Hello everybody. I can see some people joining in here. Uh so not to give you guys any spoilers, uh we are going to be starting in about 3 minutes. Uh I see some people still trickling in. If you’re in here already, make sure to let me know where you are from. I’m going to be keeping a very very close eye on the chat here.
I see someone’s from New York. Hi. This is going to be exciting. It’s actually a bit of an experiment this time because we are streaming to both YouTube and Facebook at the same time. I’m going to be keeping an eye on two chats. Uh, and hoping that I don’t miss anybody, but you guys will surely let me know if I do. All right. What I’m also interested in, oh, someone is here from Austin, Texas, Ohio, Poland. Hi everybody. Michigan, Florida, Georgia, so many places. I’m really curious what your niches guys are as well. So, if you have started your store or you’re thinking about starting it, what is the niche that you want to be working in? because that is going to be very helpful to me later when I’m showing you some of those design steps that I would personally take when going through the design process. Someone’s in here from New Mexico, South Africa, Philly, Lena, a couple of people from Georgia in here actually. Hi everybody.
Right. Okay. Someone’s saying baby clothes. What this is going to feel like hopefully to you guys is a bit of a choose your own adventure. Uh so you’re going to get a lot of say in what we do both through polls and also through letting me know in the chat. Uh someone’s doing LGBTQ events and a travel group. Is that like together? Is both of those combined or are those separate? Let me know. This one’s from Toronto. Hi. Hello.
Oh, both together. All right. I can h I can kind of see how how those work together. But actually to think of like LGBTQ events and a travel group as this kind of like joint safe space, I don’t know, makes me happy.
Fatima is very excited to be here. Hi, Fatima. Happy to see you. Uh, someone’s working in Shopify. This is actually very uh helpful information because very often I see people going through uh different sales channels and being like, “Oh, this person is looking at Etsy trends. That doesn’t apply to me.” Trust me, all of these things do apply. So, we’re going to get fully started in a little bit. Someone’s from New Hampshire. Vintage travel and tourism. Okay. Good to know. Good to know. Okay, so the countdown is officially over. It is now the hour on the dot and we can get started. Hello everybody. Uh my name is Liz if you’re new here or Elizabetha and I host these live streams about once a month at this point and I keep hearing a bunch of people, new sellers or experienced sellers keep saying that they kind of never know how to approach designing. So, they have created a bunch of designs in the past, but they never know what the workflow is, like how do you get started from a completely blank slate. So, what I thought I would do is I would show you what my process looks like, but also let you participate in it. This is a bit more of an experimental stream than what we usually do because uh we are streaming to both YouTube, our YouTube channel, and also the Facebook group Printful Insiders. If you’re not a part of it, do apply to go in there. Uh, and what is going to happen and the way that we’re going to do this is I’m going to give you guys an opportunity to vote and you will get to decide what the process is and also leave whatever questions or comments you have in the chat. Our moderators from either YouTube or Facebook are going to put all of the questions together. I’m going to try to answer as many as I can throughout the stream, but if I don’t get to them, we’re going to cover them towards the end in a full Q&A. Uh so without further ado, uh I’m going to show you kind of what the voting mechanism looks like so you can see. So this is a bit of a setup that I have in here. you will get four polls and we’re going to talk about technique and what product type to choose uh and what aesthetic you guys might want and what color scheme. And the reason I’ve set it up this way is whenever you approach designing a new product, I feel like the best thing to do is to answer a bunch of questions for yourself first. So, what technique do you want to use? What kind of product you’re designing for? What kind of trend or aesthetic or specific niche you’re thinking about? And then what color do you want to use in your designs? If you’re picking a specific technique, are there any limitations to your colors? So, you can keep all of that in mind and build yourself a framework before you even get into designing. So, I see a bunch of different niches in here already. For example, uh someone’s talking about uh different like vintage stuff like old trains and ships. Um, I saw also like countryside bliss potentially that being a niche that I can definitely see as a Pacific aesthetic. So, what we’re going to do, uh, is I’m going to ask our lovely moderators to share the link to this poll. uh and if you are let’s say watching from a TV or you can click a link you can also uh use this QR code and scan it and vote that way if you want to use your mobile device. Uh so I’m going to give you guys five minutes uh and I’m going to see what you guys decide on what we’re going to do. So, something that I’m very curious to see uh is what people are going to be excited about in terms of technique. I personally am a big fan of embroidery, but I know that that is something that people are less free to design within. So, if uh you have a limited color palette, then you might be like, “Ah, this is this is not free enough. I I had a very specific design in mind or I have a logo. So, I’m not going to go for it. So, let’s say I were to just like, you know, for curiosity sake, vote for embroidery. Uh, and I can then see what our percentages are. So, a bunch of people uh are currently looking at DTG or DT Flex. So, we’re potentially looking at maybe a printed t-shirt, you know, the the classic. Uh, let me know actually what what you voted for in the chats. I also am very curious to see you guys’ opinions. And next, after we decide on what technique it’s going to be, we also need to figure out what product type we want it to be. So, there is overlap with all techniques and virtually all product types. Maybe not uh as big in some product types as others. So like all over print hats might be smaller than embroidered hats but still uh let’s just pick apparel for curiosity sake so that we can see the numbers and people are heavily voting for apparel. So if you are not team apparel get in there and and vote for the other options and we will move on to aesthetic just to see the numbers. Uh if you have not uh been able to get in there, make sure to find the Canva voting link in either the chat or scan the QR code on screen to vote. Uh these are kind of vague descriptions of aesthetic just to at least give myself a little bit of wiggle room in here. Um I like everything edgy and counterculture, so I’ll just pick this just to see what people are choosing. Uh, and it’s actually kind of neck andneck with this slightly fairy core, outdoorsy, green, foresty vibes and then this more like edgy, dark, uh, high