Ever since its popularity in the 1960s, t-shirts have been more than just clothing. They are tools to express your style and build your personal brand quickly and conveniently. Who are you, what are your characters, hobbies, what is your job?... All questions will be answered by just the t-shirt you are wearing. In addition, Everyone wears them because of their convenience, comfort, and affordable price.

In the field of the t-shirt business, finding design ideas to print is the most important thing, because it determines the audience and type of market you are trying to target. Are you in need to find unique T-shirt design ideas? However, finding and choosing a unique idea that many customers are interested in and bringing in revenue for you is not an easy task. So, in this article, together we will answer some questions about Tshirt design ideas such as:

• How to have a few simple t-shirt design ideas?
• Who are you designing for?
• How to create high-quality creative t-shirt Design ideas?
• Where can you find t-shirt design ideas?
• What design tools help you create the best designs?
• What are the latest T-shirt design ideas for 2021?

Now let's start with the first question!

How to have a few T-shirt design ideas?

Design is a creative field that requires a lot of rather vague factors such as emotions, intelligence, trends, inspiration, soul, ... to be able to create a satisfactory work to touch the viewer. Therefore, in order to start having really quality and unique new t-shirt design ideas, designers need to prepare well the following preparation steps.

How to Research Trendy T Shirt Designs?

Trendy t shirt designs are on the rise. We've seen a huge increase in the number of people buying, wearing, and writing about them online. The old adage that style is timeless is no longer true. These days, trends come and go at a rapid pace, which means you have to stay current to make sure your t-shirt designs are trendy.

One of the best ways to research trend t-shirt designs is by looking at some of the most popular ones on Social: Instagram, Pinterest, Dribbble. This way you can see what colors, fonts, and patterns are trending now and what you should be incorporating into your next design.

Explore your concept, take time for yourself, and look for creative inspiration

First, you have to choose a nice day, get up early, breathe the clean air, make a sketch, go out for a walk. Then, make a few variations, eat something, rest, and do a full brainstorming process. Next, you need to have a good night's sleep. Finally, do it all over again. Sure, if unique t-shirt design ideas come to you straight away, that’s amazing, but you should have other options just in case. If you have many variations, they will help you not to miss out on any new and unique ideas. Besides, you still have the right to choose the perfect idea for your project.

Keep things simple, but do not neglect details.

Design objects are all simple things around us, are items that appear every day. They are clothes, shoes, phones, vehicles, etc. But the details are what make it memorable, unique, and function a certain way. They can be lines, curves, colors, small textures carefully drawn or repeated many times. It’s these details in the design ideas that set it new, apart, and unique. This is why details are important, they are core values for the design. So you can not neglect details in creative t-shirt design ideas.

A few keys when planning design ideas

Keep the humor subtle in design

If you want an attractive humorous design, it shouldn’t come across as a low-cost joke T-shirt. Even some of the most successful loud, in your designs also need subtle humor. Because, unless people already know you, they may not immediately understand your joke story when you’re trying to be clever and give humor in your design. They will tend to think about what you display literally. Also, customers will only trust you with a joke that has a long set-up and they already think you’re funny. But that only happens to old customers or your brand is already too well known to them. So be extremely careful when using humor in your design.

Color matters more than you think

Color and Marketing

92.6 percent said that they put the most importance on visual factors when purchasing products. 84.7 percent of the total respondents think that color accounts for more than half of the various factors important for choosing products. CCICOLOR - Institute for Color Research Subconscious judgment about an image within 90 seconds of initial viewing and that between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on color alone. The Henley Centre research shows 73% of purchasing decisions are now made in-store. Consequently, catching the shopper's eye and conveying information effectively are critical to successful sales.

Color Attracts Attention

Tests indicate that a black and white image may sustain interest for less than two-thirds a second, whereas a colored image may hold the attention for two seconds or more. (A product has one-twentieth of a second to halt the customer's attention on a shelf or display.). People cannot process every object within view at one time. Therefore, color can be used as a tool to emphasize or de-emphasize areas.

