Of all the sports out there, running may be the one most devoted to using the T-shirt as a uniform as well as a marketing tool. Most fun runs offer T-shirts as giveaways or prizes. Running clubs and teams have custom designed T-shirts to advertise their group. While hiring a professional designer is an option, it is relatively simple to take the design work into your own hands and design your own running shirt.
Instructions
1. Select a photograph or drawing to use in your design for the running shirt. You can use an existing digital file, or you can use a photograph or drawing on paper and scan it into your computer. Consider the colors you would like to use in selecting or creating your image. Be sure the colors in the photograph match the color of the shirt.
2. Open a new file in Adobe Photoshop or another digital image editing program. An illustration program such as Adobe Illustrator or Openoffice.org's Draw program can also be used. Size the file at 11 inches wide by 8 1/2 inches deep. This size is large enough to cover the chest of a T-shirt. Save the file and name it.
3. Create your typography in the new file. Bold or decorative typefaces with dynamic color schemes are appropriate for running shirts. Typography can also be created by hand and scanned in, or created in a vector art program like Adobe Illustrator and imported into Photoshop. You can also create and manipulate type in a digital image editing program such as Openoffice Draw.
4. Copy your photograph or Illustrator file. When pasting your photograph or Illustrator file into your running design file, go to the pull-down menu for window and open up the layers dialog box. Go to the pull-down menu in the dialog box that says "Normal" and select "Multiply." This strategy will make your photograph or illustration transparent so you can impose typography on it, which is useful in most designs. Play with the position of your type element and image element until you like how it looks. Try different colors for your text until it looks good over your image.
5. Check with T-shirt shops to see who has the best combination of price and quality for digital imaging on a T-shirt. Put your design on a CD and take it to a print shop, or email the design to the print shop.
Tags: into your, your photograph, Adobe Illustrator, digital image, digital image editing, editing program, Illustrator file