contrast uh, you know, chains and and and safety pins and and the magic cable and everything. So, we’ll see what people are choosing. Uh, do not be swayed by my choice. I just want to see what you guys are voting for. Uh, and then we also uh, have a color scheme. So, this uh I have thought a lot about how some of these color schemes are going to be harder to apply to some aesthetics, but I think that’s the fun of it. And I’ll be able to show you a bit more of an interesting approach with each of these. So, let’s just pick one at random and see what people are voting for. So, you only have a couple more minutes to vote and then we’re going to move forward. Uh, and let’s see. So, okay. So far, aesthetics have switched. We’re looking more and more at that fairy core aesthetic. Product types. People are very still heavily leaning towards apparel. I think we know how this one’s going to go. Technique. Ooh, technique has gotten closer between DDG flex or all over printing. Let me know why you’re so interested in this. I’ve seen quite a few people asking uh questions about all over print uh stuff and how to approach it. So if anyone uh in the chat really is super interested in all our printing guidelines, let me know what you find so cool about it. Uh and uh I also saw somebody asking uh differences between like DTG, DT flex, what are these things? Uh um and let me just quickly run through them while you have like another minute to vote. So DTG versus DT flex are both printing techniques, but they are built very differently. DTG works like a printer that you would print with on paper. So let’s say you put in a t-shirt into a printer and it sprays color onto a t-shirt and that’s how you get direct to garment printing. And then DT flex is uh a lot different in function but similar in look. So you use a film to put color on that film and then put that film with color kind of sandwich it with a t-shirt and using heat we get transfer of color from the film to the t-shirt. Uh so it’s kind of more of a sticker than sprayed on ink. Uh, so it is more vibrant and more durable, but then less flexible and and less soft in in texture. So, we’re basically done with uh voting and I see someone asking, yes, we’re also Carol is asking actually Carol Summer if we’re also streaming live on YouTube. Yes. Uh, I’m taking a look at both chats on Facebook and on YouTube just so we can give everybody the opportunity to vote and to learn. So, I’m looking at the very, very last votes for aesthetic. It’s neck and neck between two. So, jump in there. Your vote might be the deciding one. And let’s see if I can actually get some responses on here. Total responses. Bunch of anonymous ones. Your responses. This. Okay. I have to kind of use this. I’m seeing a lot of twos and a lot of threes in here. I think two wins in the color scheme. Okay. So, I’m locking some of this stuff in. So, DTG locked in. DTG or DDT flex apparel for sure is something you guys are super interested in. And then, ooh, I think the the slightly edgier aesthetic is winning. And then we saw that the color scheme number two, the blues and the browns was people’s favorites. So, this is what we’re going for. Uh, and what your uh, task is going to be from now on is to stop me and ask me questions anytime you have them. Uh, I’m going to go over to Prull’s catalog to show you what uh, products we’re picking and what techniques and how to filter stuff. And we’re going to start from the very base, picking a product, downloading a print file, and then starting to build out our stuff slowly. So we are in Prull’s catalog and this is just like all products. So what we know is that we definitely want apparel that is either DTG or DT flex. So what I would do in here is I would go by technique uh and filter DT flex and DTG printing and see what we get in here. And then you either can pick clothing through here or in our case because apparel is the biggest half of the the biggest part of the catalog, we can go through and and take a look at something we enjoy. Uh now I want some opinions in here. Uh do you guys want more of a t-shirt or more of kind of long sleeve thing? Let’s see. Someone’s also dark at dark times rebellion is saying DTG is much better quality. DT flex is more vibrant and detailed but the quality is not up to par. That is interesting. I am someone who prefers uh DT flex for prints and uh over the past like year year and a half I have several shirts that I basically live in and sleep in and they’ve been washed like I don’t know over a hundred times at this point. Uh, and I find that um, DT Flex does last longer, sometimes almost longer than the actual fabric itself. So, if it’s a a thinner cotton t-shirt, I can see it slowly start disintegrating while the print is still there. So, uh, let’s see. People are saying t-shirts, t-shirts or tank tops. Okay. All right. I feel like t-shirts t-shirts are winning. Uh and then uh someone’s also saying on so it’s Sophia Magdalena on uh Facebook is saying a session like this for all over print apparel would be great. Uh we do have previous live streams for all over print design tips specifically. We are going to go with the poll here but I see your love for all over printing which is wonderful. So we’re going with the t-shirts. Let’s just pick men’s t-shirts and filter by technique in that case. BT Flex DTG and I’m gonna go with what is I’ve said this before many many times. My personal favorite blank is the Comfort Color 1717. Uh there are a lot of Gildan stands out there and a lot of Bella Canvas stands. Uh and I can also see a bunch of love coming for these kind of boxier TE’s. Uh, but the uh the comfort colors is just my comfort zone, so I’m going to go with that. Uh, and we have a bunch of colors, and we need to also remember our color scheme that we picked out, which is the browns uh and and the blues. Let me actually show you guys again. So, it’s this one. We’re looking at either darker browns or darker or lighter blues. So, let’s keep that in mind when looking at colors. Uh what I will do first, so we’ve picked out our product. Uh is I’m going to scroll down, click on file guidelines, and download the print files so that I can design with them. Uh and my measurements are in centimeters just because the site can can see where I’m browsing from. Yours would be either in inches or you can go into settings and change them. But uh you can see that the front and back so 30.48
is the same for both DTG printing and DT flex printing. So kind of if we’re looking for front and and back prints doesn’t matter what we download. So let’s just make sure we take the front and back print and click download for the print file template. So it’s going to save for us here. And uh what I would normally even do if you’re designing in uh some type of software that is going to allow you to set specific dimensions is for just a rectangle. I would take these measurements 30.48 * 40 by 64 and put them into Canva. So let me start a new design. We are going to do a custom size. We’re going to select our measurements. So, if your measurements were in inches, you can select inches. Here, I’m going to go with centimeters. And I’m going to remind myself what those numbers are. 30.48.