The above evidence can show the importance of color in your design. So, in addition to the idea of lines, creating attractive yet unique color scheme ideas will increase the success of your design by over 70%.

Properly prepare your t-shirt design

As you know, the majority of T-shirts are made of 100% cotton, polyester, or a cotton/polyester blend. So, when printing, use CMYK colors for your design file when export – the printers will love you. Outlining text and expanding strokes are another thing they’ll love, and there are plenty of other tutorials regarding this, depending on whether you’re using Illustrator or Photoshop. Each t-shirt printing method will create a different design rendering on the t-shirt material you choose. So, choose the most appropriate printing method among the following printing methods and come up with a suitable design idea for that: screen printing, Dye sublimation, Direct To Garments, Heat Press Printing, Vinyl Cutting

Self-study to find new creative ideas

If you want a good understanding of basically anything, studying and understanding its context is important, and that is also the case for T-shirts. They’ve come out of every subculture ever, from skateboarders, street art, general pop culture, etc. This is where T-Shirt design ideas play an important role. So, you should learn about the history of the t-shirt, its evolution, and its latest trends and ideas now. You will find many wonderful images in it and find breakthrough ideas in your design concept.

Stay ahead of the game in the race of ideas

Inspire yourself with the latest trends, but don’t copy them. By the time you’ve seen that t-shirt already produced, designers are already moving on to something else and you won’t know it. So, if you really want to be successful in designing t-shirts, set the trend yourself, Generate new ideas yourself. Don't follow trends, be a leader and create them. Follow your passion, and success will follow you.

Technical considerations when designing

Use PMS colors

Frequently Printers ask if the colors for your print project are CMYK or PMS. To designing experts and printers, this is common knowledge. But it is not really popular with amateur or young designers. That's why you need to learn a little about them if you want to build T-shirt design ideas. 

PMS stands for Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color space used in a variety of industries, primarily printing, colored paint, fabric, and plastics. By standardizing the colors following the Pantone card, different print shops in different locations can all refer to the Pantone system to make sure colors match without direct contact with one another. PMS colors can streamline the process of printing and cut down on costs for t-shirt printing projects.

So, you might be used to CMYK and RGB, but for accurate colors used for designs on T-shirts, go with PMS colors. Color separations are both easier and more accurate here as well. The printer shouldn’t charge you extra for color matching, as you’re actually doing them a favor by being more particular with your colors. If your colors are properly set to PMS swatches, the color separations software shouldn’t have any problems. This is more often a human error that happens because strokes might be overlooked.

Finally, sometimes your budget, or design, may require halftones to save on how many colors are printed. The best way to achieve this is to slide that color scale down, to a percentage of the PMS color, thus leaving the color separations software to handle the rest.

Convert your text to outlines

Your artwork may require a custom-designed font, and when you’re sending it off for print, a substituted font is the last thing you want to see. When using SVG files in design, converting your text to outlines is necessary. If you will not be sending fonts along with your artwork, the best practice is to turn fonts to outline or paths. If designers don’t send the fonts or don’t outline your text, print shops may not have the typeface that you used and it will cause problems when setting up the artwork. Turning fonts to outlines effectively means that the text is no longer text - it has become a graphic product, and the text cannot be altered.

Your t-shirt design should be created at actual size

The printer’s judgment about the product isn’t something to trust without discussing it with them. The vision you have of your end product might not match with what your printer has assumed is your vision. The safest way to prepare yourself is actually creating the artwork in its final size. If you don’t know what size you want to use, get a ruler and slap it to the shirt you have on you. It may sound dead simple, but it does work.

Overmore, currently, print shops only accept .webp, .png, .gif file formats to maintain image quality when printing only. You will be asked to upload a high-resolution image. For the best results, your image resolution should be 300 PPI (pixels per inch) at the size you want to print.

Use vector art as often as possible

When starting a new t-shirt design, you should always use vector graphics tools. Why should we use them? Because vector graphics will never lose their quality when resized, and they take up a lot less file space than raster graphics.

In addition, there are several other big reasons why you should use vector graphics instead of raster graphics for your t-shirt concept (or any graphic design project, really).

