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Are you creating your own clothing line? Expressing personal style? Need an awesome design for event clothes like a school reunion, family reunion, or team bonding event? Promoting your business beyond traditional means?
Regardless of your reason, finding the right design can be a serious job. You want to get it right. You want an unforgettable piece of clothing.
In this article, we’ll not only show you amazing designs, we’ll tell you how to create stunning, memorable designs for your clothes.
How to create designs for your clothing
Before you contact your fashion designer or graphic designer or begin to create a dress design for yourself, there are things you need to figure out to nail your fashion statement.
Why Do You Need A Cloth Design?
There are a lot of reasons to want to put a graphic design on a dress. It could be that you’re starting a clothing business and you need a custom design for your own clothing line. It could be for your own clothes as an expression of personal style.
It might not be about fashion, it might be about business branding or merchandise. It could also be for event souvenirs, promotional gifts, or internal company usage.
Figuring out why you need a shirt will help you decide on the themes, styles, and personality traits you want your piece of clothing to convey.
The piece of clothing could be something you want to give away for free to keep your brand top of mind. Say a T-shirt. You could give t-shirts at campaigns, conferences, conventions, or any other promotional events or even leave them behind at a business meeting.
It could also be for special event souvenirs – a school reunion – you want a cool design that allows everyone to feel comfy.
You can even give to your employees to show solidarity for a cause or express buy-in for a particular product or service. That’s if it’s not a company uniform, to begin with, which would be less about style, but about the message and might be casual but would also need some thought.
It might also be a product you plan to sell. This would require you to focus on style and a whole lot of other details.
You want to treat your clothing design like a billboard design, product label, or any other brand design at that. That’s because your clothes are a point of contact with your brand. Even if you’re wearing you’re wearing the design on your own body, you want a design that makes sense- one you can showcase comfortably to the world.
Once you’ve determined why you need a design, you’ll also have an idea of what type of design you want and you can then decide the design aspects you want to prioritize. Check out the t-shirt color combinations.
Define Your Budget and the quantity
How much can you spend and how many pieces of clothing do you need?Do you need different designs for different clothes and in different colors? Small orders or bulk?
The answers to these questions can help you determine the printing methods. Some printing methods are better for bulk orders.
It can also influence how many colors you can use.Additional colors tend to cost more money depending on the printing method. If you’re working on a tight budget, conserving colors is a good way to save.
Know Our Printing Option
There are some important factors to focus on when choosing a printing option – appearance, cost, production time, and materials.
- Screen printing
This is the most popular and standard printing style for custom clothing. The printer creates mesh screens for your design so you can print in bulk. However, while this print style is great for high-quality design, it could be very expensive when executing colorful designs.
- Vinyl graphics
This can be done with the aid of a Cricut machine. vinyl printing uses heated transfer and it’s more durable and ideal for standout designs. However, vinyl isn’t ideal for large orders.
- Direct to garment or Direct to Fabric
Although not also good for bulk orders, DTG printing is great for printing designs with maximum details since it uses inkjet printing to print directly on fabric.
Knowing these printing options can help you measure the one that’s the best fit for you. You can also adopt a cut and sew method where the design is printed on a different surface and given to your tailor to sew it to the clothing you want. Find the ultimate tips for t-shirt design.
Brainstorm Your Design Concept
Now, let’s get to the design. You don’t have to contemplate alone. Bring in everyone from your team if you have one. Consult friends, family members and people who you think might have a design idea. This is especially important if you want to develop a clothing line.
While you’re brainstorming, here are some factors you want to put into consideration.
- Clothing type
Which type of clothing are you designing? Collared shirt, hoodie, T-shirt, (short sleeves, long sleeves, armless) track, pants, crop top?
Imagine how will the design look on the piece of clothing and in different sizes and shapes. This will not only guide your design choice but also affect your budget. Different sizes may require design modification which means extra cost.
- Style and imagery
What is your brand, and what message do you want to pass with the clothing? Your audience? It’s important to know those who want to wear the cloth and the message you want people who see them get.
Are you designing a piece of art, recreating trends, or creating new design patterns? Do you want to evoke luxury, environmental consciousness, the feeling of a tribe, comfort, or professionalism? Are you selling to children, teenagers, adults, or the elderly?
Identifying your demography helps you avoid communicating the wrong message with your design.
Also, consider the different body shapes of your target market. You need the design sitting in the right place.
- Typography
Typography is a craft you need to master and put into consideration when making any graphic design. Typography passes different messages -humor, professionalism, grandeur, or formality – depending on the font you can use. For example, serif and sans-serif fonts are the basics -neat and can convey modernity. Script and display font can show a more creative message. Explore some amazing t-shirt design ideas that you can inspire.