30.48 time 40.64. Am I right? Yes. So,
we’re going to create a new design. And the size of this exact placement is going to be the exact size that your design needs to be. I see a lot of discussion uh on on uh printing techniques and what you guys prefer. So if uh there are things that you really feel should be addressed as questions about DT flex, DTG, even a lower printing, uh feel free to put them in. And if it’s a a specific question, I’ll definitely be able to answer that to the best of my ability. Uh now, someone uh let’s see, I saw a question in here that I really wanted to get to. Uh there it is from panhandle drift. Question about the Bella canvas shirt. I recently noticed that the inner tag branding almost shows all the way through the back of the shirt if it’s a lighter color. This is uh an important note to address whenever you pick you are picking uh t-shirts. I’ll be very brief on this so that we can get into designing but just so you know there are different fabric weights in different products. So a Bella canvas, for example, is a good example of a relatively lightweight shirt. So it’s it’s kind of in the middle here. It’s a bit more lightweight than than something on the thicker side of things. And if you combine a lower fabric density with a lighter color, there is just going to be more likelihood of something being visible through it. So if you think about a very sheer uh white fabric, you can put a hand on the other side of it and kind of see the outline of that hand if that is something that uh you are not looking for. So lightweight shirts really are the most helpful for uh warmer climates uh and uh in general sometimes feel better when you’re doing uh you know activities outdoors. If that’s not something that you’re looking for and you want a more durable fabric, I would advise that you pay attention in this kind of material thickness area. And you can even see the exact fabric weight in the description of every single product that we have if you scroll down a bit more. So, I hope that answers your question. Uh, let’s jump over and start designing. And I’m going to grab some of these colors from here just so we can have them. And we remember that we were looking for a very uh that’s not the right thing. Uh that we were looking for a very edgy kind of dark aesthetic. So we’ll keep this in here somewhere. And something that I always advise, especially if you’re using something like a Canva or KD, is to go into the templates or in uh I think in both cases on KD and on Canva it’s called templates. It’s over on the left top corner uh you can really find very interesting things that other people have already created on the platform to use as inspiration for yourself. So, something that I would do if I was just starting uh and I knew that I was looking for a kind of darker, glooier design, uh is I would just type in keywords of of something that matches uh or let’s say I would say edgy t-shirt. If I want something that is a specifically a t-shirt design, I would type that in. And you can see a lot of designs like that already. So, uh, what is helpful is looking at what is in common for the designs that appear under these keywords. Uh, I see a lot of, uh, spray paint, you know, like here and here. Uh, I see quite a bit of mixed media as well. So, photos and like paint on top of them. Uh, let’s see what else. You can also use other similar keywords. I quite like these illustrations, so let’s keep those as well. I know the color isn’t right, but we’ll fix it. Uh, you can also try to look for specific elements that you want to include. So, we had that little eightball in the voting right here in the aesthetics. Maybe I want to include specifically that in there. So, I can go in here and see what people have created with an eightball. uh or well pool that way it’s easier to see. So a lot of it is more pool inspired uh we know okay so there is a bit more of a niche here you can also go into elements look for eightball here as well and see what kind of graphics are available to you and and what textures and and what colors are you know most likely to pop up. Um, and so what we’re going to do here is pick out a few things. I’m going to go with an eightball of some kind. I like ones that are a bit more illustrated. So, something like that. Uh, we can also look at similar graphics that appear as recommendations. This is also quite cool. It reminds me of an older Americana style tattoo. Uh, and then in addition to it all, we can start looking for similar elements. So, we had chains. Let’s see if I can find some chains that would look nice.