First, with vector graphics, it’s easy to adjust and separate colors. Your illustrations will be clear, crisp, clean, and vivid when printed on clothing, including any custom fonts you use. And it’s easy to change the colors if you want to create different versions of the same design.

Second, vector graphics are infinitely resizable. You’ll always be able to resize your t-shirt design no matter the size of the garment.

Color separations are much easier, and the small details will be much cleaner when printed. This is also a general rule for everyday jobs, but shouldn’t be automatic in all situations.

T-shirt design ideals in 2021 are not as simple as before, this is the era for T-shirts to spread the artistic intentions and creativity of the designers. Not only does it help provide people with a creative outlet where they can freely and safely express themselves, helping to support individuals, communities, and social movements around the world. It can be said that T-shirts can also help inspire and change the world. Below are the Top 10 T-Shirt Design Ideas for 2021 that you shouldn’t miss. Let’s dive into it.

Top 10 T-Shirt Design Ideas for 2021

T-shirt design ideals in 2021 are not as simple as before, this is the era for T-shirts to spread the artistic intentions and creativity of the designers. Not only does it help provide people with a creative outlet where they can freely and safely express themselves, helping to support individuals, communities, and social movements around the world. It can be said that T-shirts can also help inspire and change the world. Below are the Top 10 T-Shirt Design Ideas for 2021 that you shouldn’t miss.

1. Book Design - Popular T-Shirt Design

Books help bring each other together more than we know it. So how can we express love and desire to connect with others, who share a similar interest in reading? Book design is one of the most popular t-shirt design ideas and is predicted to be one of the trending t-shirts in 2021.

Whether books are the main theme of your design or you use them as part of the structure, they can add a great backdrop to your t-shirt.

“It's lit- erature” books Tshirt

"It’s lit" means "it lights up". That means something that is really good, intense, fun, or exciting, similar to other slang terms such as "Poppin" or "off the chain". Besides, It's interesting that "It's literature" is also the name of a famous saying and book. Designers are experts at playing with words and images. They combine these phrases with book images to create designs with extremely interesting meanings.

When your parents tell you how school is and you say "It's lit" it's because your main focus is on your lit-erature class right? Books are great.

“Readers are leaders” book Tshirt

“Readers are leaders”. It's a saying that's often used to inspire children to read. What's more is that reading fosters resilience, develops problem-solving skills, allows one to discover new things, and enhances creativity. It also helps develop basic language skills crucial for success in society. T-shirts printed with "Readers are leaders" along with books will create positive motivation about reading to the wearer. This is also one of the simple but novel design ideas.

I like big books and I can not like

To Read Or Not To Read What A Silly Question

I like to party and by party I mean read books

2. Strong Messages - Cool Shirt Designs

Sometimes your t-shirt design ideas just say what you need to say, bold and clear. This bold design trend is especially effective if your outfit supports an individual, a political campaign or a social movement. What's the tip here?

Look for words, perfect sentences, or slogans that convey what you hope to share with your community and the world. Want others to focus on your strong statements? Keep your shirt minimal and simple, then burst your text with bold, easy-to-read font, handwritten patterns, bright colors, or just plain black and white.

See more: Top 5 Reasons Why T-Shirt Printing Business Will Trend In 2021

Do more of what makes you happy

Doing more of what makes you happy stands for a very simple principle in our lives. In order to be happier and enjoy your life more, you should simply do the work that makes you feel connected to something bigger than us.

Make your next move your best move

"make your next move your best move" or another name is "Next move, best move" is a quite famous quote. Being interested in many people, becoming the life motto of many young people, or becoming the title of many books today. Make Your Next Move Your Best Move: The "Dream Play" Booklet by Tyrell Avery Morris and Next Move, Best Move: Transitioning Into a Career You'll Love by Kimberly B. Cummings are interesting books about a controlled lifestyle, with goals and everything to be prepared for success. T-shirts with this quote will motivate you to maintain your efforts and efforts for the preparation and skill training process to be able to strive for longer and further goals in the future. This is a really powerful message with a positive mindset.

