I've been selling T-shirts online for nearly 10 years now
and in this video I'm going to share 10 T-shirt
design hacks that will take your T-shirt designs
to the next level.
Some of these hacks are super quick to do
but you would only learn them from experience
and they can make a huge difference.
This is going to be one of those videos
that I'm going to try to get everything
in within five minutes, but it's going to be one
of those that you will be able to use this information
for the rest of your designing career.
The first T-shirt design hack is to use negative space.
Now, negative space is the area around
and in between the main elements of your design.
By creatively using this space instead
of the main design space
you're going to be able to create interesting
and unique designs that are different from everyone else's.
Just to give you some real examples
of how to use this negative space
you can use that space to form a hidden image,
a message, a letter, or a symbol.
Now, if you're having a hard time trying to create things
in the negative space, my best advice for you
would be to use pre-made T-shirt design templates
that are customizable.
You can find some that have negative space features built
into them, and you can work your design from there.
The second hack is playing with typography.
Now, for those of you who don't know,
typography is basically fancy graphic designer lingo
for saying text, so essentially lean
into using text only designs.
Believe it or not, some of my best selling print on demand
T-shirt designs have been text only
and if you're going to try this one out, my best advice
for you would be to try combining different font types
or different font sizes
and even using different layouts of fonts.
The third hack is using color gradients.
Gradients will add depth and dimension to your designs
so that they're not so basic,
and when you're using gradients you can make a transition
between two different colors
or you can just add a subtle shading to the same color.
It's just going to take a simple design
and kick it up a notch.
The fourth hack is adding a distressed effect.
By adding a distressed effect to your design
it'll give it that vintage or worn out look
and it seems to sell really well.
There's a couple different ways that you can do this.
You can use a texture overlay or you can manually
use the eraser and kind of take out parts of the design.
This is simply going to add character
and uniqueness to your T-shirt design
and others will have a hard time replicating it
because some of the times you have to create this effect
by hand.
The fifth hack is incorporating geometric shapes
into your design.
Now, graphics have historically been the go-to
for T-shirt designs
but geometric shapes can add a unique look to your design
that not many other people are using right now.
You can use these in the background.
You can use them as a frame
or you can even use them as the main element to your design.
The sixth hack is to use hand drawn elements.
Hand drawn elements are going to give your design a personal
and unique touch.
Think along the lines of drawing your own graphics
or creating patterns by hand or even hand lettered text.
As you go down the rabbit hole of graphic design
you'll find out that there are multiple different softwares
out there that allow you to use a stylus
and basically draw directly onto your computer or tablet.
So if you're someone who's talented in this department
of being able to hand draw things
then really take advantage of it
because you're going to be one of the few.
The seventh hack is to lean into the minimalism trend.
Sometimes less is more.
A minimalist design can be just as impactful
as the complex ones if you do this right.
My best advice for you would be to focus
on using simple text, simple shapes, clean lines
and limited colors.
I know it may sound crazy, but one of my personal
top selling designs is only two words.
It's a single font, single size,
single color design that is totally minimal.
The key here is that I focus this design
on really meaningful and emotion packing words.
The eighth hack is incorporating pop culture references.
Now, there's a really important fine line
on this one that I'll get into in a second
but you can basically lean on pop culture references
and take the traffic that's already existing
in the popularity for something
and create designs based on it.
The super important thing on this one is
that you have to make sure
that you're avoiding any copyright issues
by using original artwork or parodying the original content.
Those are kind of the loopholes around this one.
Now, for this one in particular, you also wanna be sure
that you're checking the trademarks for your designs.
Now, I should probably say checking trademarks
for all of the T-shirt designs
that you make is a really good practice
and will save you from legal issues down the road.
So I'll put a link to a video down in the description
that walks you through how to do that.
The ninth hack is to create optical illusions
in your T-shirt designs.
Optical illusions are super uncommon to find
in T-shirt designs because they're extremely hard to make.
However, if you can be one of the ones making them
you have some serious upside potential.
This is another one that you may wanna find pre-made
templates for so you can customize them
because creating these from scratch
is going to be pretty hard.
The tenth hack is to use a copyright-free T-shirt
design tool.
This was a total game changer for my business
when I found out about it
because they have pre-made templates that you can customize.
They're all made by professional graphic designers
so it gives you a really big headstart.
I'll put a link in the description below to a video
showing how to use the one that I personally use.
It only takes a little bit of creative thinking
and a little bit of extra effort
to make your T-shirt designs really stand out.
Hopefully this video has been super helpful
and all of the links that I talked about
will be down in the description below.
I hope you guys enjoy.