And yeah, so a lot of these are this 3D style, but if we’re looking more for an illustrated flat element, you can type in here um illustration and that’s going to find stuff. Uh or you can try flat, which is also going to help you quite a bit. So this is a completely 2D flat element. uh this is a completely flat element etc. Uh all of these keywords are made by the people who are making the elements. So if it makes sense to you as a keyword, it most likely made sense to someone else who was creating that element before. So let’s see if we can get maybe a round chain to add in there that is also going to be flat so we can see. Yeah, this one is completely, you know, flat with no highlights, you know, nothing that we can put in the middle. We can use that to frame the able. We can start thinking about how to stylize this. So, we have arrived at a very messy but very important point in your designs. What I find most helpful uh when being faced by, okay, there are so many different directions that I could go in. My personal favorite way to go is to think word association. Uh so when I saw the the eightball in there and I saw maybe some dice in there as well, I thought of luck, right? Um so what are some things that are some cool words that we can include in the design that could match this type of stuff? So if you have any ideas, drop them in the chat. I’m very interested. I immediately think of bet, luck, lucky, unlucky. That could work. Bet on yourself maybe as a bit more of a motivational uh niche. Uh and then let’s think of trust related stuff maybe. Uh so bets are not a surefire thing. Trust is a surefire thing. I don’t know, trust issues or I don’t know. Uh I make questionable choices. So stuff like that, phrases that uh to me seem fun and interesting, I will put together in my head or usually in some doc somewhere or in a notes app or even scribbled down on a piece of paper and I will start thinking about what visuals go with this stuff. So if we are thinking go for the sixes. I see uh Nicholas posting in there as well. Uh what I immediately think of with this is we have some chains. We have uh I want to add maybe some dice in this as well and see how that goes. Uh and I like the bet on yourself idea. Let’s see if we can find some kind of dice that is going to match a bit more. This could work actually. I wonder if we can try and include some more of the blues that we had in this color scheme here. Maybe this. Let’s I keep uh another thing that I keep doing a lot is I always add a bunch of pages just so I don’t lose any elements that I already liked, but I can just keep refining and refining and refining. Uh let’s try some text and just say bet on yourself. Now what is useful at this point is to go back to these inspo things that we found earlier and see what types of fonts they are using. Because as we start thinking about text to add to designs, text can convey a very different message depending on what font we use. Uh, and in this case, I really like the idea of using a spray paint inspired font for the text that we’re using. So, this one right here is a good one. We can also jump into fonts and look up spray paint
or just spray and see what we can find here. So, this one is a bit thicker, which is cool. I quite I like the one that we had here. I wish it was bolder, but I think we’re going to be able to make this work with a few adjustments. We’ll get to those later. So, let’s say it’s an eightball that is crashing into paradise or something. Or we can do something like a collage together out of those things. Um, maybe add a few flames into this as well. We’ll think about this. And then we have bet on yourself
which we are going to then play around with to make a combination of elements that is going to look cohesive and not like a bunch of stuff thrown on there. Uh I see uh Ray Simpson agreeing. Roll the dice better on yourself. Absolutely. I could actually make that a top and bottom text which is a very common uh composition that you can go for. Roll the dice. Bet on yourself. So, let’s see what other elements we could add in that would match this kind of fiery uh aesthetic. What I like to do, um, and it’s the same on these kinds of online platform based tools like KD, like Canva, is for virtually any element, you can rightclick and go into info and then see what else is similar to this. So sometimes artists have a collection, but if they don’t, you can click on see more like this. And there’s a lot of this more old school Americana style things coming up, which I really enjoy. I like that we can instantly see some dice with some flames. That might come in very, very handy. Let’s see what else comes up when you kind of look for stuff like this. That That is fun. That definitely matches uh the aesthetic that we were going for in the beginning. Uh, and let’s see, maybe some extra flames that we’re going to look for later. So, this combination, once again, I’ll just make a new page. I’ll remove some of the elements that I don’t want, and I’ll start mixing stuff up. What I quite like about a lot of elements uh on Canva and I think this is more usable on something like KD uh is you can change a lot of the colors within the element especially if it’s an illustration. So here we can use the same red and have very similar uh color flames or uh and this is something that we should actually do because it’s part of this challenge is I’m going to make these flames blue. So, we have some colors in this design already, which are the colors that we had in the color scheme in the very beginning. I’m going to try some blue flames for this. I think it was here. Yes. Let’s see if we can combine some browns and some blues in here. So, for the black, we are going to go for a darker brown. something like this. We’re going to add a bit of a vintagey texture to this in the end. And we’re going to make sure that every black that we use matches or close to black that we use matches together. So this right here can stay. This right here can stay. And so we’re starting to slowly arrive at an idea. What I would like is for this to be a blue, but a slightly different blue. Uh maybe something like this. Move it over here. And see where we can kind of attach these things together. What I also would like is maybe some more skeleton elements. So I’m back in the elements tab. Type in skeleton. I don’t know. Hand, I guess, works. and see what else comes up because I want a bit more of that outline style that as you can see all of these elements have a very thick even outline versus this one is a bit more plain. Let’s see if we can find something that matches a bit more. This has an outline but only an outline. So that doesn’t work for us. We can look for Let’s see. This is actually quite cute. And that these are all very outline based. Do we have anything that has a center? This definitely has a center. And I think that also matches the aesthetic quite well. So, let’s use this. And my favorite uh thing about these collage style designs is if you have a spot that cuts off a little bit in a way that you don’t like, you can just go ahead and hide it behind some of the other stuff. So, let’s see if we can adjust the placement of everything to fit and to come out of each other there. here. These can be turned a little bit. This can be larger. This can be a bit smaller. And we can kind of move this into the center. So, let’s start working on the text a little bit. We’re going to come back to some of these elements. See if we can hide them more properly and combine them more. Like so. What I like to do with text is to work it into the overall design itself. So with something like a top text here, I would go into effects and either pick curve, which can get a little bit boring because it is a very even curve and it might not work for a lot of designs, or and this is a very underused thing, is you can go into apps and find whatever is going to warp your text for you. So, I’m just going to go for some something like a text warp app and I’m sure it’s going to give me a bunch of different options. So, you could keep scrolling for days and most of these are going to work for you. Uh, I tend to use Typcraft quite a bit for this. I’m sure uh text warp works uh very well. Type warp I’ve used before. They’re all very similar. Let’s just go for typcraft. Let’s see and hope if this has the same font that we have uh lacquer