Collect Moments Not Things

No Animals Were Harmed in The Feeding of This Body

 

World's Greatest Person

3. Tarot Cards - Best T-shirt Design

One of the favorite design trends we predict will cause a storm in 2021 is the use of tarot cards on shirts. Possessing unique, iconic images and high aesthetics, the tarot cards provide a variety of elements for t-shirt designers to take inspiration from. This style of design is a great go-to for those looking for a visual representation of their message. So what's the trick here? The Tarot deck consists of 78 cards, each with its own symbol. Choose which 1 or more leaves can convey your own t-shirt design ideas and style, the messages you are aiming for.

Deadly Tarot Womens/Ladies The Sun T-Shirt

The Sun Tarot card radiates optimism and positivity. A large, bright sun shines in the sky, representing the source of all life on Earth. Underneath, four sunflowers grow tall above a brick wall, representing the four suits of the Minor Arcana and the four elements. Finally, the white horse image is also a sign of purity and strength. There are many image versions of the sun card that are chosen to be printed on T-shirts because of the positive meaning and motivation it brings to the wearer. This is really a great design idea that is hard to ignore.

The Moon Tarot Card Tee

The Moon card shows a full moon in the night’s sky, positioned between two large towers. The Moon is a symbol of intuition, dreams, and the unconscious. Its light is dim compared to the sun, and only slightly illuminates the path to higher consciousness winding between the two towers.

In the foreground is a small pool, representing the watery, subconscious mind. A small crayfish crawls out of the pool, symbolizing the early stages of consciousness unfolding. A dog and a wolf standing in the grassy field, howling at the moon, representing both the tamed and the wild aspects of our minds.

4. Animal portrait

With the rise of environmental, natural, and animal influence on social media, a new trend is to draw large animal portraits on shirts, resembling floating pets. the language customers want to celebrate. Designers create large, stylized portraits of dogs, cats, turtles, cows and more! This is a great design idea if you are a darling, pet owner, or if you are designing for an Animal Rescue or Conservation Foundation or Association. So, with all this in mind, animal portrait can be seen as one of the best t-shirt design ideas for 2021.

Pet lover Tshirt

This unisex custom dog lover T-shirt for pet lovers is a brilliant custom dog mom or dad gift. You can surprise your pet owner's loved ones with a personalized present that is truly made only for them. Treat yourself with a unique T-shirt and show the world your wonderful pet.

Wild Animal T-shirt

Is your personality as wild as an animal? Show your wild side by this tee design with wild animals in front of glittery blue nature. The meaning of wild animal portrait design on the t-shirt. 

1. wild - marked by extreme lack of restraint or control

2. Not tamed or domesticated. intractable - difficult to manage or mold.

Wild animal design t-shirts will show off your outstanding style and personality. You can also add slogans about environmental protection, animal conservation to spread to the community.

5. Floral

Beautiful flowers are represented in many ways, with many symbolic meanings. Flowers can represent growth and beauty, or a fresh start. But they can also be added decorative to frame words or phrases contained in the design.

You can take flowers as the main focus of a t-shirt, or use flowers to add an extra element to a printed t-shirt. Wrap flowers around the words in your artwork to give your designs a more floral, natural feel. You can also draw a more complex design with flowers as the main focus and add smaller text around or below it.

Women's Valentine's Day T-Shirt Love Wreath

Flower Tee Floral TShirt Pretty Wreaths- This pretty t-shirt design is perfect for Valentine's day but works any day of the year! The hand-illustrated design features a floral wreath and script font that reads 'love' expresses the faithful romantic soul in the love of the wearer. Gentle, dreamy girls are also very suitable to wear this to show their personality to everyone around. This is an old idea but still very trendy.

Red chrysanthemum Classic T-Shirt

The symbolic language of flowers has been recognized for centuries in many countries throughout the world. They even play a large role in William Shakespeare’s works. Mythologies, folklore, sonnets, and plays of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and Chinese are peppered with flower symbolism—and for good reason. Nearly every sentiment imaginable can be expressed with flowers. For instance, the red chrysanthemum means “I love you.” Instead of giving roses on Valentine's Day, couples wearing shirts with a red daisy design on top will create a stronger impression on each other and those around them.

