This blog post is a t-shirt design tutorial but we want to get more people involved.  The only way we know how to do that…is to give something away for free.  If you link to this t-shirt design tutorial, we are going to give you a free t-shirt printed with the design that we create in this tutorial.  Just share this tee design tutorial with people that read your blog by linking to us, and then leave us a little comment, letting us know to check yours out.  We will contact you to get your size and shipping information.

This tutorial is centered around the trendy practice of using reflection in your t-shirt artwork.  We are referring to taking a design and making a mirror reflection of that design to create an overall new look.  All of our work will be based in Adobe Illustrator, and we always start with a blank canvas:

Now we are going to cheat a little bit and put in a design that we created as the foundation for this tutorial.  Take a good look at what we’re starting with, because it is definitely cool enough to be considered a solid t-shirt design in itself.

One of the most important steps that cannot be overlooked when creating a reflection is making sure to group all of the objects that are going to be reflected.

Once all of the objects are grouped, we’re going to make a copy.

Now here comes the most important part.  While having the copied group of artwork selected, we will go to the Object menu, choose Transform, and then Reflect.  The default settings should be set at Vertical reflection. If not, select Vertical because that is the one we need for this exercise.

We’re going to adjust the alignment now to get it just how we like it.

The last thing we’re going to do to set it off is drop in some Old English text with the title of our piece.

Here is the final t-shirt artwork for your viewing pleasure:

Tomorrow we will post pictures of the printed t-shirts with this artwork! Don’t forget, share us with your friends and we will show you some love.