Picking the right typography in your clothing graphic design not only elevates the quality of the piece of clothing but also helps you to convey the right message.
It’s unlikely to not have texts on T-shirts. Other pieces of clothing might not need texts in your design. However, when you do use texts, readability and simplicity are things you should focus us rather than how crazy or swirly the text can be.
- Color combinations
When mixed correctly with the right typeface, color can make your customer or audience feel exactly what you want them to feel. Each shade, tint, and hue evoke different types of emotions that can tell a lot about your personality.
You also want to make sure print colors and fabric colors complement each other.
Printing Technique
The nature of clothing inks makes printing colors a little trick and expensive. Without the right technique, your design color could come out differently. You have to check with your designers that they use the right system that can get the exact color matches. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key (CMYK) inks or Pantone Matching System (PMS) can get the exact color matches,
Once you make sure you get the right color matching, explore the ink options in your printing., Plastisol is the standard ink for screen-printing. However, you might want to consider using foil which is shiny and reflective, or novelty if you want a little glitter. You might also explore high-density ink or gel if you want to create a dimensional appearance on your clothing.
Find A Designer
Can you design for yourself? Do you have the time? Then you can do it yourself. Don’t forget all the CMYK or PMS things we talked about earlier. Oh, that gives you a headache? Then, let go. Hire a pro.
Except you’re going through a design course, or already a pro yourself, a graphic designer is your best bet to help bring your idea to life and also create a potpourri of design inspiration for a variety of garments. You could hire a professional designer to execute your ideas or employ the services of a freelancer. Either way, this would even make your design come out even better.
Once you’ve found your designer, tell them the ideas you want to communicate with your cloth design including the visual style, clothing style, audience, messaging, and printing specification.
You could also send them images of your logo design and design inspiration so that they get a feel of what you want. Once they have all these, you can bet they’d give you the perfect cloth design.
Evaluate Your Design
Your designer will start rolling in design options. You might not be comfortable with them at the beginning. Consider what doesn’t feel right. Is the color great? Is the typography fit for the brand? Is the messaging right? Is it within budget?
You don’t have to decide alone. Communicate with your team members. Show your friends and family the design, Survey the opinions of prospective customers and those who have nothing to do with your business. This will help you gather constructive feedback need to give your designer so that you can get a perfect design.
Get the Right Files
Now that you’ve gotten the perfect design, you want to make sure you get the files that fit your printer’s specifications. You’ll need the design in Vector format – Adobe Illustrator, PDF, or ESP file, Also, you need to get the color codes in Pantone or CMYK so you get your design print looking exactly as it should.
Find A Quality Printer
Now that your design is ready, it’s time to find a printer. No matter the amount of time you put into your design process, if the printing doesn’t come out tight, it’s useless.The outcome is the most important thing.
Ask your designers for options or do your in-depth research into different printers. Once you identify a printer, ask for samples, read online reviews, ask how long they’ve been in business, check their website for more information, ask for all hidden charges, and be sure to ask for pre-press proofs if you’re making a large order.
That said, while you might be able to find some clothing design resources to help you with your design process, the best chance at getting an amazing clothing design is to consult a professional design agency to help you execute your clothing design project.
Before you go, let’s look at some clothing design trends to inspire you on what to ask your designer.
Design ideas for your clothes
Design ideas for your clothing line
You can elevate the interest customers show in your clothing by complementing it with stunning art. You want to use attractive images, and designs that tell a story or tap into history, perhaps.
Design ideas for bands
Music fans find everything they can get from their favorite bands special. A T-shirt might just be what you need to punch up the love they have for you. It could also serve as a promotion tool for a new band or new music project. It could come as a freebie or merchandise up for purchase on your official site. Either way, you want to make it count
Clothing design for events
Hosting an official event, party, or conference? What better way to create long-lasting memories with your attendees if not by a stunning clothing design? They may even attend another event just because they hope to get a new and improved design.
Also, everyone wearing an epic design can create a merrier atmosphere at your party. Check these out.
Clothing design for official uses
Want to add a cool piece of clothing to your employees’ wardrobe? Or do you have an organization and you want to pass your message to the world using your clothes? Fundraiser? Cool. You can borrow from these ideas.
Conclusion
Like we said earlier, there are lots of reasons to want to design a piece of clothing and that just means there are lots of fashion inspirations out there. You can check fashion sites, art galleries, and social media pages for more inspiration.
However, remember to put your customers in mind when creating a design. Even if it’s personal, for charity, or for business, you want your cloth to feel like the best thing since sliced bread.