YIKES! Look at My UGLY T-Shirt Designs (Print on Demand)

hey YouTube what I'm gonna be doing in
this video is showing some of my very
old t-shirt designs see what a lot of
y'all don't know is I have been on
print-on-demand for eight years yes
eight years now not successfully
failures but I've been on print on
demand that long
crazy right and my designs did not
always look that great and so what I
thought I would do is show you a few of
them and not just make fun of myself but
use these as lessons to help those of
you who are just getting started who
make a lot of the same mistakes that I
made now let me start off by saying I am
NOT a designer and I'm not trying to
pretend like I am one if you want true
design tips go over to my boy Gary's
channel a t-shirt helpdesk shout out to
Gary
by the way Gary you have been very very
generous about shouting me out so I just
wanted to say thank you for that I
really do appreciate you but yeah Gary
now he's an example of a true t-shirt
designer me on the other hand I'm an
entrepreneur who has learned just enough
about t-shirt designed to be successful
but my success comes more from
understanding keywords and being able to
come up with good ideas that's my
strategy
some people are successful because
they're designers other people are like
me and I would imagine most of you that
watch me are more like me you're
probably either entrepreneurs or mantra
preneur or just doing this part-time or
whatever and you just want to learn a
little bit to to make your designs pop a
bit and that's what I'm gonna do in this
video so what inspired this video was
when I'm looking at some of my students
t-shirts when they want me to look at
their keywords I noticed they make a lot
of the same mistakes I made when I first
started doing t-shirts back in the day
so I thought this would be a good video
to do you're ready for this job okay
let's look at design number one this is
this is bad where where do we even begin
with this you guys first of all how many
fonts does anybody want to guess how
many fonts are in this your eyes don't
know where to look
I've got icons plastered all over the
place this woman is throwing our poor
kid up in the air this flowers just
chilling
looking lost it's just so much going on
in this design you know what this looks
like it looks like the words and the
icons just threw up on the canvas it
looks like I said you know what I want
to do an EMT shirt for moms well this is
this is this is so bad you guys this and
let let me you haven't even heard half
of this I actually paid money money to
advertise this oh yes oh yes on Facebook
you guys remember when everybody was
doing the teespring Facebook ad stuff
well I was in that game for for about I
guess maybe a year or so I attended a
teespring meet up here and one of the
people told me they said Lisa no don't
pay money to just advertise one off
t-shirts put up images advertise or
promote the images for like a specific
niche and then work on building likes to
that page then you have an audience to
promote t-shirts to and I actually did
that pretty successfully with a few
pages this wasn't one of them I don't
but this is what I was doing this is
what I was attempting to do so let me
show you yes I even have an ad and I
still have a picture of the ad this is
the ad I ran on Facebook so the idea was
to get likes and clicks and so people
would see my page and then like the page
so I can sell other poorly-designed emt
mommy shirts to these people so that was
the strategy behind it all but it was
just poorly executed because my design
was bad I mean no wonder I never really
mastered the teespring
you know Facebook ad game I had one
shirt that did well and it actually took
the campaign tipped and it was a science
related shirt the rest of it didn't even
take off and the reason that science
shirt took off is because it was a
clever shirt but yeah most of my
campaigns failed on teespring so yeah
this was my creation I mean
your eyes don't even know where to look
it's just all over the place
I just got Ikon it's just terrible if I
were to redo this shirt today and I'm
not gonna do this for all the designs
because this video would just be too
long but I just put this together last
night just to show you guys the
difference it's like night and day one
of the things I like to do and I realize
this is still a very simplistic design
but it looks a whole lot better than
this
I think but one of the things that I
like to do is when I am putting a shirt
together sometimes I like to put it
inside a container sometimes the
container is visible sometimes it's not
in this particular instance it's it's
invisible it's like a square so
basically everything is aligned to the
left and the right and even in the
orphan space that I have with this text
you see how I centered the text so it
leaves like this space over here on the
right in the left I fill it up with some
type of icon or whatever and another
thing I like to do is I like to take
icons or elements in that niche or
whatever and use them in the design some
kind of way so I put the stethoscope
inside oh I love some art text I love to
arc some text on a t-shirt I do that a
lot but yeah I mean this is just so much
more clean than this mess
like what is this you guys this is I had
forgotten all about this and when I came
across this last night I was like oh I
have got to show them this this doesn't
even look like a t-shirt it's just crap
on a canvas all right let's move on to
the next one y'all ready for this y'all
ready for this
what in the PowerPoint slide is going on
here date a runner and let me come clean
let me come clean you guys want to know
where this came from some of you might
have seen this the actual shirt said
date a runner other athletes are just
players or something like that which I
thought was super super clever so I said
well I don't want to copy someones
design exactly I'm just going to reword
it mm-hmm
does that sound familiar yeah I can't
lie I started off doing that too I think
that's how a lot of people start with P
OD unfortunately that's how some people
continue to do it but yeah I took
somebody's idea basically and tried to
rephrase it so yeah once again I was
trying to build up a running page on
Facebook so I could sell shirts to these
people it's crazy I mean it's
left-aligned what is this a blog post
you got this paragraph of text
there's the custom-shape again y'all was
look let me tell you this was along this
time I discovered you can add custom
shapes to Photoshop so I went nuts all
over the internet finding custom shapes
and I was like oh I'll just throw these
custom shapes into my t-shirts and so I
was just custom shape crazy as you can
see because we don't play games like
other athletes so I tried to rephrase
somebody's text but I made it too wordy
and you have to look at it and go what
does that even mean I'm like oh I get it
see this is why you don't take other
people's stuff this is a good example
right here you know this is why you come