ler does it? Yes, it does. So, we have the correct font. We can type in roll the dice in here and we’re going to get essentially what we had right here. Uh but warpable. So you can add an outline to this if you want. So the inside might be this kind of pale blue that we had or maybe even the yes this right here. And the outline can be that dark blue that we had in the color scheme. So you can see a preview of the text. But what apps like this do is they don’t just work on a text element and keep it a text element. You input the text that you want. You adjust it within that app. And then it creates an image for you that you can then use. You can adjust it after, but you can’t quite move it and wiggle it into place the way you would if it was just a text box. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to look for some interesting options here. And if I don’t find them, I’m just going to click custom and fully start adjusting this the way that I want. So, I want it to be a curve, but not quite as basic of a curve. I want it to maybe go up a little bit at the ends there. Kind of like that. And you can really squish those letters as much as you want. You can move them towards the center here. Can adjust the curves here. I might keep it like this. Maybe make the top wider than the bottom
and add to design and see what it looks like. So what I am immediately seeing is that a I really like the shape. If I were to compare it to something that is just a regular curve, you can see how the top one is a lot more spray paint adjacent and not just a neat little curve. But what I do want to do about this, and you can click on edit right here to go back into your editor, is I want to make the outlines a little bit thicker. So let’s try triple the thickness of this. Update the element. That’s a bit much. So we go into two. Update element. And that actually looks right in my opinion. What we can also do is I think I might go for the same color outline as we have in here. And then where was I? Update element. Pick the right color. update and see. I think that matches the rest of the design a bit better. I think it also matches the vintage aesthetic a little bit better. Uh, and let’s do the exact same thing with this. So, we have I think it might be easier to just copy this over. Change the actual text to bet on yourself
and go into custom and switch everything out this way. So, we want the bottom now to be a bit wider than the top. We want the curve to be quite prominent. And we can really play around with this stuff. I want this section to be a bit thicker and for it to look a bit more messy. So, we have this element in here and we can arrange them however we’d like. So, we can remove this and we already have something that looks a lot more custom. Let’s put it that way. Let’s see what else we can do for these elements. And maybe some of you even have some ideas in here. All right, let’s see.
I see a lot of conversation uh about different apps as well. Uh someone uh see SD Wallace 1962, I love photo pe uh but it freezes on my laptop. Uh someone says that they I think Bodie Pearland used a design lab. So the choice for um whatever design software you want to use definitely lies the most on what features you’re looking for, what your budget is, and how familiar you are with designing in general. Uh for beginners who want to get into print on demand specifically, I normally recommend either KD or Canva just because they do have this giant library of stuff that you can use and squish and warp and change and uh find ways to introduce your own ideas into them. Uh but if you are someone who comes from a bit more of a design background then you can use um free uh but more uh experienceheavy let’s say uh apps like uh I guess Inkscape is one of those that has quite it has like 20 plus years of use uh and and existence but a giant learning curve. Uh so if you’re into that you can try that. Um I know a lot of people who work more on on minimalist designs but they really really need vector tools go for Figma. Uh and then obviously you have the the Illustrator, the Photoshop, uh the professional tools that if you are willing to shell out some money, you can really uh get into some very very very custom stuff. Uh, I’ve kind of gone for the the the most beginner friendly options for this type of demo just because I feel like it’s more easy to follow for for the majority of people. But whatever you are familiar with, you can kind of repeat this process and this ideation in in anything. So let’s see what someone else is asking or saying. I saw uh someone have a great idea. Um, how about a So, a couple people are talking about distressed stuff. So, Ray Simpson uh is saying, “How about a background like a brick wall or a distressed metal?” Uh, I did also see, yeah, like Nicholas is asking, “Is it possible to make a distressed look on Canva?” Uh, and what I feel like for uh a DTG uh design specifically is if we go for a full background, it might look a little bit like a square on a t-shirt. I like the idea of a background, but I think uh and let me just adjust this a bit more to be to curve around the design a bit more. What I would almost prefer is some background elements to create the feeling of a background without without there being a full kind of opaque background behind this. What I also like is the idea of distressing. Uh let us see what kind of stuff we can do uh to add a distressed texture over everything. So, uh, for text for example, we can go into especially if you have like I’m going to try and show you with a regular text just so you know. Let’s say we have this paragraph here. There are a bunch of different effects that you can apply uh that are these pre-made effects in here. But if you are looking for more uh customizable things, you can take a look at all of the Canva apps that are out there. So, specifically for text, uh what you might be really uh into. I don’t see it here, but you can just go into the app section and look at text effects and find one that really specializes in in distress text textures. Uh we also have like there’s text embroidery for example which is a very specialized thing. There’s uh blend text which does a very good job in making uh two opaque elements look like they’re blended together. Uh there’s fire text. So you can really find a bunch of different things. Uh and then what I also enjoy about these apps is that let’s say I actually haven’t tried this. So let’s see what happens. distressed text and no but distressed texture.
It may well be that there is something that is going to match our needs. So we have texture in here.
So and we select an image. Does it work or does it just work with images that we upload? There might need to be a workaround. Let’s see if we can do this. Uh, let’s try an upload that I have. This is just from a recent thumbnail. Let’s see if it works on uploaded images at all. And yes, it does. So, what I would do in this case, it is it is a bit of a workaround really. But I would download whatever the final design is, upload it again, and then put a texture over everything. That way, it’s going to be cohesive. you don’t have to look for separate apps for separate design elements and you also uh get to just keep it all in one spot. Uh it is more of a workaround than than some more professional options but I think uh if if we want to we can live with that. So let’s put some finishing touches on this. Uh, and I’ll really quickly take a look if anyone has anything for us to try.
