There are basically three ways we can bring a design to life: (1) You provide print-ready files; (2) You need a li’l help, and (3) You ask us to create a brand-spankin’-new, completely custom design. Let’s look at each one a little more closely:

  • This is usually straightforward. You send us a vector file (or high-resolution layered file) of your artwork, and we convert it so it’s screen-printable. If it’s a complex file, or if it’s not a vector file and we have to vector-ize it, you may incur a small fee to cover the time it takes our designer to make the image screen-printable. This will probably be $45 per design, unless it’s super difficult, in which case it would go up from there. But we’ll tell you ahead of time in any case that fees will need to be applied.

  • The idea here is that you can provide us with the images you want to use, but we’re using our expertise and skills to make it look nice on whatever merch item you’re looking for, and we’re maybe even making some additional recommendations. For example, maybe you’re a brewery and send us one of your can labels that you want reformatted to go on a t-shirt.

    This takes a little more time and mental energy on our designer’s end, so this is $125 per design. It includes two (2) rounds of edits, which can include multiple edits within each round. Be specific and thorough with those two rounds, because it’s $45 per edit after that. And that’s lower-case-e-edits*. For capital-e-Edits and/or all-caps-EDITS**, we reserve the right to request payment for the first design and any subsequent designs, used or unused, as long as it wasn’t a mistake on our end.

    *Lower-case-e-edit examples: ink color changes, most font/typography changes, shirt color changes, “change the dot on the ‘i’ from a dot to a star” types of things

    **Capital-e-Edit and all-caps-EDIT examples: drastically changing the layout, sending new imagery to use, major font/typography changes, scrapping the current design and requesting a completely new one

  • For this, we’re going to ask you to give us three (3) inspiration images (“inspo”) and descriptions of what you like about each and/or how it should apply to the design we’re going to create for you. No more “We like your other stuff, so we’ll just go with whatever you come up with” stuff. That never works. Trust us, we’ve been through it too many times to count. You can use past products and projects of ours that you like as part of the inspo you provide, but again, be specific and thorough. You’re paying us decent money ($250+ per design) to create this, and we want you to get your money’s worth AND get a product that you will sell the heck out of! This route also includes two (2) rounds of lower-case-e-edits, with the same terms for additional edits, Edits, and EDITS.

Other things of note, related to designs. The “fine print” type of stuff:

  • Whether option (1), (2), or (3), we will create a file of what it will look like on the garment or item of your choice (a.k.a. a mockup) to get approval, unless you’ve provided us with one.

  • A vector file means the artwork can be re-sized smaller or larger without losing resolution. Most designers use Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw to create vector images and text, and those files typically have the extensions .ai or .eps. Jpg’s, png’s, gif’s, and Photoshop files are NOT vector files; Pdf’s are sometimes vectors. If you provide files and are unsure if they’re vector or not, we’ll take a quick look and let you know.

  • For vector files that you provide, please instruct your designer to outline all text and strokes before saving and sending to us.

  • We print with water-based inks because they’re more comfortable and slightly better for the environment.

  • Water-based inks aren’t well suited for exact matching of things like Pantone or other specific color swatches. We have a wide variety of “house colors” for you to choose from. For a fee of $50 per color, you can get a custom color or pantone match; we will get as close as we can to the colors you request, but slight variations are inevitable, especially when you take into account that mockups are generally being viewed on a computer screen, as well how the color of the fabric affects the ink color.

  • We retain the intellectual property rights of any new designs we create. Why? Well, our fees are actually relatively low compared to most designers out there because we’re counting on you also paying us to produce the merch you want. It’d not feel great for you to come to us to get an inexpensive design made and then just take it to another print shop and get some cheapo (or even good) merch made. If you’d like the rights to the designs we create, or want to license them for other uses, let us know and we’ll happily work something out. We’re reasonable people after all, and our clients tend to be, as well.

  • Most of our designs are NOT “logos.” A logo is the primary icon, text, and/or image associated with your brand. A logo is not often suitable as a standalone piece to create sellable merch, which is what we’re going for in a design. In the rare case that you want to use something we create (or any element of something we create) as your primary logo, let us know and we’ll work something out. Heads-up, though: since it will be your primary brand image, you’ll be getting significantly more value and use out of it, so it will be significantly more expensive than our standard design fee.

  • We do use AI to assist in the creation of custom designs. Typically, this is just an idea-generating tool for us, a starting point from which we then create the design according to your specific project. In any case where we use AI, we will make note of it on the mockups we provide to you.