6. Words inspire - Best T-shirt Design

With an increase in t-shirt designs, these simple and beautiful designs encourage anyone to see them. The inspirational sayings are no longer just for iPhone wallpapers or posters on the wall, paintings, but nowadays, they can go anywhere by being printed on T-shirts. This design trend is especially popular among young people. They often design their shirts to highlight a popular saying like trends or something that means to them. The trick is to think about the message you want to share with the people in your community, whether they will wear the shirt for themselves or for others to wear. What should the world around you listen to?

See more: How To Do T-shirt Business Effectively?

Good things take time.

Don't force it or demand immediate results. Let things marinate in your subconscious. The same applies when you're taking any action in life. Don't set grand goals from the beginning or expect immediate results. All good things take time and if you acknowledge this simple idea, things will go much more smoothly. These words help you reduce stress before immediate pressure and focus more on long-term goals in the future. The font is gentle, not rigid but fun to help people see happier and more loving life. A t-shirt design idea that is hard to ignore.

The future depends on what you do today

 

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “The future depends on what you do today.” Without any change now, nothing will be changed for the future. Change and compromise are never something that comes with ease, but we are complete fools for allowing our past to continuously repeat itself. This is a powerful inspirational quote for young people that you cannot ignore. Printing this saying on a t-shirt with a unique design will help the opposite person see your strong spirit.

7. Handwritten Typography

Your Handwritten Typography can come in a variety of moods, be it bubbly, classic, bold, or subtle. The flexibility you get when you draw your own lettering makes it a great choice for almost any t-shirt you're designing.

Due to the variety in font styles, the first step in designing your font is deciding what mood you want to evoke with your text. Then start making the design more interesting using fun colors, adding lines or other design elements around the letters.

Art Typo

Autography

This is a super-smooth font, in an upright signature style, with an ink effect straight out of an expensive fountain pen. It's free for personal use, but make sure you contact the creator for your tshirt business projects.

Dancing Script

This is a super-lively yet beautiful font that is completely free to use commercially or personally. With letters that change size slightly, and caps that go below the baseline, this font is informal and friendly.

Wild Youth

Created by veteran font-maker Jeremy Vassey, Wild Youth is both beautiful and adventurous, with a rugged quality sitting alongside its elegant curls. It's a hand drawn brush font that we think is a perfect choice for quotes. It's free for personal and commercial use.

Stay Classy

This well-named free handwriting font is one of the classiest out there. Delicate and interesting without being fussy, make your designs ooze chic by using this for headers and short pieces of text paired with simple, tasteful backgrounds. It's free for personal or commercial use.

8. Repeating message design

Repeating your message is a surefire way to gain your perspective. It will make the desired impact, while at the same time creating a well-designed shirt. This t-shirt design idea is perfect if you're not super design-savvy, but still want to create a trendy t-shirt on your own.

Select the bold message you want to convey. Then just choose an attractive font that matches the mood of your message and purpose, then repeat it. You can also use the text in it as part of the message and change it slightly on each line.

9. Retro - Amazing T-shirt Design Idea

Retro is still one of the creative t-shirt design ideas in 2021. Designers are bringing designs back to the 60s and 70s with vintage fonts in retro colors. Using a striking font with fun colors is an easy way to create a simple graphic t-shirt that is easy to combine with other accessories. With a classic and simple t-shirt, you can flex your outfit with flexibility.

Find free font sites for typography inspiration. Or, you can hand-draw your words with vintage inspiration! And don't forget to add color. Red, yellow, and pink colors are great options for this classic t-shirt.

Do you know the Baby Shark song? What if you had a t-shirt with an impressive mommy shark retro design? Awesome Vintage Retro Mommy Sharks for Women T-shirt design brings lots of fun and impresses for children. Don't forget to contact the owner of this image first if you want to commercialize the image design. But believe me, your creativity and unique ideas will create unexpected values.

Goosebumps Travis Scott can also be a great idea if you know how to present the image of this singer in a retro design. His fans will be delighted with your creation.

