Custom T-Shirts – The New Fad?

Have you ever wanted to design your own clothing? Do you ever see people wearing t-shirts with slogans on them and think “I could come up with something cool”. Well, with technology improving in the customized garment printing industry, you can now make custom t-shirts yourself or at a variety of online stores.

Printing them yourself is done with heat applied transfers. In my experience they are hard to do right at home with an iron. You really need a heat press which is much more expensive than just designing the shirt online and having someone else print it professionally. You want this to look great, right?

The first thing you’ll want to think about is if you’d like a slogan, a slogan with an image, or just an image. The pricing of custom t-shirts is usually based on how many colors the design you come up with. If you just have text with 1 color, it is way cheaper to print than say a photographic image. So if you are choosing to add an image, you’ll want that image to be as few colors as possible, unless you are ready to spend a lot.

Once you know what you want the shirt to say, you’ll want to start playing with fonts. Font selection can really improve the way the t-shirt looks. You want to choose something that is easy to read unless your goal is to have people staring at you for a while with a confused look on their face. Bolder fonts of course will print better, especially on darker colored tees. A custom tee with text that matches the graphic will be the best. So for example, you might want to pick a techno looking font for a shirt you are going to make about clubbing. Or you might want a computer font for a technical joke. The font selection for your idea is very important.

Now that you have your text ready and image if applicable, you need to choose what type of shirt it will be printed on. There are many choices available, normal tees, long sleeve, ringers, hooded sweatshirts, polo shirts, etc. There are cuts for more fitted shirts and cuts for women. Some of the better, more fashionable brand names are American Apparel, Bella, Gildan, and Royal Apparel. Of course a plain shirt is less expensive than a ringer or other more detailed shirt.

So once you have your shirt style, brand, color, text, and image picked out, you are ready to order your new customized t-shirt. There really isn’t a better way to express yourself with your clothes. I imagine with the improvements I mentioned earlier in the garment printing industry, we’ll see customizable jeans and other clothing coming soon!

Author: Jason Gesham

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