There are three things you need to have in order to have a successful promotional t-shirt design!
1. A Targeted Marketing Strategy.
2. A Great Design.
3. A Quality T-Shirt Design Screen Printer.
With these three powers combined your business t-shirt design will be the most popular promotional apparel worn.
1. A Targeted Marketing Strategy
Every new promotional t-shirt design should have a targeted marketing strategy that is relevant to the audience, message, time, space and desired outcome.
a. The Audience. Who is that specific t-shirt designs audience? Do you specifically want to appeal to your end consumer or are you trying to appeal to business owners that might carry your product in a given niche?
b. The Message. What are you trying to tell your audience? Are you telling them your brand is cool, easy to use, or environmentally friendly? Make sure the t-shirt design is themed around the message.
c. Time and Space. Where are you giving away your promotional t-shirt? Is it at a conference or an even that could help your brand through association? Can the message be tied to any recent event relative to your business?
d. Desired Outcome. You need to know what your goal is to know how to reach your goal. Do you want people to wear the shirt? Give it to their kids to wear? Buy the matching hat? Sign up to your newsletter? Wear the t-shirt at a specialized conference?
2. A Great Design
You are creating a t-shirt to be worn, therefore, make it so people want to wear it! Have a true artist or graphic designer create your design that will appeal to your target audience.
a. Positioning. Do not make your brand front and center. Tastefully put your brand on the t-shirt sleeve or on the back and make the t-shirt message front and center.
b. Originality. Come up with an original design that is new to the business or the event instead of using t-shirt prints from last year.
c. Sustainable. Great design takes in account a sustainable environment. Make sure your t-shirt printing promotion is sustainable for your business (financially) and for the earth (materials).
3. A Quality T-Shirt Design Screen Printer
Find a company you trust and will stand behind their work and make sure to communicate all your needs to them including when you need the order fulfilled and if you want a sample to view before your order is put into production.
When submitting graphics for screen-printing make sure the images are vector graphics and that the images layers are maintained and separated based on color and depth.
a. Vector Graphics. Vectorize all images including all separate layers within the image. This is a hard process to do if the image was created as a bitmap to start with so make sure your designer knows up front that you need vector images.
b. Layers. Separate colors into different layers within your image. It is important to note that in screen-printing, each color is a different screen and all screens have their process life cycle (i.e. the more colors, the more screens, the more time to make, the higher the cost). Also, colors are not printed on top of colors, each screen-print of a color actually goes directly onto the fabric of the shirt, therefore, when you separate the colors into different layers, make sure the images on each layer do not overlap.
c. Communication. If you have any concerns or questions regarding screen-printing, make sure to ask your screen printer before the jobs is put into production! If you communicate with the screen printer they will more than likely appease all your needs.
Author Resource:
YouDesignIt.com (http://www.youdesignit.com/) allows businesses to design custom t-shirts online using their web-based design interface or import custom images and logo files that you want to be screen-printed. YouDesignIt.com can take your great t-shirt design and produce quality screenprints, embroidery, or digital prints on custom t-shirts, business wear, accessories, and caps (http://www.youdesignit.com/screenprinting-and-embroidery/custom-tee-shirts/).