Certain elements of retro design may in themselves actually be repeated from former designs. They may have been altered to fit the then-modern sensibilities, or they may just have been copied completely. But either way, the odds are that your retro design is going to end up incorporating throwback design elements from multiple eras, whether you intend to or not. And this does no harm. The things that were popular in past times trended for a reason, and there’s no reason why they can’t be popular now. Retro design, even if somewhat muddled and widespread, can be just as effective and appealing now as it was back then.

10. Rainbow

The colorful rainbows have become quite a popular image to use on t-shirt designs! Rainbows evoke joy, hope, and miracles, making them the perfect image for almost any type of t-shirt for all ages. Let the rainbow stand alone, or add a word or quote to add meaning and inspiration to your design. Many designers often pair brilliant rainbows with a positively inspiring slogan.

Special women's t-shirt design ideas

Women are followers of fashion and youthful and dynamic outfits like a T-shirt is something that they can't ignore. There are many models and topics of t-shirts for women that we think you will care about. So, in the below examples, we will list some women's t-shirt design ideas to give you more information about this potential market.

Some unique women's t-shirt design ideas

Confident Woman Style

Cute girl style

Sexy girl style

T-shirt design ideas for the girl's friend group

Womens t-shirt design ideas: slogans for women

Womens t-shirt design ideas: cute icon for girl group

Stylish design showing off personality

Tips on creating an inspiring t-shirt design

Make it feel comfortable

Before you even think about the design ideas, make sure the shirt is comfortable. T-shirts are common clothes, so customers are very fastidious in choosing products for themselves. The first thing should be the quality of each shirt and how comfortable it is to wear. Choosing a material that is cheap and uncomfortable will result in people buying the shirt but not wearing it. Although you have great design, do you want your customers to think that you’re low grade, or high-quality? Your base shirt should be something that customers want to wear over and over again every day. Only then will they be interested in the design on it and the idea and style you want to express.

Choose a color palette that matches your design ideas

Next, review your color palette, and come up with the right hue. Darker colors are usually more expensive to print, and certain colors may have limited availability. Common colors may include black, white, and grey. Red and navy are also good choices. Picking well-known colors may be good for appealing to your target audience, you shouldn’t be neglecting your brand’s color scheme. Keeping the number of colors down is another thing to try, as complex color patterns aren’t only more expensive, but they may not appeal to your audience’s taste either.

Cost optimization: Reduce, reduce more

For a screen-printed design, fewer colors can keep prices low for your design. If your artwork is too complex, or has too many colors, ask for a digital print, that should net better results. You should also identify the custom ink colors in order for the printers to be able to match them. You should use the (PMS Color) Pantone Matching System Color in the print process because it will help the printer operate easily, produce t-shirts with the right colors as on the design and help save printing costs for you. So, when creating T-shirt designs, be creative with control and consider the commercial viability of the product. That will make your t-shirt design project to be more competitive in the market.

Expand ideas and outline Tshirt design project

Forgetting to outline elements for a design project is a big mistake with an expert. In fact, not every computer will have the font you chose, so the outline is a good option to optimize the design resources you have. Outline all your objects, and expand the borders and strokes on T-shirts for things to remain proportional. It creates harmony when putting the design on a T-shirt. Using outline design will save you time and reduce unnecessary design costs. All t-shirt design ideas will be filed in the sketch and choose the most optimal design.

Make a beautiful T-shirt mock-up

This is the key to having a beautiful T-shirt. Once your unique design is done, print it and hold it up to a t-shirt. It should look at the scale of your design, so you know whether or not it works on a t-shirt. If you have someone holding it up on their chest, several feet away from you, can you still make out the images, as well as read the words? You should know what works and what doesn’t before you even think about printing it on the t-shirts.

Ask for help from other experts

At the end of the day, if you’re having problems, the screen printing company undoubtedly has designers, and you can go ahead and ask them to give you an engaging design from your rough sketches. They may also offer help when you’re choosing colors, as well as offer some additional tips.

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• Top 5 creative T-shirt design trends hot hit

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