Ask HN: Looking for an easy and cheap-ish way to create t-shirts for my startup
Ideally there'd be a way for users to order online through the site directly rather than me having to buy a bulk of them and sell them myself. Any recommendations?
Here's some relevant advice (that doesn't actually answer your question, but might be useful)
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2174367
I'm a former professional T-Shirt designer. Here's a few pieces of advice for people thinking about designing t-shirts:
1. Reduce the size of the design - while it looks great on a flat t-shirt (and perfect for the promo picture) you need to add room for a human body at the sides (surprisingly more than you think). My rule of thumb is to measure from your left nipple to your right nipple. Try sticking printouts to your chest and you'll see what I mean. A logo could probably fit on a large post-it note (roughly the size of the of an iPhone).
2. You need to position the design so it floats in a woman's cleavage. The most popular t-shirt I did had a small duck that looked like it was sitting on a woman's chest.
3. Screen printed t-shirts are printed light-colour to dark colour (like an oil painting). If you put a full print of white under the other colours they will look more vibrant - even black. But remember that t-shirts have bleeds measured in mm! getting accurate registration on cloth is tricky.
4. Large designs with many layers of solid ink can get very sweaty to wear. Try to keep things small and have gaps in the design. The recent trend for grungy, worn & badly printed designs were naturally less sweaty.
Are you selling them or giving them away? If selling, do you intend to use that as a main source of revenue?
I'll assume that you want to have your customers buy shirts with your logo/brand with the least amount of bother for you. Also, I assume you don't intend to make serious money with the sales. In that case, it's best to use a site like cafepress.com (or a competitor) where you just upload the logo, and they'll take care of the rest.
I haven't ordered any t-shirts yet, but I've been digging this company's user interface to get the design set. Prices seem reasonable. What's really cool is the selection of t-shirt brands. Meaning, you can get a nice, soft American Apparel shirt. Vistaprint did not offer as many choices (styles, brands or colors). Zazzle seem too expensive.