Design tips3 min read · April 2026
5 mistakes that ruin a custom t-shirt.
We print thousands of custom tees and watch the same five errors kill otherwise great designs. Here is each one — and the exact fix — before you hit order.
Low-resolution images
The number one killer. A logo copied off a website or a photo saved from WhatsApp looks fine on a phone screen — printed at full size on fabric, it turns into a pixelated blur.
Use files of at least 150 DPI at print size — for a standard 25 × 25 cm chest print, that means at least 1500 × 1500 pixels. Vector files (AI, EPS, SVG) are best because they scale without loss. When in doubt, send it to us: we check every file before printing.
The wrong shirt colour
White designs on white shirts, dark designs on dark shirts. It sounds obvious, but we see it constantly — the design simply vanishes because it has no contrast against the fabric.
Preview the design on the actual shirt colour before ordering. If your artwork is mostly light, choose a mid-tone or dark shirt; if it is dark, go light. Need one design that works on any colour? Give it a thick outline in a contrasting tone.
Too much text, too small
An entire poem on the chest looks perfect in the design file at 100% zoom. On a shirt, worn by a real person and read from normal distance, nobody can make it out.
Keep body text at 10pt or larger at actual print size, and make letters meant to be read from a distance at least 1.5 to 2 cm tall. Less is more: one strong phrase beats a paragraph every time.
Ignoring the safe zone
A design pushed right to the edge of the print area looks awkward the moment the shirt is on a moving body — and gets clipped if there is any print shift at all.
Keep the important elements — text, faces, logos — at least 5 mm inside the edge of the design area. A smaller design placed confidently in the centre almost always beats one stretched to fill every corner.
Designing in RGB
Screens emit light; fabric reflects it. Design in RGB — the default for screens — and the vibrant neon green in your file arrives as a dull, muddy olive on the shirt.
Work in CMYK if you use Illustrator or Photoshop, and avoid extreme neons in any tool — they almost never print as vivid as they glow on screen. We run a colour check on every order and flag anything that will not match what you expect.
Put a design on something
Not sure about your file?
Upload it and see a preview before you order — our team checks every file for print quality and flags anything that will not look right on fabric.