subject: Designing Your T-shirt: Three Elements For Success [print this page] A number of technologies can be found today, from inkjet transfers to online designers, which make designing and printing your own t-shirts easy and budget friendly. But easy production doesn't assure a good design. The following are 3 design components to think about when creating a design for a t-shirt: Contrast, Size, and Balance.
Contrast is the difference in *brightness* between colors. You want to have contrast between your ink colors and your shirt. For example, bright yellow, a wonderfully great color, is not great for text on a white shirt because white and yellow are very much the same in brightness. It is extremely difficult to read yellow letters on a white background. Dark colored inks, likewise, don't appear very well on dark colored shirts. Navy blue ink, for example, won't show up on a black shirt (or a burgundy shirt, or forest green, and so on...).
One more area where you need to think about contrast is the graphic itself. A graphic (or multicolored font) that's comprised of several very much the same colours, for example dark blue, deep purple, and black, will be hard to distinguish; the lines and colors will visually blur together. Contrast between light and dark colors will make your graphics easy to recognize.
Size really does matter when it comes to shirt design. Bigger is usually better for both text and graphic elements. Your design needs to be capable of being read from about six to eight feet away. Keep your text relatively simple, or at least have a major few words that are large and easily noticed. People don't have the time or inclination to read a paragraph of text on a shirt. You have around 3 seconds to get your message across before the shirt has passed by. While smaller text could be used, remember to save it for info that's much less essential than your main idea since it will be much less easily noticed.
Balance refers to the overall distribution of text and images on your shirt. A layout is described as being "heavy" where there's a lot of imagery or thick, full, font styles. As the word implies, when there is an area that is heavy (or light), there needs to be a similar area on the other side. Balance can be focused either left/right or top/bottom. As a design element, balance is an area where there is the most leeway for "breaking the rules". Many times, an off-balance, asymmetric design can be very energetic. But for a classic, clean design - remember to keep your elements balanced.
If you are mindful of Contrast, Size, and Balance when designing your t-shirt, you'll be well on your way to a result which will be visually pleasing to both you and your audience.
