Most of us tend to think of expensive software, running on even more expensive computers when we think t-shirt design. What if I told you that you could use your phone to design professional looking t-shirts with 100% free apps. Well you can and I'm going to show you how.

Whether you're designing a t-shirt for your business, as a gift, merch for your youtube channel, an event, to show your support for a cause or interested in getting started in the t-shirt business this article will walk you through designing your first t-shirt on your phone (or tablet).

We’re going to use the oShirt custom t-shirt design app to show you how to design your own t-shirt (or hoodie, sweat, tank etc) and have it made for you (no minimums!).

The oShirt app is available for iOS and Android and can help you create amazing custom garment designs that would normally require advanced design skills and access to expensive software.

Step 1 - Plan your design

What are your objectives? Here are some questions to ask yourself

Do you have a message you need to get across? Then your design is probably going to be simple - just the message itself and possibly a call to action. Are you trying to capture a memory or have a theme? Do you want a vintage or modern look?

Gather inspiration

Try picking three t-shirt designs that inspire you. OShirt has hundreds of templates that you can either edit yourself (in that case you can skip the rest of this article and go straight to customisation) or use for inspiration. You can also explore t-shirt designs that other users of the app have published publicly. Google image search is also a great source of inspiration.

Here's three outdoors themed shirts I absolutely love:

T-shirt design elements

This may seem obvious to many readers but it will also help calm those who are finding the t-shirt design process daunting. There are only three elements you can make use of in t-shirt design: Typography (text), shapes and imagery (photos). It's how you put them together that makes amazing design.

Oshirt has hundreds of fonts, thousands of shapes and millions of photos you can choose from (or use your own) so you won't ever run out material.

Some t-shirt design theory

I’m not going to bore you with an essay on design theory but the one single best piece of advice with t-shirt design is keep it simple. Use 1 to 3 design elements at the most. Think about some of the most memorable and famous t-shirt designs out there. They're always simple. Here's some that we think are some of the most famous.

Creating your design

Now it's time to play with the toys. If you haven't already, download the oShirt t-shirt design app.

We've assembled some great tips and advice below to help you create professional looking designs in almost no time.

Color and contrast

If you're only going to follow one piece of advice when designing your custom t-shirt let it be this...Make use of contrast - black on white, white on black, dark and light. There is nothing worse than spending all that time on your amazing t-shirt slogan and finding out that it's illegible because your text was light gray on white.

Try to avoid pastels on whites, or pastels on pastels. Although we do the best to make your design come out like it is on your phone screen, colors won't always turn out exactly the same. When in doubt it's best to employ contrast.

When it comes to picking colors, just like everything in t-shirt design keep it simple. Use one to 1 to 3 colors at most. Also remember the t-shirt color itself counts as a color, the predominant one so make good use of it. Here's some popular color palettes to use together:

Red and white

Yellow on blue

Black on Gray

Typography

You might be able to get away with using Arial for your school assignment or sales proposal but it's boring on a t-shirt. In fact, most fonts that you use on your computer or phone are designed to make small text readable on a small screen and not for t-shirts.

OShirt has over one hundred fonts included - every one hand picked for its ability to pop when placed on a t-shirt. We have spent the last year carefully researching and observing people's use of fonts in t-shirt design and only use the best.

Pair fonts

Here are some tips to use when pairing fonts:

• Mix serif and sans-serif fonts
• Mix script with either sans-serif or serif fonts
• Create contrast - use a big bold font with skinny stroked fonts
• Avoid pairing fonts that are too similar

Make use of text transforms

OShirt makes it very easy to change the height of text, line spacing, character spacing, stroke text, cut it out, make it bold or italic etc etc. These combinations allow you to make normally boring looking text pop.

Shapes and clipart

We're not talking your grandmother's Microsoft Office clipart here. We're talking about quality design components such as badges, decorations, icons, emoji and much more. OShirt has thousands of shapes available and sometimes something as simple as a well placed heart makes all the difference. Imagine I ❤️NY without the heart. It just wouldn't feel the same.

Photos

You can choose any photo from your phone's camera roll or pick from some amazing free creative commons licensed photos to use in your design. You can apply filters and even cut photos to shapes and text which can make for some very nice effects.

Negative space

Remember when we said to keep your design simple? Part of keeping it simple is to make use of negative space. What is negative space? It's simply the part of the t-shirt left blank. Why use it? Because it draws attention to your main design components.

Leaving parts of your design unprinted can create some amazing visual effects. This technique is almost unique to t-shirt design as your t-shirt itself can be part of the design.

Applying texture

OShirt has a very nice feature called effects which allow you to apply a design wide grungy feel to your t-shirt. Currently there are three effects available with the most popular being the vintage effect. It really does make your t-shirt look like it's ten years old at the press of a button.

Reviewing your design

Are you happy with your design? Why not share it with friends, family or colleagues and gather their feedback.

With oShirt you can share any design you have created - send it via email, messenger, facebook and more. Or you can publish it on the oShirt feed for others to comment and like.

Ordering your design

Sizing

When in doubt, go up a size. It is better to have a shirt that is a little too big than too small and completely unwearable.

Bulk Orders

If you are planning on making a lot of shirts for your business, charity or other group or event then you may wish to place a single order to give you a sample. That is, if you have time on your side. This allows you to make any fine adjustments in placement or color before placing your larger order.

We also have some coupon codes for larger orders to help keep costs under control.

Tip: If you’re ordering for a group and want everyone to pay for themselves you can share the design from the app via email (or messenger) and everyone can order it for themselves. This saves you having to worry about getting everyone’s size, distributing t-shirts and collecting payment. You also don’t need to worry about over or under ordering.

Thank you

I hope you have learnt a little about designing t-shirts on your mobile phone (or tablet).

If you haven't already downloaded oShirt you can get it for Apple and Android devices. Hopefully we'll see be making some of your designs into real t-shirts for you soon.

