Stick with a simple color scheme for your t-shirts. Choose one to three colors for your design. Adding too many colors may create an overpowering t-shirt. Printing costs per shirt also increase with each additional color choice. Choose an elegant font and a variety of shapes to compensate for the lack of many colors.
Grab a t-shirt and lay it on a flat surface. Use a ruler to measure the perimeter of where your design will appear. Open up a graphic design program such as Photoshop or Gimp. Adjust the template design area to fit the measurements you gathered from the shirt. Designing on the computer in a document scaled to what appears on the t-shirt will ensure that the printing does not reduce the quality of your design.
T-shirts feature two main design areas. You can use only one side of the t-shirt or both sides, depending on your needs. Use the front of the t-shirt advertise the main message of the t-shirt. For example, when designing a t-shirt for summer camp, place the main camp theme on the front of the shirt. On the back of the shirt, place any sub themes. Continuing with the summer camp example, the back of a shirt could feature a camp motto.
Finish your initial design on the computer and convert all of the fonts in the design into an outline. If your design includes a lesser-known or customized font, converting it to an outline ensures proper transfer from one computer to another. Convert your text to outlines by right-clicking with the selection tool and choosing "convert text to outline." The computer then recognizes the text as an image instead of customizable font. This proves helpful as you take it to the print shop.