Right. Okay. I have a couple of spots where people are asking uh how they can remove backgrounds more easily. So, uh, in Canva, you do, I believe, need the paid version of Canva to be able to remove backgrounds upon download. Uh, and for, uh, most of your designs that are going to go on either DTG or DT Flex, you do want the option to remove the background. I will say that I would definitely prefer it. Um, for something like an O all over print, you don’t really need that. Uh, but my advice is if you don’t want to spend any money on a more premium option, what you can do uh is once you upload your design, if it has just a clean white background, you can remove the background pretty decently in Printull’s design maker directly. So depending on how complex your uh design is and how busy your background is, the tool is going to work pretty well for you. uh in my experience and if you and let me just uh try and show you an example. If you had something like this and your background was about the same color as everything else, you would not be able to successfully remove the background just because the tool does not know where your background ends and the element begins. So if you are trying to remove background further later in other tools like friendos design maker, make sure that your background is as different from everything else as it possibly could be. So I would in that case pick a different color. This is actually a nice color color palette. We might go for something like that for a t-shirt. But you would just go for a color that is completely different from everything else so that the tool can see, all right, this section is background and this section is uh the design. So let’s just put some finishing touches on this if we’d like. What I’m noticing uh when seeing something like this is I agree with I believe it was Ryan who said that we need a background. Uh, I think we do need something something extra on here. So, as a last little addition, uh, let’s see. Maybe I can I don’t even need an N. I can just create an ellipsus or a circle by pressing C or by just going into elements, finding simple shapes. uh is I might want to create a bit of a flat shape like this in a dark color.
Not quite this color, but maybe this color. And put it behind everything. So that is going to let us
have our elements stand out a little bit more. there is this separation between uh the ball and the flames which wasn’t quite as obvious before we added this. And we might want to make this even like a darker blue just so you can see all of the lines and outlines of elements. So that way you can see this is where the eightball ends and this is a big bit of a gap and this is where the flame starts. And it’s going to also allow us to see if we need to move anything to make it really mesh with everything else. So, I would probably make this larger, move this over a tiny bit, and just see how we can organize our elements the best way possible. So, I think something like this looks quite well and we can download it and see how we would put this on a product. So, uh, before you do anything, this is something that I see people forget to do all the time, is a select all of your kind of central composition elements, group them, and make sure that this is centered. Because after moving a bunch of individual elements, something that happens to people a lot is that they will end up with something like this. And some of the elements are centered and some of them are not. So, just make sure to center them. Uh and then second of all, uh this is not very intuitive but important to do when you see a design and you feel like, “Okay, this this looks good. The composition is good. It’s done.” Think about where it’s going to go on the t-shirt. Especially with t-shirt placements specifically, you have to remember that there is going to be a few inches off of the collar. Let me actually try and show you like this. There are going to be a few inches that are going to separate the print placement from the collar. So, you might feel like your design already in your design space has enough of a gap, but that gap is going to be even larger when it’s printed on a t-shirt. So, if I look at my design right here, the immediate advice that I would give is select everything, group it, don’t group it if you want, make it as large as you want it on the placement, and then move it up. just move it up a little bit because that way it looks unbalanced in here, but you will see that once we download the actual image and put it on a t-shirt, it’s going to look right because it’s going to be a chest placement and not just sit in the very middle of the t-shirt. So, I’m I’m happy with this as our like little demo design. We can move stuff down a little bit if we want. Right. So, we’re happy with this. We can check what page this is on. So this is on page six. We click on share download. Select the page that we want. You can directly select it right here if you’re on this page or you can go through and pick out which one which one you want. I’m going to click transparent background. Excuse me. This is a paid option. If you don’t have paid Canva, then uh feel free to download it the way it is, maybe with a brighter background and remove it later. Uh, and I can totally leave it at one. I might download it at a slightly higher resolution just so because Canva doesn’t have a specific DPI setting, I can be extra extra sure that it’s going to hit those DPI numbers. Even though we put in the exact correct dimensions when we were creating the uh space for our design, I’m just going to try it this way. So while this is downloading, yeah, you can see that my first bet on yourself typo uh was saved into this. But this is our uh bet on yourself design. It’s a PNG. And we are going to switch over to Printful to this uh this is actually Bella canvas. We wanted to get this comfort color 1717. And we’re going to pick out what color we want. So, if you have a very specific color in mind before you go into designing, you can set your artboard or your canvas to be that color and that way you can make sure it matches. In our case, we had a specific color palette to work on, so we kind of had to live with it. Uh so something that I would pick out for this type of design is I would either go with a pale blue that is going to be a slightly different shade of blue than that pale blue that we have in the design or a complimentary color like this kind of paler yellow butter is nice. I also a color that that I really enjoy in comfort colors specifically is some of this like granite colors and and bay these very muted greenish gray shades. So let’s I don’t know pick a size. I I usually go for a large uh pick a technique. I think for something like this DT flex would be great to get that really crisp outline on everything and start designing. We are going to jump right into the design maker and I’m going to select a few of the colors that we were considering just so I can compare them. Right. And then upload Yes, I understand. Save and close. I’ll upload the design that we just created and we’ll see where it’s placed. Right.