up with your own stuff because here I am
trying to work my way around this and I
ended up just just making it not even
funny it's not even clever anymore the
way I worded it and I guess I must have
learned how to use the line tool because
I got her running on this double line
over but this is the part that really
kills me up here this left alignment
with the space hanging out like I would
never let this happen today that would
bother me and and don't get me wrong I
mean sometimes left-aligned t-shirts do
look fine the one that comes to mind is
the legendary sense whatever
a year the birthday shirt like that
looks fine but in this case when you
have a blog post or a PowerPoint slide
or whatever this is it just it just
doesn't look like a t-shirt it's it
looks it looks like a PowerPoint slide
it looks like I'm speaking about running
and this is slide number one it's so
many things wrong with this Wow
see I've seen real designers get upset
with the PIO D world today because
there's people like me coming in junk
and get up with stuff like this I can't
be mad at you guys I see why y'all get
mad because here you are you've got
these skills and you can't even get your
stuff seen because people like me are
uploading stuff like this I can't be mad
at you I just can't crazy but you got to
be able to laugh at yourself at the end
of the day you have to all right here's
another one there we are with the custom
shapes again somebody should have told
me the importance of a niche because you
can't even get more broad than that when
you're talking about doing a wedding
t-shirt and I guess I must have learned
that you can actually color the custom
shapes as well so I must have learned
how to rasterize the layers by this
point because now the custom shapes have
color ooh this is funny
Wow all right next one now let me zoom
out here this actually isn't too bad and
honestly when I look at this I think
merged my Amazon circa 2015 2016 like
this particular idea this this to me is
a classic merged by Amazon idea right
you take a hobby or a pastime or sport
and yuneisia down to a very specific
person like a woman who lives in New
York and I love the fact that it has a
double meaning I love doing double
meaning shirts so I think I was actually
kind of progressing by this point this
looks a little bit better I like that
it's a double meaning you know this girl
runs New York like she's a boss lady or
whatever but you can also look at it
like she also runs as in terms of her
hobby or her sport or whatever so I like
the double meaning one thing that I
really like to do when I'm doing my
shirts is and this helps me even to this
day I like to take the most important
word which in this case is the word runs
and I put that there somewhere in the
center make it bold and then I design
around that word so when you're coming
up with your text you say okay what's
the most important word in this case
it's runs put that right there with
nothing else and then decide what you're
gonna do after that I do that a lot now
and that seems to help me with arranging
text and arranging things on a t-shirt
but yeah this is a to me a classic merch
by Amazon shirt I never uploaded this to
merch I wonder how you know saturated or
if there would even be a demand for
people doing very niche down shirts by
city or state might be an idea but I
could so see this like doing really
really well on merch in the early days
you can do all different cities all
different states or whatever and then
you can do one for men and I'm sure
somebody's probably gonna upload this
idea hey go for it you know so you see
what happens but yeah I was getting a
little bit better because the mistake I
often see with newbies is people will
make their shirt text so incredibly
small and tiny and they'll have too many
words on the text like this one here
they'll you know have all these words
but then they'll make them super super
super small and I'm like no one is going
to see that you have to remember
probably over half of Amazon shoppers if
we're talking about merged our shopping
from their phone and this is a great
example of an image that would show up
very nicely when somebody is scrolling
on a mobile device you know so think
about that when you're uploading here's
another idea and if you follow my blog
you might have seen this post that I did
last summer but this is an example of
how you can take a very basic text shirt
or design and turn it into something and
make it pop and this goes back to what I
was just talking about I like to take
the most important word in this case is
the word love I make it a different
color I make it a different font and
then I design around that word and so I
tried to balance the design out a little
bit by adding the hearts but in this
case I aligned everything to the right
but again it just shows you how you can
just make things
look so different just by placement just
by changing at the fonts adding a couple
of icons you know it really does make a
difference when you're placing things on
your shirt
I definitely like I said like to design
within a container another example is
this template that I set up for my
students to use this is a another
container so the design is contained
within this space whether it's a
physical container like a circle or it's
an invisible container like this so yeah
I've come a long way with with my
designs but like I've always said it's
not always just about the design very
simple text designs can sell to as my
students just learn with my case study
that I just did it's not always about
design but it is helpful when you can
make your text pop and not do stuff like
this I mean you can do so much more than
this and there's so many different ways
to make your textures eyes pop as you've
seen with some of the examples here and
once again this is an example where I
put the most important word here and
then I would choose what I'm gonna put
up here and then maybe down here and
then maybe I can put an image or
whatever in here so that's kind of how
my mind works when I'm trying to come up
with ideas for my design this is coming
from a non designers you know point of
view but it does help me so I hope you
guys have fun with this yeah we gotta
laugh at ourselves sometimes I've come a
long way you know but at the end of the
day success with print-on-demand
yes design skills will definitely help
you but at the end of the day you also
have to be able to find keywords you can
sell in and come up with your own unique
ideas because you can have all the
design skills in the world but if you
haven't figured out keywords that you
can sell in it really doesn't matter
that much at the end of the day you know
especially for March my Amazon but the
designs have gotten a lot better though
if you've noticed on merch you see a lot
more artistic a lot more detailed you
can definitely tell there are some a lot
more designers on March by Amazon now
but simple text sell - so hope you guys
enjoy it I'll talk to you later
[Music]
you