Family reunions can be a very rewarding event but they can also be stressful to organize. We've taken the time to compile some ideas for what to have everyone wear on the special day and how to look good when you take that photo.

1. Matching colors

The simplest to pull off, if not as satisfying as the other options, it at least shows that you want to some effort for your very special family reunion. The key here is not to pick something run of the mill (hint: no blacks or whites).

Go for something matching the season, reds and oranges for autumn, greens and browns for winter, pink, purple and gold for spring and  cooling colors like baby blue and anything with a heather pattern for summer.

2. Matching outfits

This is harder to pull off as you're likely to have to match across men and women and children.

This mixes in very well with ideas 4 and 5 because if you are all wearing the same t-shirt or sweater then all you need to do to match is ask everyone to wear blue jeans and white sneakers, almost everyone has them. Otherwise try something simple like navy blazer or blue striped shirt and khakis.

3. Pick a theme

Who says it's only kids and office Christmas parties that are allowed to have a theme. Here's some popular reunion themes we found in our adventures:

• Pirates
• Wild west
• Famous dead people
• Super heroes
• Mexican fiesta
• Retro (grandpa might not even need to dress up)

2. Order custom family reunion t-shirts

There are lots of designs out there to choose from and some companies will let you customize the name on your shirt but not much more. Many of these though will also have minimum orders of 20 or more.

OShirt is a custom t-shirt (and other garments) design app that has hundreds of design templates for family reunions, get togethers and other events. They are full customizable so you can change the name, change the colors, add your own text, shapes and images etc.

The best bit about ordering custom t-shirts with oShirt is that instead of having to order 5, 10, 20 or even 50 tees and hand them out at the reunion (and likely worry about getting your money back) you can share the design link with family members and they can order and pay for it themselves.

Download oShirt for Apple or Android phones or tablets.

1. Design your own t-shirts

If you're feeling creative or have seen a design somewhere that inspires you then you can use oShirt to make a design from scratch. Some of the amazing features of oShirt are:

• Thousands of garment combinations
• Almost 100 fonts to choose from
• Thousands of t-shirt design shapes including badges, decorations, animals, emojis and more
• Millions of photos or bring your own
• Powerful design tools such as being able to fill text and shapes with photos or add a vintage effect to your design

If you'd like to learn more about how to design t-shirts with oShirt read some of our Howto articles or Youtube channel.

With so much going on with oShirt all the time it’s hard to find the time to sit down and write about what we’ve achieved working on the #1 t-shirt design app for iOS and Android. So without making any promises we’re going to try and make this a monthly state of the “oShirt nation” update a habit.

New app feature — Text formatting

One of the most asked for features when it comes to working with text was the ability to stretch and shrink fonts. No surprises it’s a commonly used method to make text stand out on banners and custom garment designs.

You can find this feature when you have selected text under the style menu.

Christmas is coming

And it’s always a busy time for us. Last month you may have noticed we introduced design templates (we really should have written this update back then as last month was HUGE).

This month we’re working hard on filling up the app with Christmas themed templates. Use them as inspiration for your designs or just create a new design with one and change the text by double tapping it. Custom tees for Xmas for the whole family with just a few taps.

We’ve also added lots of Christmas shapes and clip art and as usual we have millions of photos so we’re looking forward to seeing what you design.

Coming later this month — Text spacing

Hot on the heels of being able to adjust text height we’re also working on letter spacing and setting line height. Small features but important for getting the most out of text in your designs.

More Content…

We’ve also been working on adding a lot of useful content to the blog and the oShirt youtube channel.

Don’t miss this month’s feature on seven t-shirt design tools you must be using in oShirt and of course our how to design t-shirts for your band, couples, street art, restaurant/cafe or local small business, startups and many other needs. They’re all packed full of ideas and practical examples to inspire or just copy.

Don’t forget to install the app if you don’t have it already.

‎T-shirt designer - oShirt
‎Design your own t-shirt. Make custom and personalized t-shirts. - Easy to use t-shirt design maker / editor - High…apps.apple.com

T-shirt design and print - by oShirt - Apps on Google Play
Design your own t-shirt. Make custom and personalized t-shirts.play.google.com

Or why you should look beyond Google fonts for good typography.

A couple of months ago we wrote a very popular list of the best Google fonts for use in t-shirt and poster design. The data for this story came from the thousands of designs created and published by users of the oShirt custom t-shirt design app over the last year.

The 10 most popular fonts in t-shirt design
We have analysed the fonts used in designs made with the oShirt app and come up with a list of the best fonts for…medium.muz.li

The story was very well received and we hope it has been and continues to be a valuable resource to help designers produce better looking physical products (including t-shirts and posters) with typography.

The march of time

Fast forward two months and a lot of features have been added to the app. Shortly before writing our first article we actually added support for font sources other than Google fonts.

90 percent of design is typography. And the other 90 percent is whitespace — Jeffrey Zeldman

We felt that although there are some good fonts available through Google fonts we were restricting our user’s creative options by limiting them to a limited collection of fonts — not that Google have a small collection, as of writing there are almost one thousand fonts available but most are better suited for text legibility on small screens (15 inches and lower) rather than t-shirt design. As a result we currently only make available just under 10% of the total collection in the app.

Fonts turn words into stories

To test out the app’s new support for third party fonts we added (what we thought would be) five exciting new fonts.

Those fonts are:

• Kung Font
• Peace Sans
• Westside
• Pricedown Black — The Grand Theft Auto font
• LOT

They were chosen because of their big, bold and stylistic nature and because they have licensing unrestrictive licensing terms that make them free for personal and commercial usage. This last point is important for both us and our users as many people use the oShirt app to make t-shirts for sale or to market their business.

Given the app already had almost 80 fonts available we thought adding five more wouldn’t have much of an impact…

Wrong!

