In this video I'm going to share with you 16 t-shirt design tips that every t-shirt
designer should know, especially if you want to sell t-shirts online. Let's go!!
Thanks for joining me on this video. My name is Juna with Detour Shirts. I've been designing and
selling t-shirts online since 2005. So I have a lot of experience when it comes to designing
t-shirts. I've been doing it for a while now and these are some of the tips, some t-shirt design
tips, that I want to share with you to help you get more sales online with your t-shirt designs.
And my hope is to keep it really simple to give you examples of what i'm talking about.
These tips should help any new t-shirt designer and people who just want to learn how to do this
and make money selling t-shirts online. So I wanted to give a quick thanks to those on
the facebook group, my Detour Shirts facebook group that helped me out with some of these
tips. They gave me some of those. I asked a question in there and got some answers,
some good ones and I wanted to share those with you as well. You're going to want to
stay till the end to see all 16 tips and let's just get into the tips right now.
So tip number one i wanted to start with a very obvious one and that is don't copy anyone there's
multiple problems with doing this but a lot of new sellers i see they look at what's selling and they
do exactly the same thing and that's not a good idea for a couple of reasons one
things that are online are copyrighted so you're going to have some copyright infringement and you
could get some takedowns and you could lose your shop but two if you look at this example right
here tacos and cervezas you can see so many of them are copying the same thing but the one that
stands out is the one that's doing something different so make sure yours are different
think of what to do come up with something original i put that as tip number one for a reason
so tip number two to remember is it's not just graphic design so a lot of people have
some really cool graphic design skills they can make drop shadows and they can make all these
cool different things but t-shirt design isn't necessarily graphic design it doesn't always
translate so if you got a nice book cover or if you got some nice icons you're really good
at drawing like big murals and stuff um you're gonna have to learn to make it fit for the t-shirt
design so look at this example right here these are all great graphic design examples but i don't
think any of these are great for t-shirts right so a t-shirt design is a subset of graphic design
learn what sells on t-shirt learn about what t-shirt design is and then you can get those
skills on what it looks like so your graphic designs will help but not everything that you
know how to do in graphic design will translate into t-shirt design so tip number three i think
most people know these but i still see a lot of new sellers do this and that is to remove
the background so you're gonna design in a tall rectangle and typically when you design
you put a background in there so that you can see what's going on take a look at this one right here
you can see they didn't remove the background and it looks just like a big sticker on your t-shirt
you don't want to do that you want to make sure that the background is knocked out and so the
letters pop and things just work if you look at most t-shirt designs they don't have this
so you're going to want to save your file as a transparent png file and so that way you won't
have the background on there so just make sure you do that before you save so tip number four is
fonts matter they convey feeling so make sure to pick the right fonts so take a look at this meme
right here you've probably seen this online i will always find you one reads really happy and the
other reads really creepy and that's just because of the different fonts that are being used so make
sure to use the right font for the right audience on your t-shirts so there are fonts that work well
for different audiences and you need to learn how to find those also your fonts need to be big bold
and easy to read those are the best ones to use on your t-shirt so that people can actually read
what's on your t-shirt stay away from fonts that are kind of hard to read and if people
are squinting and can't read your shirt then the message doesn't get across so tip number five is
to design in a tall rectangle shape now this isn't always the case this isn't a hard and fast rule
but for new designers i would say stick to this in the beginning just because it's a lot easier take
a look at these examples right here these are some of the top sellers on merch by amazon and look at
the shape they're all in the tall rectangle shape so you've probably seen the video that i made
recently about the top 100 designs on amazon if you haven't i'll put a link right up here
but most of them are in the shape of the tall rectangle so it's something just really easy to
do for especially for new designers so again this isn't a hard and fast roll but typically you'll
get a lot better results by fitting your design in a tall rectangle so tip number six is to use
proper placement so if you're not going to design for a tall rectangle and you want to make it
horizontal make sure that it's in the right spot a lot of new designers don't know where to put it
they put it way too high or way too low just make sure it's right in the middle of the chest you'll
see these examples right here what i'm talking about you can see all of them are in the same area
so that's where you want to place your designs if you're not going to design for a tall rectangle
another reason to do it for the top rectangle is you won't have to worry about this but
if you do have a design and want to get out of that tall rectangle make sure the placement is
right so tip number seven is to use color to stand out take a look at these two examples right here
one is using color to stand out the other is using different techniques to stand out but
the color one is just so easy to do if you just add a little bit of color to your design it can
really make your design pop just make sure that it's the right kinds of color on the right kind
of t-shirts you're going to want to make sure that you have good contrast and all of that so speaking
of contrast tip number eight is use contrast to stand out take a look at this example right here
gray on black doesn't stand out as much as white on black so make sure when you design
your t-shirts to have that contrast so that it's easy to read and people can see your design better
so tip number nine is to know your audience so every topic every niche has a audience that wants
to buy that and it's your job to figure out what that audience is so take a look at these examples
right here you can see they're all different designs and you can pretty much tell what
the audience is for each of these right so 100 days of school with a dinosaur and a backpack
most likely a little kid that goes to school uh and you can see the same with these the let it
go brandon t-shirt is a totally different audience than the t-shirt on the right so make sure to know
the audience you're designing for that's going to help you make sure that you get the best design
