adoration but rather, a critical eye in the way we rethink what we want to put in the design in the first place.
Don’t be afraid to modify, rescale, or even remove elements in your design if you think the design is not working, or if you have a better idea. The best type of ideas are the ones that inject a fresh perspective in what you are doing.