After two months with these new fonts live in the app we analyzed thousands of new designs that included some form of text and found that these 5 new fonts despite only making up only 6% of all fonts in the app were accounting for 24% of all fonts used.

Why is this? Well the short answer is that we can’t be certain certain but we do know there must be a certain amount of novelty — these are new fonts in an app that some people have been using for a while so they’re more likely to be clicked.

6% of all fonts in the app were accounting for 24% of all fonts used

The biggest single contributor to the extraordinary take up of these fonts has to be that these are good, standout fonts, chosen by and for people who know what makes a good font for t-shirt design. How else can you explain a 4x increase in take-up vs the original Google fonts.

Google fonts cannot be everything to everyone

fonts.google.com is without doubt an amazing source of well polished although mainly conservative fonts that are well suited for use for large amounts of highly readable text on small screens. However, if you are wanting to make stand out graphic design statements then the statistics don’t lie. You should be looking elsewhere.

We are moving forward and the first thing we did when we learnt about the outstanding performance of our five new fonts vs our current font stable is go out and source another ten outstanding fonts. It’s not always an easy thing to do — licenses, character set support and format conversion are just some of the things you need to go through once you actually find something that you like. It looks like it’s all worth it.

If you’re looking for some good alternate font directories that contain a lot of fonts with open licensing then try Behance and Da Font.

Band and tour t-shirts have been around for almost as long as bands themselves. They’re great for giving band members and fans a sense of identity. They even gave birth to a new style in the 1970s called punk.

Are you looking for inspiration for your own band merchandise? We’ve collected some of the best for inspiration.

Fun fact: Black is by far the most popular band shirt colour.

You don’t need Photoshop skills or a professional designer to make any of these designs. The oShirt app was created specifically to make custom garment design easy for anyone. Whether you want to make tees, hoodies, sweats, tanks, muscle shirts or more. We’ll add a couple of tips to each band’s t-shirt showing you how to make it yourself.

You can download oShirt for your iOS or Android phone or tablet.

10. The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones font is similar to Bangers or The Luckiest Guy and their t-shirt designs make judicious use of bent text which is a formatting feature available in the oShirt app. “Who The Fuck Is Mick Jagger” font is similar to the Graduate font.

9. Smashing pumpkins

A bold font with a simple star shape to embellish and the iconic ZERO shirt is complete.

8. The Who

This design is one of the most complex but is essentially a series of concentric circle shapes that can be layered on one another and then some text on top.

7. Run DMC

The closest font available in oShirt is the Archivo font and a line above and below the text and you have reproduced probably one of the simplest but memorable band shirts of all time.

6. Nirvana

Looks like a sick emoji? Well this t-shirt was designed well before the modern emoji existed.

That shouldn’t stop you from using one of the thousands of emojis available in oShirt.

5. Oasis

Quite simple but makes use of negative space. If you select fill -> cutout in the oShirt app you can also make your text cut out the rectangle you have placed below as in the Oasis t-shirt.

4. The Ramones

OShirt has some image filters but won’t be able to reproduce the effect on this Ramones photo. A great companion app for image manipulation is Snapseed — available on iOS and Android.

Circular text is easy with oShirt. You can place text on a circle with the bend text tool in oShirt.

3. AC-DC

oShirt allows you to change your text into an unfilled outline just like this AC/DC tee. The font itself is quite unique but there are plenty more to choose from

2. Frankie Goes To Hollywood

Just text. The trick here is to pick a bold and forward font when designing shirts with a message on them. We’ve covered the best fonts for t-shirt design in another article if you’re wanting help choosing a font.

1. Daft Punk

Simple but iconic much like Run DMC. This style can be reproduced by overlaying solid text on outline text. Here’s our take on it using the Kung Fu font.

If you haven’t already, download the oShirt app now and start creating. The app store links are below.

T-shirt design and print - by oShirt - Apps on Google Play
Design your own t-shirt. Make custom and personalized t-shirts.play.google.com

‎T-Shirt Designer - oShirt
‎Design your own t-shirt. Make custom and personalized t-shirts. - Easy to use t-shirt design maker / editor - High…itunes.apple.com

Whether it’s his and hers, his and his or hers and hers couples shirts can be cute and entertaining. Great for holidays, family events or just for a Sunday stroll. They are the perfect way to show the world your love. They also make the perfect anniversary gift for the committed couple.

Rather than buying a generic “I’m with stupid” with arrow design why not create your own design that says a little about your personality as a couple.

We’re going to use the oShirt custom t-shirt design app to show you how to design your own couple’s shirts (or hoodies, sweats, tanks etc). The oShirt app is available for iOS and Android and can help you create amazing custom garment designs that would normally require advanced design skills and access to expensive software.

We’ll also show you five designs that inspired this article and will help inspire you.

But first you need to install the oShirt app and spend a few minutes getting used to it so you can play along at home. Here’s where to find it…

T-shirt design and print - by oShirt - Apps on Google Play
Design your own t-shirt. Make custom and personalized t-shirts.play.google.com

‎T-Shirt Designer - oShirt
‎Design your own t-shirt. Make custom and personalized t-shirts. - Easy to use t-shirt design maker / editor - High…itunes.apple.com

Start designing your couples shirt

For this example we’re going to create a pair of been together since anniversary shirts that look just like the ones below:

1 — Open up the app and click the plus icon to start a new design. We’re going to start off with the design on the left then use it to create the design on the right

2 — Double tap the default text and type in “TOGETHER” — once you’ve done that you want to pick a nice bold font. For this design we’ll use Graduate but for more typography ideas see our article on the most popular fronts with users of the oShirt app

3 — Now we’re going to tap off our newly added text an add more text — “20” for the millenium. The app should size our text appropriately but you may want to pinch to size it more appropriately and either use the controls to centre it or drag it around until the helper markers align it appropriately. We also chose a bold style to make it stand out more. When you’re happy with the design tap back and we’re going to duplicate the design for our second couples garment.

