T-Shirt Design Secrets and Tips for Great Looking Designs

Our clip art images make great starting points but are only the first step in a final design. Text and design elements can be added to make a design absolutely fabulous. There effective ways to combine these components, but they require some planning and thought ahead of time. Below you will find some tips and secrets that might be helpful. Remember, there are no “rules” but a lot of these concepts can be found in one or more ways in nearly every well designed t-shirt.

Great shirt designs  involve utilizing contrast, depth, outlines, and other concepts. If done correctly these methods can really work together to help create an amazing final design. Try some of these ideas and see if they help make your next design cleaner and more appealing.

Contrast

Contrast is a completely underestimated and often overlooked way to make designs easier to view and more attractive. Contrast is simply making sure that darker elements are surrounded by lighter ones and vice versa. A quick and easy way to create contrast in your designs is by adding outlines to your text. Don’t forget the shirt color when you are designing your artwork. The color you are going to print on should be an integral element to consider when you are starting your design.

Depth

Adding depth may be one of the quickest and yet most effective aspects of creating a solid design. The focus images here at beyondmascotart.com are a great starting point but our images are just the beginning. Creating depth within your design can really help finish it. Avoid simply throwing some text around the images. Overlapping your elements will create a more visually pleasing and cohesive design. Pay attention to how the elements are working together in order to maintain the visual clarity of the images and fonts so they are easy to read.

Create Interest by Adding Elements

Vector design elements can be a designers best frient. Small elements augmenting the design can really cause a design to come together and look finished. Designing your own unique team logos with our mascot clip art images is easy. Our great clip art images are easy to incorporate in some vector design elements and text.  Make sure your design elements are working well with your text and not interfering with their readability. Vector design elements are a easy and quick way to polish up a design in a short amount of time. Don’t forget… outlines and other elements add interest.

Quick and Easy Design Templates

If you need an amazing  design but you are in a hurry visit our t-shirt design template site. You can edit and customize these AI CS2 t-shirt design templates for a unique design in a fraction of the time it would take to create it on your own.

Here are the unofficial rules about using our images.

Overview of the File Types

Unsure about file types? Hopefully this will help.

Our image files come in two different format types. (EPS and JPG) Each file type has its pluses and minuses and you should be careful about which file type you get. Every printer will have their own preferences as to their preferred file type. However, except for the extremely rare case almost every printer will be able to use one of these two file types to help you get your products produced. If you are having something printed you should contact your printer to find out their preferred file type and resolutions.

JPG Files

JPG files are intended for web use. They vary by size and the larger the size the higher the resolution. JPG’s are intended to be used on websites and blogs. Although you can edit the colors of JPG files it is not really what they are intended for. Occasionally a printer will want a JPG file but most often they would prefer the EPS file. For most websites a medium size JPG will be plenty big enough but if you are looking to have a banner or t-shirts printed you should get the EPS file.

EPS Files

EPS files (Vector files) are easily editable files. EPS files only open in illustration programs like Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, or Corel Draw. These files are typically what a printer will want because they are scalable, easy to edit, and allow for color modification with very little effort. Be aware that unless you have the correct software you may not be able to open an EPS file. JPG’s can be generated from EPS files so if you are unsure what your printer wants get the EPS and let them make a JPG from it.

Love the image but your school colors are different?

No problem, get the EPS version and colors changes can be done in minutes. You will need to have the correct software but this isn’t as problematic as it might seem. Almost any printer will be able to modify the colors for you. It really is only a few clicks of the mouse and shouldn’t take longer than a couple of minutes.

The image has 8-10 colors but I need to print it in 4 or less.

This is also easy to do. Simply merge some of the colors together to reduce the amount of colors. The art will still look great and print beautifully. All of our images also work very well as line art so they can be dropped down to only 1 color and still work in most cases.