Right. We’ve waited. It’s uploaded. We click apply. And you can instantly see that this gap is maintained. Even though the Let me actually zoom in for you so you can see a bit better. Even though we had Is it going to work? Let me just place it again. Uh even though we had this kind of crazy uh idea of putting the design at the very very top of your artboard, there is enough space from the collar down for it to look cohesive and and for the placement to look right on a t-shirt. Now, let’s talk about color. So, we can see that the DPI is good. We only needed 150. This is 250. We’re right on the money. Uh let’s look at some colors. So, this yellow I quite like as a combination. This is butter. Uh we can also go lighter with ivory. Uh and it’s going to be less saturated and maybe matching a bit more of the glooiness if we want a bit more glooiness out of this. I think granite is a very good combination with these colors. So let’s see uh what you guys think of colors. So do we want to go um yellow, pale blue, or dark gray? So, let me know in here uh what you would like. Uh I also saw a question from SD Wallace. Uh will Canva allow you to use your own custom colors by adding the RGB or the hexodimal or hex code? Uh I will jump over really quick and show you, but yes, you absolutely can do that. So, for any uh anything or any element that you want to change the color, let’s just pick this one. Uh you can just pick out whatever colors exist already in the default uh solid colors or in uh the you know options that you have in here. But you can also add a new color and put the hex code that you want right in here. Now there isn’t an RGB selection but there is a hex code selection and uh there are a bunch of converters online. There’s a frequent converter on Google. If you only have the RGB code, uh you can definitely get to a hex code and then pick out the color that way. Uh and uh so someone was saying uh everyone’s picking yellow
and then Okay, I saw someone saying, yeah, Nicholas is saying that it’s a little too cute. Uh we’ll see if everyone’s agreeing with me on yellow. Are we going a bit more ivory with this or or more butter? I like the combination of of blue and this brighter yellow a little bit more. So, we would just go with this. All right. Uh if I were to wear this, it would almost definitely be this this gray color, but it I I clearly do not like fun in my life. Uh but yes, I agree. Um, enjoy the moment. Uh, saying that there’s good contrast with the yellow. Yes, it’s also a light enough color so that we can see all of the outlines and everything. And we can take a quick look at the mockups before we jump over to any of our questions. And I I would buy this. I would wear this. Uh, and at the end of the day, once you’re done designing and once you can look at something like this and decide that yes, I would probably wear that, I think I think we’re good. So uh let us see if there are any uh questions that I have not yet answered. Right. Uh so let’s start over. This uh probably came up a bit earlier uh from uh Sharon Dennis 1914. Uh okay. I’m confused with the dimensions you just entered. the file guidelines on your website is listed in physical inches, which of course determines the pixels after you multiply it by DPI. Yes. Uh you I I love that you’re approaching this from a math standpoint. I will try to explain it as best I can. So what happens? Let me just get in here. Leave this. We all saw it. It was wonderful. But let’s say we go over to the file guidelines in here and uh the immediate thing that we see in the guidelines is a physical size. Now, if you uh were to design something on a piece of paper that is exactly this size, centimeter, centimeter, inch to inch, uh and you would put it on uh a product, it would be the perfect DPI that it would need to be. Uh so you are correct that these numbers do take into account DPI uh when thinking about it but uh you are working backwards when you are using this these numbers. So you know the size of the garment you know the size of the print placement. If you use the size of the print placement you are going to hit the DPI number that we already have in mind and you won’t even need to worry about it. uh versus if you can’t create a large enough artboard for your design, you can uh work in a different order. So, let’s say in my design app, for whatever reason, I can’t create uh an artboard that is 30 cm by 40 centimeters. You know, it’s too large. What I would do in that case is I would pick out let’s say um you know uh a 3 cm by 4 cm uh artboard and then I would use DPI knowing what how many dots per inch or how many pixels per inch need to be there to calculate how high I need the DPI number to be to get to the right size of of the print replacement. You know when we think about DPI and printing we need to consider that printing is physical. So the most accurate uh measurement that we can give is the actual physical size of the print placement. I hope that made sense but you are thinking of it in the right way. But if you create the exact size of the print file that we recommend, you’re going to be good. All right, let’s see. Um, black gold Texas tminus 100 says, “Can you explain why I need Canva or KD in order to use Printful?” You don’t. You really don’t. Uh, so if we were to jump over to just start designing without any design that we had previously, you could create a really good design without needing any external tools. Uh something that I have done a bunch in the past is I would go into quick designs and just pick out something that really you know matches what I have in mind from here or I can use some of the clip art that we have. There’s a gigantic library that really can it can either be a photographic or uh you can find the shapes that you want or you can find sections of maps. There’s a bunch of stuff that you can create with built-in tools that exist just in the Printful Design Maker. Uh but if uh there is something very specific that you have in your vision, you want to change exact colors of stuff, change dimensions, you want a very custom specific font, uh or in the case of something like KD or Canva, if uh you are looking for uh elements that you can kind of take and use in your own design, uh that is not nearly as rich in resources as an external tool. So, if you want a bunch of different elements that match your vibe, uh you can find a lot of them on the in the Printful Design Maker, but maybe not as many as you might want, which is why I’m just showing how you would do this process in Canva, but you can definitely replicate a lot of this, not all everything, but a lot of this in the Printful Design Maker. Uh, all right, let’s see what are some other questions. Uh, I saw a question from Sophia Magdalena on Facebook. How to maximize the canvas for all over print apparel with bright colors and designs that doesn’t leave the fabric feeling stiff and rigid. Okay, I feel like there are maybe two questions in one with this kind of thing. So for first let’s let’s talk about fabric. uh for all over print apparel. Uh there are as of recent well as of maybe like sixish months ago I think uh we have different types of all