4—Tap your newly created garment and bring up the preview. You’re going to want to click “copy” now and start editing a new design. Tap the garment colour and choose black. Feel free to use another colour — we suggest offsetting white with a darker colour like navy or red.

5 — Double tap “TOGETHER” and change it to “SINCE”. You can do the same with “20” and change it to the year you first got together. In our example we are using 17. There should be no need to move any of your text as it should auto align for you but you may need to make an adjustment.

6 — Your text will still be black at this point so you’ll need to tap it and change the colour to white to make it stand out on a dark coloured garment. See our article on five common t-shirt design mistakes to get a better understanding of how contrast on t-shirts works but suffice to say if you use black text on a black t-shirt no one’s going to be able to see it.

Tip: One cute tip we have for the older, happier couples is to use the effect option to add an vintage effect to your design to make the t-shirts themselves look like they are aged. You’ll get a kind of crumpled, faded effect when applied.

Ordering your couples t-shirt

Now you’ve made your second t-shirt you can tap done and pick a size which will add it to your cart. You’ll then need to go back and add your first design to your cart. If you want to ok the design with your better half then designs can be shared and even bought by them by sharing your designs.

Our favourite couples t-shirt designs

Here’s five of the best couple design t-shirts from our designers on oShirt and that we’ve found online.

What design are you planning to make for your couples shirt? Leave a comment below.

We have analysed the fonts used in thousands of designs made over the last year with the oShirt custom t-shirt design app and put together this list of some of the best fonts to use on your next t-shirt design according to the design community in our app.

All of these fonts are available to use on your design in the oShirt app but if you want to use the fonts in other t-shirt design tools like Photoshop they are all available as free content via Google Fonts which is an interactive directory of free to use hosted web fonts.

We’ve used the wonderful work of Piotr Jakubowski to showcase the fonts in poster form. Fonts used in posters can also be a great source of inspiration for t-shirts as they’re very similar mediums often being the same size and also used to convey a message whether that is artistic or commercial expression.

The fonts

Without further delay here is the list of some of the best fonts to use in your next creation. In no particular order they are:

Knewave

One of the newer fonts on the scene it gives a penned with a brush style feeling that can be very desirable on fabric. Your designs will have a handmade feel. Great for messages that feel emotional and genuine.

Monoton

Monoton feels like it is right out of the 1960s or 1970s or even something that wouldn’t look out of place on a hypercolor t-shirt of the 1990s but its origins fall further back in time and it was inspired by the Prisma font first introduced in 1930.

Rubik

Rubik was actually a font commissioned specifically by Google to use on a Rubik’s cube style installation. Hence the name. At small sizes it looks quite ordinary but when used at larger sizes such as headings on a website or on a poster or t-shirt it really shines. Make use of the zoom feature on oShirt to really get a good idea of what it will look like on your shirt.

Oswald

Oswald was designed from the ground up to look good on smaller screens. This doesn’t make it unsuitable for use on t-shirts by any means. It may not be suitable for all of your headlines but it can be used if you want to include a professional message in your design with a smaller text size as it is highly readable at many sizes.

Playfair

Playfair Display is perfect for a more elegant or luxurious design. As a display font, it is perfect for use in headings and as a replacement for Times New Roman

Bangers

Bangers is a comic book style font. It was designed in the style of mid-20th century superhero comic book covers and is great for impactful but playful designs.

Montserrat

Montserrat is a bold geometric sans serif font inspired by the old posters and signs in the historic Montserrat neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. It is easy to read and works well at large scale. Perfect for a simple message or feature letters.

Creepster

Straight from the graveyard. Creepster is a great font for a ghostly feel. We’ve lost track of the number of designs we’ve seen using this font in a ghostly, glow in the dark green.

Shrikhand

This retro font, to us looks like something something straight out of a 1970/1980s car advertisement. It was inspired by the colourful and vibrant hand-painted lettering that can be seen on the streets in Gujarat. It’s big, bold and unapologetic and that’s what makes it so good for use on garment designs.

Graduate

Nothing says sports and academia better than Graduate. Great for team jerseys, graduation shirts and more. The bigger the better. Unfortunately Piotr hasn’t made a poster for graduate so we just thought we’d show you one of oShirt’s happy customers wearing their design featuring the font.

Our favourites

It’s very hard to pick a favourite — Monoton looks really great with “fluro” colours but Bangers is good for getting a message across and can give your design a playful, comic book style. Perfect for memes.

Do you have a preferred font? Share it in the comments below

Update:

Much changes in two months and we’ve written a follow up on our experience moving beyond Google fonts.

Please stop using Google fonts everywhere
Or why you should look beyond Google fonts for good typography.medium.muz.li

Whether you want to have uniform clothing for your employees, want to make some marketing materials to give away to customers or just some t-shirts for a special event printing out custom garments with your logo on it doesn’t need to be difficult.

We’ll show you how you can create your own designs and how you can save some money when ordering them.

We’re going to do this on our phone (or tablet) using the oShirt app. OShirt is a free t-shirt designer app available for iOS and Android that helps you create amazing custom garment designs that would normally require design skills and access to expensive software.

It is packed full of fonts, shapes and images that can be used in your design and when you’re done you can order straight from the app. No need to deal with garment specs, print shops or minimum order requirements.

Download oShirt now for iPhone/iPad or Android.

1. Prepare your logo graphic

At this point we’re assuming you already have a logo you would like to use but if you haven’t here are some sites where you can find designers who will make one for you for a price:

• 99 Designs
• Fiverr

Or if you want to have a go at designing your own logo you can try one of these apps:

• Logo Maker Shop (iOS only)
• Logo Maker by Shopify (IOS or Android)

Once you have your logo file you will need to make sure it is in a format that you can use to add to a t-shirt. If you have someone who can do it for you then you should request a transparent PNG file with a minimum width and height of 2000px but if you just have a logo file and don’t understand the above don’t worry too much.

