When handcrafting branded merchandise for your company, T-shirts should soar to the top of your priority list, as they’re not only great casual attire but also excellent office apparel. Branded merchandise offers invaluable benefits to your company. For example, with a simple t-shirt at your disposal, you can promote team unity, establish uniformity, and market your company’s core values and long-term ambitions.
While having branded merchandise can yield many advantages to a company, you should consider the costs you’ll incur when designing a company merch line, i.e., manufacturer setup fees, product costs, decorating costs, freight costs, and rush charges.
Fortunately, you can cut these expenses by purchasing wholesale t-shirts like these. Besides the fees previously mentioned, business owners should also account for the challenges of producing branded merchandise. That way, business owners by day and clothing designers by night can avoid undue complications.
What hurdles might you have to clear in the design process? For starters, you’ll need to select the appropriate products for your industry and business, craft a t-shirt-worthy logo, allocate the space to sell, and consider branded giveaways.
Before you orchestrate a social media campaign to showcase your newly-released company merchandise, you’ll need to start at square one: designing your logo. If you’re wondering where to start, look no further.
The Guide on Making Your Company Logo T-Shirt
#1. Simplicity
The human eye processes a limited amount of information at a time. The viewing time reduces when your message is printed on t-shirts, as it will be extremely likely that onlookers admiring your t-shirt’s design will be on the move. While you may feel tempted to showcase your creativity or originality by using a one-of-a-kind composition or unique angles, remember simplicity is key to developing an appealing design.
Sometimes the number of colors used and design nature can complicate the outcome. Ensure that your target population can decipher the message and identify with the emotion you are trying to convey. You can optimize an intricate design by simplifying it.
#2. Choose the correct size
Although size matters a lot when designing branded t-shirts for your company, people tend to opt for the standard size. To avoid making custom clothing designers’ mistakes, you should base your sizing on the design nature and what you want to print on the attire. Additionally, you may wish to vary your sizes based on garments ranges and size order, so consider reducing the size print for smaller t-shirts.
For a product worthy of a feature on your social media pages, factor shape into your team’s decision-making process. For instance, it is better to use square or circular shapes in smaller sizes. Printing out your design using regular paper at home and holding it up to the shirt gives you a better idea of proportions and offers a sneak peek of how the actual logo would look.
#3. Fonts and Typography
Typography allows you to convey a particular message and emote a specific style: vintage, modern, rigid, shy, romantic, or any combination of the following. High-quality images won’t be enough to attract potential buyers if you don’t utilize the right typography for your brand.
When creating a brand identity, ensure that it’s consistent with the type of font you use. Typography helps you achieve the correct line spacing and letter spacing. Similarly, taking this step will ensure the graphic elements interact with the font for an aesthetically pleasing design. You can use different fonts to add visual appeal and variation to convey the right message, emotion, and idea.
#4. Image Quality
Low-resolution images don’t contain the appropriate amount of pixel information to generate the details and quality for excellent print quality. Images retrieved from the web are usually too tiny to be printed. Ideally, you should use at least 200dpi or more at full size.
Low-resolution images can be frustrating to use, given that they’ve been compressed at least once. Unfortunately, with low-res images, onlookers can’t see the visual artifacts without zooming in the photos. Vector files are better alternatives because you can scale these images and print them any size you want without distorting the quality.
#5. Placement
Placement refers to the process of deliberating where to place the logo to achieve optimal aesthetic value. Heads will be turning in the right direction if you get the placement right, so avoid common mistakes like printing your company logo on the belly.
If you go with a standard print location for your design, make sure you opt for traditional placement in all your garment sizes and types.
#6. Colors
Considering that specific colors can invoke unique emotional reactions, you should think about the colors that will positively impact your target market. As a first step, it’s essential to carefully study your market to identify the colors that would resonate with your ideal buyer. From there, you can incorporate these brand colors when developing t-shirts with your company logo.
Anyone that’s dabbled in the psychology of color understands how vital it is to choose your color schemes wisely, as they can make or break your brand merchandising initiative. Therefore, when picking a color scheme, consider the target market, your company’s core values, and the brand story.
#7. Borders, masks, and edges
Borders, masks, and edges are critical factors, especially if you’re printing more than one photo onto a t-shirt. Why? Simply put, plain edges can make your attire look cheap, unprofessional, and even dull. There are many options for edges and borders, including simple thin black or white borders, which can automatically improve a design’s appearance.
If you don’t want a simple square, you can choose a frame with thicker borders and even elaborate details or beveled edges. You can use image editing tools like photoshop to play around with different borders, boundaries, and masks before settling for one that enhances your company logo.
#8. Inversion
Unless you want your brand merchandising t-shirts to resemble an x-ray, you should do an inversion when printing white images on black attire. While it can be hard to know if you should do an inversion, this step is vital to see the distinction. For example, you should switch the negative to a positive image with a white outline if you print an animal with a black skull and white eyes.
When in doubt, jot down what you want your outcome to look like, or better yet, sit down with a specialist to help you come with the best direction to take.
Final word
Simple t-shirt designs that highlight your company logo can help you reach your marketing and branding goals. However, simplicity does not mean overlooking certain aspects that make a great design. The steps above offer guidance for printing your logo on t-shirts.