over print fabrics available depending on what product you’re looking for. Uh what used to be possible is that all over printing was only available in synthetics. But then relatively recently through a fairly innovative approach and a completely different technique we are now now able to offer cotton all over print products. Uh and depending on what fabric composition you’re looking at depending on what product you’re looking at and uh depending also on like what category you’re looking at. So it could be, you know, a pillow is probably going to be a slightly thicker, stiffer fabric than, I don’t know, something like a soft little t-shirt. This is going to be what primarily affects the thickness and the stiffness of the fabric. The actual print does not, especially for all over printing, affect the the feeling of the fabric itself because the technique uses heat to take paint from paper and to press it onto fabric. It’s not a layer or anything that would create any thickness. And then the secondary question that you might have is how do I uh maximize uh the the brightness of all over print apparel? If you’re looking for a very bright and vibrant color, I would usually go for a more synthetic fabric. Uh if that’s, you know, the the sheer vibrance and vibrancy of the colors is what you’re looking for. Cotton is going to always be a little bit more muted than synthetic. Uh, but cotton has its own benefits and a lot of people really prefer a cotton fabric to the feeling of a polyester fabric. So, if you are mainly looking for for the brightness of colors, go for synthetic. And let’s see, there’s only like a couple more questions that I think we have time for. Let me get through a few of them. Uh someone let’s see uh SD Wallace 1962 was asking what do you think of AI designs? Very interesting question. So with uh Canva and I want to say almost every other tool that you could use these days, there are going to be a bunch of AI features for your designs. Uh there is a very good reason why I don’t use that in demos is because it’s almost impossible to replicate exactly. The output that AI is going to give me in this session is not at all guaranteed to match what it would give you if you tried to use the exact same prompt and the exact same setup. Uh just because AI is not predictable. And that kind of applies to also what I think of AI designs in POD in general is that if you are creating a one-off design and it matches all of the guidelines that you need, you can absolutely go for it and and enjoy yourself and spend maybe less time on designing that than you would otherwise. But you can’t really create a cohesive look across the board for all of your products in your store for your specific brand. AI is not quite as predictable as we would like it to be still, even though it’s gotten much much better. And if you are a brand builder who wants to create a cohesive collection of a bunch of different products, that may not be the way forward. If that’s your only tool that is going to allow you to create really interesting stuff, absolutely go for it. Use whatever you need to use. But there is merit to the more humanmade aspects of design because that still in my opinion can’t be quite beat by AI. All right, one last question and then we’re going to wrap it up. So I see a question from Valerie Valerie Martin Stewart. Can you provide more exact measurements for where the 12 x 16inch file size is positioned relative to the bottom of the collar band of the shirt? For example, if we want to print the print to start two inches below the bottom band of the knit collar, where should I vertically position the top of my graphic on the 12 x 16 in file? I know exactly the question that you’re asking. We can’t really guarantee uh that a print is going to be exactly 1.7 in under the collar or anything, but uh we actually did have a guide recently. Let me just look that up really quickly. Uh of generally what is the the the average guidance. I might try and open it for you
and show you so that we can have like a visual guideline of everything. I think this might be it.
Right. So here it is. All
right,
bear with me.
Here we go.
All right. Uh so we have this uh post that has gone up on I know Instagram and on on Facebook and on YouTube and everywhere uh that has quite a few guidelines that our design uh and graphics teams have put together specifically for this type of question. Uh so there are a few like proportion rules that you should follow but something that is very useful is uh to see how this changes depending on the general fit of uh the t-shirt. So as you can see and I can maybe try and zoom in not very easily um for different fits of t-shirts. So, let’s say something is going to be uh evenly spaced for the body length and the shoulder top. Or if it’s going to be more oversized, it’s uh going to have more of a space around the the print area. If it’s going to be more cropped, it’s going to be shorter in length and maybe wider in in the shoulder drop. So, what you can do is you can go through this and think, okay, if the t-shirt that I’m designing for is a bit more of a classic fit, then I know that there’s going to be about three to four inches uh from the collar until the print area starts. Uh or if it’s going to be a bit more relaxed, that kind of relaxed silhouette has a bit more length to it. So the placement of the print um file I guess should be and will be about 5 to six inches below the collar. Uh this is actually uh what the comfort color 1717 falls under in this kind of fit. Uh and you can see that there’s quite a bit more space from the collar to the print. And you can also see this uh in more like cropped and tank top options. there’s going to be a bit a lot less space from the collar to the actual print. Uh that being said, and it is very important that I stress this as much as I can, we can’t guarantee it because any printing is not done just by a machine that swallows t-shirts and and spits out prints. It is people who take a t-shirt, put it on a frame, and make sure that it fits into the frame correctly. there is not going to be a a very precise placement that okay this this uh print is going to start exactly 2.3 in under the collar. Uh what you can do however is you can look at these types of guides and you can also and this is something I’ve done before uh look at the size of the actual t-shirt that is listed like the in in the size guide you can see that the measurement from the seam to the bottom is this uh and then you can apply that measurement to the design that you’re creating and see you know where it lands visually. There are options, but there is no guarantee is what I’m saying. All right, we are uh 10 minutes past the end time. So, I kind of want to wrap up here. There’s there’s quite a few joining today that I feel like I I haven’t seen a couple of you in in the chat before. So, welcome if you’re completely new. I hope you stick around for for next month and the month after that. And I hope that you learned something and enjoyed this session uh and can have something to take away for yourself in your design process. That being said, thank you for joining and I’ll see you next