Are you a designer trying to create bestselling t-shirt designs? It doesn't matter if you are an experienced artist or a newcomer to T-Shirt design - there are a few principles to keep in mind to help you create concepts and designs that create likes, comments, shares, and sales are the most important.
So let's list some of the top tips to help you create the best selling t-shirt designs that people want to buy:
Get to know your target audience
Best-selling t-shirt designs are a great concept in their own right. But it would be great if you understand your audience of all the concepts and ideas and their motivations. Take the time to dig below superficial information about your target market so you can understand what's important to them. You have to put yourself in their shoes to create an original design that resonates with them and not force them.
Have multiple design ideas
If you know your target audience well, you probably have at least a few initial ideas for the kind of design you want to create for them. However - you're unlikely to get a direct hit from the door. So before I put it down on paper - first brainstorming ideas - there should be as many as possible. From this big list of ideas, you can narrow your concepts to a more manageable set of design ideas. If you've never sold T-shirts online before - try to target at least 5 unique designs, each one that matches well (but from a different angle) to your target audience.
Choose your best ideas
Look for humor, puns, parodies, or ideas for a style for your audience (remember step 1). Isolate your strongest concepts that are most likely to be in natural harmony with your target audience and only then start designing.
Keep it simple
When it's time to start creating the best-selling t-shirt designs, simplicity will be your best friend. Your design needs to convey a message to your target audience clearly and quickly, and that means small fonts and not overly complex graphics (if that's not what your target audience expects). Your target audience should be able to see and understand your design in seconds. It's up to you to figure out if complex graphics and lots of text are right for your target audience, but for the vast majority of best-selling t-shirt designs, simplicity goes beyond complexity.
Limit your color palette
Before DTG and print-on-demand technology came along, virtually all T-shirts were screen printed. This led to t-shirt designs based on just a few colors because the fewer colors used, the cheaper your screen-printed t-shirt would be. With the advent of DTG and printing on-demand, you can use as many colors as you want. However, we recommend that you limit the colors for a few reasons: It looks more professional and more aesthetically pleasing. It reduces complexity so your market understands the message faster. To the viewer 'this is a t-shirt design' - it helps to communicate, even if they see the artwork in isolation.
Bring it all together
The most professional-looking t-shirt designs are not patchworking of various pieces but consistent item collections. So while designing - ask yourself how you can create interaction and overlap between your text and graphic elements. Include background elements where appropriate - and generally try to keep your design from looking like a flat, 2D flyer or logo (if that's not the look you're looking for for some reason). In most cases, the client prefers to wear something that looks like a professionally designed T-shirt rather than a logo or graphic that looks like a 'hit' on a T-shirt.
Here are tips to help you improve each of your designs and concepts. Now you can increase your chances of creating your next best-selling T-Shirt from now on.