Why transparent?

Transparent image files like PNG will have a certain color that is essentially see-through. This allows you to place them on top of other images without annoying boxes around the image. See the example below. Can you tell why you want to have a transparent PNG now?

If your logo turns out like the above then use this transparent png tool to convert it into a transparent PNG.

Image size

This is very important as when you’re designing a t-shirt where your t-shirt is almost ten times bigger than your phone. If you have a small image it might look fine on your phone screen but come out blurry on your final design.

Open your logo on your phone and use the two finger pinch zoom to try and zoom in on it. Depending on your phone if it lets you zoom in at least double the size, preferably triple without pixelating or preventing you from zooming further. If you have it on your desktop then you should be able to open it and get info on the size. Make sure it is both wider and taller than 2000 pixels. A little less is ok especially if you want it to only be on part of the shirt.

2. Get it on your phone

Pretty much everyone has email on their phone, emailing it to yourself and downloading the attachment is the easiest way of transferring the file.

3. Start designing

If you haven’t downloaded oShirt go get it now. When you open it up you’ll be invited to start a new design. OShirt has a large number of garment options including many tees, hoodies, sweatshirts and even infant clothing.

Pick a color

If you picked a unisex t-shirt then you have plenty of choice for colors with almost twenty available. Pick one that fits your brand but keep in mind that if your logo is black it’s not going to work on a black or other dark colored t-shirt.

Placement

Most people will just want to place a large logo in the middle of their shirt but it’s also quite common to position the logo above one of the pectoral muscles.

Here are three common placements:

FYI: It’s very important to point out that the t-shirt you are designing on is a mirrored design. So if you place the logo on the right it will be worn on the left of the person when they are wearing it.

Embellishments

Depending on whether your logo already includes some text or is descriptive enough already you might want to add your business name to your design. OShirt has a large number of fonts you can use but it’s as simple as tapping the text button, adding your text then modifying the font, color etc.

3. Ordering

You can now click done and start adding sizes to your shopping cart. If you have time on your hands I suggest ordering a couple of shirts to try out before ordering twenty of them.

One trick for choosing sizes is to pick more of the more common sizes and trail off on each side. For men that will tend to be L or XL so if you order ten L then get 7 of each XL/M, 5 of each of 2XL and S. That way you won’t run out of the more common sizes.

4. Save money

I did promise I would show you how to save some money. Well we have two coupons available in oShirt for those larger orders.

BULK — 15% off of orders of 10 or more items. Enough for a team

SAVER — 25% off of orders of 20 or more items. Great for swag for your next event

Emojis are a great way to express yourself and combined with a t-shirt, hoodie, onesie, sweat or a tank top and a message you can look fashionable.

OShirt is a t-shirt designer app for your phone or tablet (available on iOS and Android) that helps you create amazing designs that normally require design skills. It is packed full of fonts, shapes and images that can be used in your design and when you’re done you can order straight from the app. No need to deal with garment specs, print shops or minimum order requirements. Buy one or one hundred garments.

Crazy fact: Did you know there is an international day dedicated to emojis? It’s every July 17 and the perfect day to wear an emoji shirt.

The app has over one thousands emojis available and hundreds of fonts you can use to design your own custom tee.

Which emoji should I use on my design?

According to emojipedia these are the most popular emojis in the world today

Some inspiration

And some great designs we’ve seen our users and others make using emojis:

Our favorite?

Whilst we don’t have a clear winner it’s hard to go past the crazy wink face emoji. It’s so versatile when delivering a message.

We hope you’ve been inspired to start using emojis in your t-shirt design. Download the oShirt app on your iphone/ipad or Android phone or tablet today and start designing.

Whether you’re part of a casual team that catches up for some basketball at the local courts, soccer at the park or you’re the coach of a weekend little league club team uniforms can help give your team a sense of identity and even intimidate your non-uniformed opponents.

They don’t have to cost much and will make your team look great as well as play better.

There’s no need to employ a designer to make them and you don’t need to order in minimum quantities or reuse the same design these days. Each team member can have their own name and number on their own shirt.

We’ll use the oShirt app for this tutorial (available on iOS/Android). OShirt is a t-shirt designer app for your phone or tablet that helps you create amazing designs that normally require design skills. It is packed full of fonts, shapes and images that can be used in your design and when you’re done you can order straight from the app. No need to deal with garment specs, print shops or minimum order requirements. Buy one or one hundred garments.

Download oShirt now

What garments can I order?

We have some recommendations based on some sports below.

• hoodie or unisex tank — Basketball
• unisex jersey tee -soccer/football, ultimate frisbee, cricket, rugby
• Sweatshirt - lacrosse
• Unisex tank — beach volleyball

What should I put on my team shirt?

If you look at professional team wear there are usually two or three elements that are consistent across sports. Some professional sports jerseys can be noisy with lots of sponsorships but you need to look past them.

The basics are:

• Player’s name
• Player’s number
• Team name

Sometimes there is also the team logo. Logo design can be difficult but often animals are used and the oShirt app has a good selection of animals like wolves, bears, eagles etc you can use to add some flair to your design.

Note: sometimes designs are placed on the back of the garment. OShirt only lets you design on the front of the garment but if you would like to order your design on the back just drop us a note after you’ve placed your order and we can have it made on the back instead.

Enough already let’s get started

We’re going to show you how you can use the oShirt design app to create a team jersey with your name on it and a number and how to make copy the design for your whole team.

Don’t feel like this is all you can do. The app has a large library of shapes and fonts you can use to really get creative if that suits you.

You can follow this tutorial using Photoshop or similar tools but most steps are will take longer and you will need to scour the internet to use the fonts, shapes and images used in the tutorial.

