How to Design a Basketball T-Shirt

Set yourself apart from other teams by wearing a custom-designed t-shirt.

There's a perpetual pickup game at the local gym and your group has earned a reputation and bragging rights. Time to creatively separate the adults from the kids by designing a distinctive basketball t-shirt. Not only will the current members of the group enjoy the attention and notoriety, but also the team will have the power to dangle the offer of a team uniform in front of the eyes of wannabes who are sure to be impressed by your attention to detail.

Things You'll Need

• Reference material
• Design skills
• Computer
• Draw software
• T-shirts
• Fabric printer sheets
• Manufacturing source

Instructions

1. Get members of your basketball team together for a brainstorming session so everyone has input on the basketball t-shirt design. Come up with a team name that reflects its collective energy, spirit and camaraderie as well as a symbol to represent it: stylized animals, a bolt of lightning, the ubiquitous basketball line art, etc. Trigger great ideas by bringing logo examples to your brainstorming session and check out links below for inspiration.

2. Locate copyright-free graphic images that represent the symbol you've chosen as your focal point. Scan hard copy and save the image to your computer desktop as a jpeg or download the graphic element from the Internet after paying appropriate licensing fees. Open your favorite draw program (e.g., Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator or a program that's bundled with your operating system or other software).

3. Use your favorite draw tool (pencil, pen, brush) to render a t-shirt shape so you're able to design the basketball t-shirt in perspective. Import or copy/paste the image you've chosen into the upper center portion of the shirt outline. Experiment with the design: 1) Enlarge the image and run your team name over it, 2) Segment a portion of the graphic (e.g., half a basketball) and add your team name under or over the jpeg or 3) Step and repeat small versions of the jpeg and overprint one letter for each image to spell out your team's acronym.

4. Choose your top three design ideas and dump the rest so you're not overwhelmed. Explore different colors and fonts. Take the best examples back to your basketball pals to obtain consensus. (Expect them to like one color, another image view and a third font---after all, you're a competitive group!) Render the final art.

5. Purchase printer-ready sheets in either laser or inkjet format. Load a few into your printer tray and output the basketball t-shirt art. Peel off the backing and iron the art onto t-shirt. Show off the finished basketball t-shirt art to teammates.

6. Sleuth out a t-shirt manufacturer in your area if you don't plan to silkscreen your basketball t-shirts yourself or shop the Internet for a company with good pricing that allows you to upload the finished art to their site. Whichever road you take, wear your shirts with pride---after all, you and your buds did all the work, so enjoy looking cool on the court.

References

• Just Creative Design: Prepare T-shirts For Printing
• Naldz Graphics: T-Shirt Design Tutorials and Tips
• Logo Sportswear: Use Online Templates to Design Sports Uniforms