[chipchop]

hi all,

i have joined this forum for quite a while now but havent got the guts to ask any question cos people might think that my questions might be silly. I have this idea for quite some time but i do not know where to start.
I have no design background or whatsoever but would like to set up a website selling tshirt. With each tshirt i sold, a part of the proceeds will go to a charity organisation (for kids) or even like the tom shoes approach, for every pair of shoes sold, an underprivileged kid will a get pair of shoe (but for my case, it would be clothes). I would like to know if there are anyone who had similar ideas as mine and would share some info or shed some light? and whoever doesn't have any designing background be able to set up a tshirt selling business successfully? i would like to design on my own someday using royalty free images..but afraid that my ideas/creativity are limited.

 

[losttrail]

Perhaps you are selling yourself short. You need to invest in corel draw or Adobe Illustrator and learn how to use them. Youtube and google will answer just about any question you have while learning. Then start playing around with ideas that come to mind.. You will be amazed what the end result will be.

 

[Fenrir]

I would take some courses in Photoshop and Illustrator at your local community college or adult education courses (or even an online tutorial... take several from different websites), so you learn whether or not you are really interested in doing it, and also have access to the programs without actually buying them first. Do not plan on buying the student editions and then using them for your business later on. If you want to play with similar programs for free, GimPhoto + GimPad (Photoshop-style interface) is a decent substitute for Photoshop and Inkscape (vector design program) is a decent substitute for Illustrator. They do not have all the bells and whistles of the newest CS versions, but I do consider them comparable with Illustrator 8 and Photoshop 6 and lower, which is all people had to use for a decade or more. But I would not be able to do as much with them without having taken the Adobe classes first.

 

[ryan barker]

you can't learn talent. just because someone has gone to school for something really doesn't impress me at all. give me a person that can do the job, not someone with a piece of paper that says they sat in a lot of classes that has nothing to do with what i need. in other words, a degree means nothing to me ~ your ability is the only thing i care about. i dare say plenty of 'uneducated' but passionate people here are better suited to design t-shirts than some people that can quote everything you need to know about composition, lay-out, etc., and then proceed to do nothing more than riff off other people's design anyway. true, on paper they're more 'qualified,' but that doesn't bespeak of ability beyond being able to regurgitate what others have done or creativity beyond following a trend.

all that is to say that some people have a design insight, some don't, and education should take a back seat to design prowess. kind of like how i know tons of guys that can play someone's song note for note and it sound amazing, but ask them to play something they've written and it just sucks.

you can be a designer merely by designing something. it's not as if you have to pass a state exam to receive a license, lol. if you have the raw ability, you can become a *better* designer with school or teach yourself. you need to look at designs, designs, designs, then more designs. then practice, practice, practice, then more practice. as mentioned, there are tons of resources available online to help the self-taught person achieve better results. remember to look at designs on everything, from t-shirt to bottles of water to cereal boxes. (note that i'm talking about designs that i think would be appropriate for most shirts. something like advertising, and that's different, and i would say that, yeah, school is probably where it's at as far as just that is concerned.)

in time you'll begin to see designs where nothing but a random collection of images existed before, just waiting to be put together, details where no one thought to look before. i think a lot of designers basically riff from successful designs for the bulk of their work, anyway, and i don't see where it requires any special ability or training to be able to do that.

taking it all into consideration, you can probably design something no worse than someone viewing it as a dull task who's going to riff off other designs, throw it on a template and hit 'print.'

i'm not putting down people who have gone to school for design at all, rather those who use their education as a crutch to deflect the fact that they have no intrinsic ability and wind up doing nothing more than designing the same old car show t-shirts we've seen a million times or who couldn't design something without a skull on it if their lives depended on it. those guys are, imo, hacks with a degree, nothing more.

 

[ryan barker]

my previous post was not in reference to taking computer classes.

 

[cadart]

Unfortunately, I'm a self confessed hack with NO degree. I do like designs with skulls and cars, but i have no design skills. I see some really cool tees and wonder how someone thought up the idea. I'm really jealous!! Anyway, i can put together a bunch of crap and some think its looks good ( at least that what they say). So to make a long story longer, i have to overall agree with ryan. Some have it, some don't, i don't :>( and i would hire someone on skill and not on a degree.

 

[ryan barker]

i would qualify as a hack, too. but, it doesn't bother me because i never spent thousands of dollars learning that fact, lol. i will look at designs in how they're put together, not so much what the individual elements are. probably why i like looking at movie posters.

i wonder how people come up with some things, too, and i wish i could do that. what i can't understand is a giant ampersand on a shirt and why people eat it up. you just don't know what people are going to be into, i reckon (though i would venture to say in this case, an ugmonk design, a big dumb ampersand is more to do with marketing than design).

 

[Enrique]

As Ryan said, you can't learn talent. You can either draw well or you can't. But if you seriously intend on going into a printing business (of any kind, t-shirt or otherwise), you should at least learn the software involved, for two reasons: A) you'll be able to talk with whomever you hire to be your designer on equal terms and B) there ARE things non-designers can do, such as setting up simple text, or simply printing the design onto film for screen burning.

People running any kind of business should have an understanding of every part of the business; it doesn't have to be thorough, just enough that they aren't ignorant of it.

 

[lilone4u2]

Perhaps you are selling yourself short. You need to invest in corel draw or Adobe Illustrator and learn how to use them. Youtube and google will answer just about any question you have while learning. Then start playing around with ideas that come to mind.. You will be amazed what the end result will be.

so do you not like hanes sublimation software?its a great beginner program try that for starters

 

[ryan barker]

neither my wife or i are great artists by any means. my bro-in-law is a tattoo artist, so if and when the time came for some serious artwork to be done, he's our guy. so far, the customers have provided their own artwork and we basically tweak it here and there. other than that we get by on clip art tweakings.

of course, that's because we don't have a brand, we provide general screen printing and heat transfers, nothing too complicated or pricey. for a fairly simple brand, you don't need to be michaelangelo by any stretch. the folk who go to school for design are probably all very good to great artists (and figure design is the only way they'll make a living drawing). but, great designs aren't necessarily made up by great artists.