Mary has worked at CustomInk for five years and reviewed tens of thousands of
designs. Use her tips below to perfect your design.
Artwork
Get Creative – Use Our Clipart or Upload Your Own Artwork!
- Don't be afraid to layer. Make sure you keep the overlapping colors high contrast and/or add a "stroke" (a bit of space around the letters) to text for better legibility. Let our designers help you.
- Search for the keywords "design" and "decoration" to pull up some great clipart elements that can complement and support your design. Grab your design and give it a try!
- Repeat, Repeat, Repeat! Paste the same clipart at different sizes for a nice effect.
- Use clipart in place of letters to make the text in your designs more engaging.
- I've included some examples to help you get started.
Original Upload Tips & Tricks:
- Upload vector files (.eps, .ai, .crd, etc.) whenever possible.
- High resolution artwork produces awesome-looking prints – make sure your raster files (.jpg, .tif, .psd, etc.) are at least 200 dpi at print size.
- If your file is low resolution, don't worry – our artists will do their best to recreate it for printability at no expense to you!
Fonts
S-T-R-E-T-C-H your imagination with 150+ fonts and text tools.
- Each font has a personality of its own – pick one that works with your design. For instance, Modern fonts like Impact are great for standing out (security guards, road maintenance crews) while Script fonts such as Lauren work well in a more subdued context (yoga studios, salons).
- Pair your font with a text tool – shaping, outlining, or rotating – to complete your design.
Colors
Contrast Your Colors for an Eye-Catching Look.
- Choose "white-on-black" or "black-on-white" for optimal contrast.
- You can create a high-contrast look with a whole range of colors using this strategy: when creating a design, try to classify colors in extremes of white or black to get the best contrast – jade shirt (black) with lemon ink (white), light pink shirt (white) with maroon ink (black), etc. Your design will pop off the shirt!
Add a Sleeve Print to Your Design!
Did you know we can print on sleeves? Although you can't create sleeve prints on the site (yet!) we can help you – just call us at 1-800-293-4232 to learn more about this great design option and get a specific price quote (sleeve prints will increase your costs a bit).
