Start Your Own T-shirt Design Business
T-shirt designing and selling is one of the most popular creative entrepreneurial hobbies that aspiring fashion designers, and retailers, can easily get into. Designers and retailers can launch their own full fledged brands, or they can simply create T-shirts for a specific event or promotion.
For example, if there is an upcoming festival, retailers can design and sell shirts with that festival's theme, or a designer can start his or her own clothing brand by initially focusing on shirts.
If you are going to launch your brand, you might want to work with a copyright and trademark attorney, to make sure that no one else has previously registered your brand or designs, and that you can register ownership of your brand name, logos, designs, and trademarks.
One of the benefits of creating unique and original designs, as opposed to simply licensing someone else's brand or designs, is that you can build a reputation for your own brand, and set your own price according to the popularity and demand of your shirts.
Once your designs catch on, you can even offer your designing services to other up and coming, and established, T-shirt brands!
There are lots of things that you have to consider in order to come up with the best designs for your T-shirts. In order to know how to design a T-shirt, you must first understand what screen printing is all about. Screen-printing technology has evolved through time and it has now become one of the best methods to print on fabrics such as cotton or polyester. Screen printing uses electronic or physical ink to transfer designs onto a particular fabric.
Note, there are online companies that will print and ship your T-shirts out to your customers, such as:
https://www.vistaprint.com/clothing-bags/mens-t-shirts
https://www.rushordertees.com/design-t-shirts/
https://www.t-shirtsprintingnyc.com/
You can personally see to the printing process, or you can have a company print the T-shirts for you. You can create your own designs, or you can hire a freelancer through a site like https://www.fiverr.com, to create a design for you.
Screen printing is a very old process that has been around for a long time now. Beforehand, screen printing was done by hand which involved cutting out different shapes and colors and using a squeegee to transfer the designs to the fabric. This was not only a tedious task but also an expensive one, since it required the use of many resources including chemicals and labor. It was also not very convenient, as you had to go to the studio to do the printing rather than staying at home, and making the designs on your own T-shirt.
With the advent of digital technology, things have become a lot easier. Today, you can make your own t-shirts in a matter of minutes. There are many screen printing options available and they can be used in different stages of a product manufacturing process. You can either do the printing yourself or use the services of an outsourcing company. Here are some of the screen-printing options you can choose from and give your product the identity it needs:
Direct-to-Garment (DTG) printing is done by printing directly onto garments with the help of special equipment. It is the perfect option if you want to cut down your production cost since you do not need to hire additional people for the task. However, there are many cons associated with this type of printing. Cons include poor quality as the material used for the garment is not of the best quality and you will need to do a lot of rework to fix errors.
In terms of color, direct-to-garment printing can work perfectly well for those who want to reproduce certain designs or colors in bulk. The cost of producing the garments is lower compared to other methods of printing. This is because you do not need to pay extra money for getting special paper and ink to print the design. However, certain colors and images cannot be reproduced correctly in vinyl graphics.
For those who are interested in doing their own printing, another printing option is to get your designs printed onto T-shirts using CMYK technology. This is another popular method that is used for personal items such as shirts. This is one of the easiest methods of printing. The colors will appear as expected on the T-shirt. Many of the online manufacturers have CMYK printing options for those who want to reproduce certain colors without using transfers.
Once you have your T-shirts ready for sale, you can retail the shirts through your own store, flea market booth, e-commerce site, eBay store, or Amazon business.