It appears that we have some unfinished business on one of the previous t-shirt design tutorials that we did. We are referring to the 3D t-shirt design technique that we blogged about that we feel could go two or three more steps to really polish it off. The trick that we are going to use involves transparency and allowing the different layers of colors to mix in the spots that they overlap. This makes for much more difficult screen printed t-shirts but we think it is well worth it.

Let’s begin with taking a look at the final design we created with the 3D feel:

The first thing we’re going to do is grab all of the blue stars, and simply change the transparency down to 60%.

Here is a closer look at the transparency change:

Then we are going to grab all of the pink stars and drop the transparency down to 70%. Going any lighter will take away the pop of the paint that we need for this technique.

A closer look at the transparency:

And that does it! I know, simple enough to really add the third dimension to the illustration. Here’s a final look at an old design with a new trick:

We mentioned last week that our main administrative offices moved and we are still getting settled in.  The most exciting thing for me is that I live on the same exact street that the new offices are located on.  In fact, saying that I live on the same street just doesn’t do it justice, because I live on the same block.  In our attempt to go more green, we have been getting pretty creative with the commute to save on gas and to decrease energy consumption.

Just like with anything else we do, we have to create a t-shirt design and print t-shirts for the occasion.  We also felt this would be a great chance to give a short t-shirt design tutorial on how to trace something in Adobe Illustrator.  We chose an illustration of a bicycle, because it is pretty simple geometric shapes that are easy to re-create using the preset shape tools and pen tool in Illustrator.

Here’s the final design we are going to create:

The image that we are going to trace comes from a standard bike route sign that you see on many streets today.  We first open up that image in Adobe Illustrator.

The first tool we will be using is the preset circle tool.  We are going to create the two wheels on the bike by sizing up the circle tool and giving it a 9 pt stroke.  The color we are going to use to make it easy to see what we are doing is pink.

For this next step, we are still going to use the circle tool, but we are going to create two circles with the fill color of pink instead of an outline.

Next we are going to use the pen tool to trace all of the straight-line pieces of the frame of the bicycle.

Now we are going to increase the stroke on the line we just created with the pen tool to match the bike.

The last part of the process for the tracing is to take the square tool and create the two pedals and use the pen tool to trace the seat.

Since we used a lot of strokes in this illustration, it is always good practice to expand the strokes so everything is a fill color.

Another suggested step that isn’t required, but helps polish off the design, is to merge all of the pieces.

The last thing we’re going to do is delete the bike sign that we used for tracing and change the color of the bike.  We added a little text just to get our point across and provide a little smile.  Here’s another look at the final tee shirt design:

*For custom t-shirt printing, please visit You Design It.

As we have noted previously in this t-shirt blog, we just entered the Design By Humans t-shirt design contest with artwork that we named Shooting Stars. We promised that we would show you just how easy it is to accomplish that custom t-shirts design effect.

First, we are going to begin with the shooting stars artwork.

As you have seen us do before, we need to group the artwork so we can make everything easier to move and manipulate.

One of the most important parts of making this t-shirt design effect really pop and happen, is to choose the right colors. Now the colors don’t have to be that particular, they just need to be bright and with a lot of contrast.

Next we are going to make a copy of the artwork, move it a little bit down and to the left, and then color it a bright pink.

We’re going to repeat this step, one more time by copying the artwork, moving it up and to the right, and coloring it bright yellow.

We always suggest you play with the artwork a little bit and change the depth until you get it right where you want it. It shouldn’t take a lot for you to be able to get this technique and make it better than we can.

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.

We are increasingly getting a lot of t-shirt printing jobs from uploaded artwork that our customers have created off-line. Most of the T-shirt designs have been very skilled and extremely advanced, but the most common mistake we see is not creating outlines from the fonts used.

It’s a very simple step in the T-shirt design process that can ensure your artwork stays just as you have created it. You see, if you use a font on your computer that isn’t on the printer’s computer, it can sometimes be substituted for a completely different font. You can just imagine how bad that can be when the format changes and the whole theme looks different.

For this design tutorial, we have created artwork that only has fonts, and lots of them. The majority of these fonts are not loaded on most computers by default. Here is the finished artwork:

This particular design tutorial is based in Adobe Illustrator, and as always, we are going to start with a blank canvas.

The next step was to create our artwork by typing our company name with over 20 of our favorite fonts.

The next step is to select all of the fonts and go to the Type menu at the top. Select the option to Create Outlines:

This will result in the fonts becoming vectored images. *Note that you lose the ability to edit the fonts after this step.

When you select this option, be sure that you’re finished with the design or you have saved a file with the fonts still editable. There you have it! One quick and easy way to make sure that your artwork is printed. Exactly like you have created it.

We want to take a little more time and create some higher quality posts that illustrate more of what we do and how we do it. Our goal isn’t so much to teach you how to use Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop or any other tool that we incorporate in t-shirt designing. But more to teach you little tips and tricks that can set your t-shirt designs apart. One of our more popular design tricks that we use quite often is creating the stitch look with a screen printing. You’d be surprised to see just how easy this trick is. Before we start, here’s the final picture of what we will be creating:

So if you are following along with us, you will first begin by opening Illustrator up and choosing the text tool.

With the text tool we’re going to create the text that we will manipulate, and we have chosen a thick script font. You can just about choose any solid font for these purposes. We always like to use a thick script font because it conveys the traditional stitch look from an appliqué.

As with any good t-shirt design that involves fonts, out of habit, we are going to create outlines. This way, if we send this file to our customers or other printers, they won’t have to be concerned with natively running or owning this font.

Once we have created outlines, we’re going to add a 10 PT stroke of the same color to our text. You can choose any size you would like but you will see in the end that you can have the stroke too big or too small.

We are then going to make an exact copy of what we have created so far and we have put this in a bright green to make it clear for illustration purposes.

The next steps are to stack the two images right on top of each other, then make the fill color transparent and drop the size of the stroke down to 2 pt.

Now we are headed into the final stages. The first thing we like to do is change the stroke to white just out of preference. Then we are going to select the box for a dashed line in the stroke options. For this instance, we are going to choose a 3 PT dashed line.

And there you have it! Here’s the final image again to show you what we have created.