for the people that want to buy it so tip number 10 is to make your designs easy to understand
so you're basically a walking billboard with your t-shirt people are walking past you and need to
know what your t-shirt is about in like three seconds so make sure that it's easy to understand
here are some examples that i found that are very easy to understand just by looking at them for a
couple of seconds you know what they're about so keep that in mind when designing your t-shirts
make sure that your t-shirts are easy to understand and just keep it pretty simple so
tip number eleven is to take time to do something good now most people can kind of imagine how long
something took to design and they're gonna kind of stay away from the ones that are just something
they can do themselves but if you take time to make something craft something just a little bit
better your best work i think others will resonate with that so here are some examples of some that
are just a little more detailed you can tell that the designer took a little longer to design these
they're not very simple i know the last step said make it easy to understand but these are still
easy to understand but just took it to the next level so so do your best work and take time to
do something really good so tip number 12 is don't over complicate it so i know you i said to do your
best work so there's a balance right here where you're gonna do something good but now also don't
go all the way to the other way where it's too complicated and not easy to understand so they're
designing t-shirts is a nice balance of the two so make sure it's simple and easy but not
over complicated so here some examples of what i'm saying is you can tell that it's just a little bit
better than just putting text on the t-shirt but it's also pretty simple easy to understand
and does really well so keep that in mind when designing your t-shirts is don't over complicate
it so tip number 13 goes back to the question do i do quality or quantity and the answer is
you do both so in print on demand you want to make sure that you're doing your very best quality now
it doesn't have to be super high quality but you also don't want it to be super low quality it has
to be somewhere in the middle take a look at this example right here does this one need to be better
quality no this is good enough it does a lot of sales so stop right there and do more of it do a
lot more designs around this kind of quality where it's gonna make some sales i don't need to add
more to this t-shirt right here it's good enough adding more to it and making it a better quality
quote unquote is not going to make it sell any better it's good enough to make sales it's easy
to understand and does all the principles that we talked about earlier so the answer to quality
versus quantity is to do both make sure that it's good enough quality and do lots of it
so tip number 14 is to make sure that your t-shirt designs are easy to read or easy to understand so
let's take a look at this example right here that we had before i'm putting the other two t-shirts
next to it that aren't so easy to read maybe the fonts really hard the contrast is hard or
the text is too small now the same for a t-shirt design with no words make sure that it's easy to
understand you don't want the graphics to be too complicated that you can't you have to
squint and find out what that is make sure that it's really easy to understand even as a graphic
so tip number 15 is to create some interest on your t-shirt now this can be with color
this can be with your artwork this can be with your words maybe it's a funny saying
but just make sure that there's something interesting on your t-shirt it can be something
like this look at these examples right here one has a you know popping apple one has a really
nice graphic of a cat the one on the right has artwork with the arms and a heart shape so all
of them have some kind of interest that's drawing your eye to it so think about that when you're
designing taking time to design your t-shirts make sure that there's some kind of interest
on your t-shirt that draws the eye tip number 16 the last tip is to follow the data now a lot
of new sellers just want to design t-shirts that they think are the best t-shirts maybe something
they want to wear that's a good place to start but if you want to follow the data you'll come
up with designs that other people want to buy so for example i'm not the type to wear a t-shirt for
uh tuesday you know celebrating the 22nd day of february in 2022 but according to the data
on amazon it's something really hot right now right you can look at the bsrs you can look at the
search results you can look at the autocomplete in this example and lots and lots of people want that
so make sure that you have a design that people want to buy use the data to let you know that
people are buying these things that it's selling well for you you can look at your own data as well
to see what sells the best so make sure to follow data when designing t-shirts remember
it's not about what you want it's about what other people want and design for that so i have a bonus
tip that i want to share with you and that is seo will not save your bad designs so a lot of people
are under the impression that they can just put up whatever t-shirt they want and just make sure
that they put in the right keywords and the right title and right things like that and they'll be
on page number one and magically they're gonna get some sales well yes seo will help you get
on page one and make you rank but when you're ranking on there you're still going to be in
competition with everything else on there so if you have a bad design like this example right here
one lucky teacher the one that i circled right there really hard to read
not following all the design tips that i talked about and what i think will happen is people will
probably pass that over even if it's on page one they're gonna buy the other things on page one and
things that are gonna stand out and are following the design tips that we talked about in this video
so make sure make sure that you follow these design tips make sure that you give yourself the
best chance when you're on page one so remember seo is great but it's even better when you have
a good design out there on page one for people to buy so that is it for this video thanks so
much for watching hopefully all these tips all these t-shirt design tips were really helpful if
it was make sure to give it a big thumbs up and if you're not subscribed to this channel already
make sure to hit that subscribe button right there i wanted to leave with a question of the
day and the question of the day is this what are some other t-shirt design tips that you use make
sure to leave those in the comments if i missed any i'd love to hear it i'd love to add it to the
list of these i might want to make a list like this as a free download so you don't forget it
let me know that in the comments if you want that free download on my downloads page
thanks again for staying till the end and for watching this video and if you want to see
more tips on how to design t-shirts make sure to click on these videos right here
and as always guys keep creating and keep learning i'll see you on the next one bye