T-Shirt Design Workshop 02: Mixed Media Design

Every design project should have a purpose. The purpose of the project demonstrated in this workshop is to show you as many t-shirt design techniques as possible.

Pinterest is a powerful tool for organizing and storing your design ideas for future use.

Arrange your inspiration pieces to give direction to your initial design sketches.

Small "thumbnail" sketches are the most efficient way to decide on the viability of your design ideas.

T-shirt designs are compositions of basic shapes. Create those shapes in Illustrator to give your design an inital structure.

Learn how to use the "Type on a Path Tool" in Illustrator to layout your type.

Adobe Typekit is an excellent resource for finding and using fonts in your designs. This lecture will show you how to access and use the fonts.

How to quickly make multiple layout options in Adobe Illustrator, using different shapes and fonts.

Now that we have multiple design layouts, we will find ways to improve our design.

Print out your design onto paper to prepare it for hand-drawn effects.

Draw outlines of your lettering to give the design a hand-drawn look.

Use a watercolor pencil to add more of a hand-made look to your design.

Combine hand-drawn effects into your computer generated design in Photoshop.

Print out the design on paper to further develop it with more hand-drawing techniques.

How to bring your drawings back into the computer and edit them in Photoshop.

How to take real watercolor paint and create a Photoshop brush.

Now that we have a watercolor Photoshop brush, learn how to use it to add color and texture your design.

Learn how to make "colorways" so your design looks good on light, dark, and medium colored shirts.

How to size your graphic in Photoshop.

Print out your design on paper to make a prototype, so that you can accurately visualize the sizing and placement.

How to pick Pantone colors to specify your ink colors for screen printing.

A "Spec Sheet" is a document that tells the screen printer the sizing, placement, ink colors, fabric colors, and any other detail that goes into your t-shirt design.

This lecture should be considered optional. It is for designers who want to make their own index separations in Photoshop, without the need for expensive color separation software. The software instruction is more advanced than the other lectures in this course.

This lecture should be considered optional. It is for designers who want to make their own halftone separations in Photoshop and Illustrator, without the need for expensive color separation software. The software instruction is more advanced than the other lectures in this course.

In this lecture, you will see how to send your designs off to be printed with sublimation and DTG (direct to garment) printing methods.

There are some surprises when we get the printed t-shirts back! You will learn some of the pitfalls of printing, and how to avoid or correct them.

Wrapping things up. We covered: 

• Digital and analog tools
• Using Pinterest for inspiration
• Sketching and hand-drawing techniques
• Laying out shapes and type
• Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Typekit
• Making colorways
• Sizing your graphic
• Setting up a spec sheet for screen printing
• Color separations
• Sending out designs for DTG and sublimation printing