Let’s make something great

1. Open the app and choose your garment. We’re going to go with a unisex tee but there are options in the app for tanks which make great ball sport jerseys, women’s tees, sweatshirts and hoodies that would also work well.

2. We are going to change the garment color to red. It’s a great color for a basketball team but there are some other bright and bold colors to pick from. We also like navy and green.

3. Tap add text and add your team number. Change the color to white and we are going to tap font and choose the graduate font. Now tap styles and choose bold. Use a pinch gesture to size your text and then drag it around until the purple vertical line shows you it’s centered.

4. Tap outside of the design so nothing is selected then tap text again. Add your name and tap font again. We are going to scroll down a bit and choose orbitron as the font. Drag the text to place it in the centre again and pinch to set the size.

5. Next we will add a star for a bit of flair. Tap outside the design and choose shapes. The star can be found by searching or under basic shapes. You are going to need to choose color now to make it white.

We are done! That’s how you make a jersey in just four easy steps.

How do I make more?

It’s easy to make more team shirts with the same design. Here’s the steps to follow:

1. When you’re happy with your initial design tap back and tap your new design again. You will be presented with a preview and a menu button you can tap with some options. One of them is duplicate design so go ahead and tap that. You now have a copy of your original design that you can update.

2. What you’re going to do next is leave the original design in place but follow steps 2 and 3 above making sure you place the text above and the same size as the original text using it as a size guide.

3. When you’re happy with the sizing you now need to remove the original text. When you have a design element like a piece of text selected there is an edit menu that allows you to move text up and down in the layer order. Tap down until your new text is below the original text then tap on the original text. You can now click the trash can icon and remove the original text. Be careful to make sure you have the old text selected before doing this. Repeat for your next piece of text and you are left just your new design.

You can repeat the steps above to make as many jerseys as you want.

We hope you’ve been inspired and will be making many shirts for your team. If you haven’t already download the oShirt t-shirt design app for your phone now and start designing. Good luck and we hope to see your designs soon.

There’s not a lot you can get for $100 of your marketing budget these days but for many early stage startups this might be all they can spare.

What do you think would be the most effective way to spend $100 on marketing if that is all you had?

This article isn’t a list of 21 ways you can waste your money chasing down some leads on Facebook. I’m simply going to tell you about the one, single most valuable way you can spend $100 on promoting your startup. Thousands of startups have already deployed this technique successfully, you may even have seen it in action.

So what is best way I can start promoting my startup?

One word….t-shirts!

Yes, that’s right. That most versatile of items of clothing. The humble t-shirt: custom printed, with your brand, what you do website or all three.

At this point I’ve probably lost half of the readers as you’re either choking on your coffee or curled up in a ball laughing but for those of you that can think outside of the box let me explain, in a few points, why this is the most effective way to spend $100 and how to get yourself some swag.

1 — They’re cheap, like really cheap

What can you really get with $100 these days in terms of marketing?

• A box of business cards — when was the last time you saw someone with one of those?
• Maybe 20 leads on Facebook or clicks from Google if you’re lucky. The website and all the time trying to set the ads up though is going to cost you a lot more
• 200 flyers you can hand out in your area only to have your neighbours throw away
• Some fridge magnets (actually a pretty good idea if you’re a plumber)

Or you could order like 4 or 5 t-shirts for the same price. A t-shirt not only keeps you clothed but acts like a portable billboard — everywhere you go, your brand goes with you.

2 — Visibility

When you’re out there doing business. whether it’s talking to potential investors, meeting customers or going to networking events you’re advertising your business when you have a company branded t-shirt on.

“When you do to a startup event with a t-shirt on, everyone knows where you’re from.”

To get similar exposure you could spend tens of thousands for a booth at an industry event to get a similar level of exposure or you could spend your $100 on some t-shirts and wait for people to come to you.

3 — Identity

Many startups don’t have their own office and may be working out of a co-working space or from their own home(s). Having a company t-shirt can act like both a uniform and a company HQ sign. Giving the company both an ethos and a sense of culture which is critical to the survival of an early stage startup.

“It’s amazing how many strangers will come up to us on the street and ask what is this thing on your shirt?”

4 — It’s easy to do

You don’t need a designer, or a logo. Heck, you don’t even need any design skills. Most t-shirts are just text.

Instead of spending time fumbling around in photoshop and on back and forth with a printer you can download the oShirt app available on iOs and Android.

OShirt is made for designing t-shirts and has a lot of the power of tools like Photoshop without the complexity. Better yet you can design your t-shirts and have them shipped to you all from the comfort of your couch. Try it out.

We’ve seen a lot of startup t-shirts proudly made with oShirt. That’s what inspired us to write this article.

Have a story or suggestion of your own about the most effective way to spend $100 on startup marketing? Tell us about it below.

If you’re like us and love street art, or are involved in creating it then you’ll love this simple guide about how to use your phone to take a snap of a piece of street art and place it on a t-shirt to create a unique piece.

Note on copyright: If you’re the creator of a piece of street art or have the permission of the creator then go ahead but if you have stumbled on a piece of artwork then it’s best to track down the creator and either purchase their official streetwear or ask their permission to make a derivative work, even if it’s just for personal use. Definitely don’t run out and make 200 of them to sell at your local market.

A Basic Look at the Ethics and Rules for Photographing Graffiti
Back in university, in an early morning class, a lecturer held up a large photograph and asked, "What could be wrong…digital-photography-school.com

Disclaimer: We used a piece of artwork marking the Carnation Revolution from the Alfama district of Lisbon of which we are not sure of the designer. The design and t-shirt we made were only used for this story. If you can identify the designer or are the designer we’d be happy to update the article with full attribution.

What do I need?

We’re going to use two apps to transfer your street art onto a t-shirt or garment of your choice. The oShirt app and Snapseed (search the app store) by Google both are available on iOS/Android.

oShirt is a t-shirt designer app for your phone or tablet that helps you create amazing designs that normally require design skills. It is full of fonts, shapes and images that can be used in your design and when you’re done you can order straight from the app. No need to deal with garment specs, print shops or minimum order requirements. Buy one or one hundred tees.

Download oShirt now

Snap seed is an advanced image manipulation tool for your phone. We will use it for some of the fine adjustment on photos that oShirt won’t do.

You can also follow this tutorial using Photoshop or similar tools but most steps are will take longer and you will need to scour the internet to use the fonts, shapes and images used in the tutorial.

Let’s start

Find your subject and take your photo

You may have a particular piece in mind or you may be going through photos you already have but here’s some tips to keep in mind.

1. Make sure the subject is clear of obstacles such as cars, people, animals and even things such as lamp posts or fire hydrants can get in the way. For the things that can’t move you may need to use a not so perfect angle but we’re going to show you how you can adjust for that later.
2. Try to place yourself in the center of the artwork both horizontally which is usually easy and vertically which is usually harder. Often artworks are placed on the sides of multi-storey buildings. This isn’t a problem as we’ll go through how to correct perspective distortion later on
3. Move as close as you can without losing any part of the subject
4. Try to take photos vertically where possible as the printing area on t-shirts is always taller than wide. If your subject is wide then it can’t be helped.

Snap away, it’s always best to take as many photos as possible and try a few different positions.

Prep your photo

We’re going to use a particularly tricky photo that we took in the Alfama District in Lisbon, Portugal. The Portuguese, especially in Lisbon, have really embraced street art in the last decade, it started off as a way of covering up some of the poorly maintained buildings but has grown to become part of the national identity. Some cities are catching up but Lisbon is still the street art capital of the world. There are parts of the city that you can barely turn around in without catching a glimpse of something.

Here’s ours:

You will see a lot of street art recalling the Carnation Revolution which was a military coupe that took place in 1974 that saw the peaceful removal of the dictatorship. During the coupe the people of Lisbon took to the streets and decorated the soldiers and tanks with carnation flowers.

It’s almost impossible to get to a vantage point to take a photo of this piece that is head on so we’re going to use Snapseed’s photo touch up capabilities to make it look as if it was taken straight on. So make sure you have installed Snapseed on your phone to follow these next steps.

Correct perspective

First off, open your photo in Snapseed then select the tools button. The tool we want is the perspective tool. It has some sub-options you can use. In our case we need to tilt the photo forward a bit and drag it to the right. This is like us virtually walking to the left a bit and floating up into the sky to get the mural front on.

At this point it’s not perfect so we use the free-hand tool to drag the sides out a little. Unfortunately there’s no right way of using these tools so it takes a little trial and error but if we can make this photo look ok then you can perspective correct almost anything.

If it’s sounding daunting just remember that this is about as hard as it gets. If you managed to take a photo of a mural that is at street level straight on then it may only need to tilt it forward slightly. Finding a line and trying to straighten that line vertically is what you are aiming to do.

Crop

Now you want to crop any parts off the image that you don’t want in your tee print. If you can keep a 3/4 aspect ratio (width is 3/4 of the height) at this point it will fit better on the garment. Don’t get this mixed up with 4/3 which Snapseed offers, it is wider than tall.

If you’re happy with the result export your image from Snapseed, otherwise keep adjusting until you are. It can take a few tries to get a perfect image.

Place on t-shirt

Open up the oShirt app and create a new garment. Tees and hoodies lend themselves really well to street art but there are also sweats, youth clothing and even baby onesies available.

Tap the photo button and choose “from gallery” to open your existing export from Snapseed. The app should do a pretty good job of placing and scaling your photo automatically but you may want to adjust it. You can even add some text to personalize your design further.

Don’t forget to choose a garment color as well. To do this make sure nothing is selected by tapping off the garment and choose the color garment icon. Most garments come in a large variety of colors but we think black, white or a nice heather (the speckled look you get in often gray shirt) look best.

You can click done in the app and choose a size before adding it to your cart. The app also lets you share your design with the community.. To do that there’s a publish design toggle on the same screen. You can also share links to designs to your social media accounts. Great for an artist to get started distributing their work.

The result

This is one we made earlier. As you can see we also removed some of the background of the image using another tool but it wasn’t necessary nor should it be for most street art.

The building in the background is the Belem Tower on the Tagus river. It served as both a defensive position and the symbolic gateway to Lisbon.

I hope this has inspired you to go out there and start making t-shirts. What other type of t-shirt design would you like to see us tackle next? Leave a comment below.

Street art photography tips for your iPhone and Android
Street art photography tips to prepare, capture and edit stunning, aesthetically pleasing graffiti images that pop…smartphonephotographytraining.com

If you are thinking of opening a cafe or already have one and would like to design an engaging t-shirt for it and don’t know where to start? Then this tutorial has you covered.

A custom t-shirt for your bar, cafe or restaurant has many advantages. It creates a sense of identity and team spirit amongst your staff. You can give them away or sell them to loyal customers and it’s a great way of advertising your business around town. Most of all it makes your business look professional and comes with tax benefits in the form of a deducation. Would your customers prefer to go somewhere with sharply dressed staff or a business where they can’t even tell if someone’s an employee or not?

Getting your small business its own uniform may seem like a daunting or expensive task but I’m going to show you how easy it is and you don’t even need to hire a designer you can do it yourself in minutes.

What do I need?

We’re going to show you how to design a simple yet striking design. Feel free to reproduce the design for your business or use it as inspiration.

We’ll use the oShirt app for this tutorial (available on iOS/Android). oShirt is a t-shirt designer app for your phone or tablet that helps you create amazing designs that normally require design skills. It is full of fonts, shapes and images that can be used in your design and when you’re done you can order straight from the app. No need to deal with garment specs, print shops or minimum order requirements. Buy one or one hundred tees.

Download oShirt now

You can follow this tutorial using Photoshop or similar tools but most steps are will take longer and you will need to scour the internet to use the fonts, shapes and images used in the tutorial.

Let’s make something great

1. Open the app and choose your garment. We’re going to go with a unisex tee but there are options in the app for women’s tees, sweatshirts and hoodies that would also work well. We’ll start with the default white tee but you can tap the color icon at the bottom and select black (or you could go for a primary color like blue, green or red for this tutorial).

1. We now want to use the shape option to add something that symbolizes coffee. Luckily we have plenty to use but if you can’t find something then you can use the power of Google search in your browser to download something then add it from the photos menu.
2. We picked this abstract line art that looks both smokey and seductive. It screams order coffee when looking at it. If you used the same shape as us use a two finger pinch rotate to tilt it slightly so we get that Nike swoosh effect.

1. Now we’re going to add the business name. Our fictional coffee shop is the Cafe Cairo.
2. Let’s choose a font that matches the svelte, yet rounded feel of the shape. We went with Comfortaa and then used the style menu to make it bodlder but Walter Turncoat would also work nicely here

1. Our cafe was established in 2017 so we’re going to add that but you could just as easily add a slogan, your location or your specialty instead.
2. Again we use pinch zoom or the handles to reduce the size. We can also zoom in using the zoom control at the bottom right of the screen and check what everything looks like at a larger size. We used a different font this time, Lato, it complements Comfortaa quite nicely. Remember these fonts are available in the app but if you’re following along on a desktop design tool you can download these fonts from google fonts.

And you’re done! That’s one professional looking custom shirt designed in less than 10 minutes in oShirt. Click done, choose your size and quantity and you’re ready for your shirt to be on its way to you.

If you’re not convinced with white then it’s two steps to switch colors:

1. Tap the t-shirt color button (tip: make sure nothing else is selected) and choose a darker, possibly primary color like black, red, navy or green.
2. Tap each of the elements in turn then color and select white

And you’re done. A new variant of your design in just a few seconds. Use this one or order multiple colors. Have you thought about different colors to differentiate back of house staff vs servers?

If you haven’t already make sure you download the oShirt app and start designing!

There is nothing quite as special as receiving a custom designed onesie for your newborn or one year old’s birthday. New parents are almost literally showered with gifts of clothes for bub so a personalized design is going to stand out.

The oShirt app lets you easily design onesies, t-shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts, youth t-shirts and more. When you’ve made your dream design you can order your design and have it delivered in days.

Here’s our five favourite designs:

I hope these present ideas for newborns helped you come up with a gift idea for that new child or baby’s birthday

Seen any cool ideas or created something yourself? Tell us about it below.

Whether you are designing a sweatshirt for your sports club, a hoodie for father’s day, a onesie for your sister’s new baby or an awesome piece of swag for your business you’ll enjoy these tips.

This article will show you some of the most common mistakes we see people make when using the oShirt custom t-shirt design app (available on iOS and Android) and how to avoid them.

Let’s dive right in with tip #1

1 — Size

This has to be the most common and easily avoidable mistakes made when buying custom garments. Make sure you check size guides rather than just go off small, medium, large etc. Any good description should also talk about the fit of the garment.

If in doubt go one size up — No one is ever going to not fit into a garment one size too big

2 — Contrast

We see this mistake made all too often with oShirt as a lot of people get their bearings in the wonderful new design world. However, even experienced designers can make this mistake. Either way when it comes to unboxing your amazing new design it usually ends in tears

Avoid using dark colors on dark garments unless you’re intentionally trying to make things difficult to see. Navy blue text on a brown shirt is always going to be difficult to read. Even if it does look good on your expensive IPS monitor.

If in doubt fallback to using a white shirt. All but the lightest of lights will look good on white.

Primary colors on black or white shirts also work well. Any combination of red, black, white and blue look amazing.

3 — Image Quality

Another common mistake we see people make. When you take a small image that looks ok on a phone screen and blow it up on a 5XL hoody its over ten times bigger. Small photos can look pixelized. oShirt compensates for this somewhat by blurring your photos for you instead of leaving unsightly chunky pixels but it can only do so much. Photos from your phone or free stock photo sites should not have this problem but if you have downloaded photos from Google search results especially please check they are at least 4mp (4000x4000) or greater. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about then make sure the photo still looks good when you’ve zoomed in to two or four times larger than its normal size.

4 — Design Element Density and Size

Very fine detail, small text or very thin fonts are often difficult to discern on printed t-shirts. What might look ok in black and white on a piece of paper or even on your ultra sharp phone screen can be hard or almost impossible to read on a t-shirt.

Try to make sure your text height is at least 1/10 the height of your available design area. Use thick, bold fonts or make your text larger. The large selection of fonts available in the oShirt app have been specially selected based on their suitability for t-shirt design but you still need to stick to the 1/10th or larger rule.

If you’re using artwork or shapes please make sure the stroke on any pen-work is thick. If in doubt then squint at your design onscreen. Can you still make it out? You should be ok.

5 — Complexity

Some shirts just have too much going on. Think about it. You have less than a second to impress someone with your design. You aren’t going to do that with three photos and a paragraph of text as it could take a minute or more to process all of that.

Two or three lines of text with two or three words each is ideal. A single photo or shape and some accompanying “flair” likes stars, underlines, basic shapes that your text is set against.

Let’s say you’re an accountant. You might think it’s a good idea to make this

Or…a simple message:

I hope this list has helped you both learn more about what to avoid but also design better. If you haven’t already tried oShirt then download it here. Even if you’re comfortable with photo shop and other design tools it’s a great way to quickly to try and share ideas and designs.

For more reading check out out our article on how to make your designs pop.

Have any mistakes to avoid or tips to help others? Join the conversation below.