Design Trend: Typography
T-shirts are the perfect vehicle to transport messages. Sparkling wit on statement tees in the guise of witty typography gets a lot of recognition these days. There’s a whole creative world beyond Times New Roman in bold, so we’ve summarized the current typography trends to get you inspired to spread your wit on T-shirts that people want to wear.
What Should the T-shirt Say?
The most important thing for your typography design is getting the message right. A fun play on words, a modified saying or quote, a funny inside joke that you share with your friends, and, and, and… Be ahead of the time by making a quick trend analysis. Which events in the next weeks or months will folks be interested in? Any long awaited movie premiere with top Hollywood stars? A legendary indie festival? Major sporting event? Take these as a stepping stone to get your associative train of thought going.
Combine Message and Font
Once you have your cracking slogan, it’s time to merge content and form. As a rough rule, the font should somehow match the content of the statement. Dress romantic love quotes in ornate script fonts and use sans serif uppercase print for sober two-word statements. Stylistic inconsistencies are of course welcome for effect. And when you create products, the product color should contrast the text color in a complimentary way. You can find a huge variety of free fonts online, and it’s well worth scouring the net in search of the right one. Sites such as DaFont offer a huge selection of free fonts.
Free Fonts and Legal Stuff
When using free fonts, you should be aware that not all of them are released for commercial use. Similar to image rights, there are copyrights in place for fonts as well. If a font is cleared for private use only, you need to obtain a permission of the licensor, i.e. the font creator. Obtain it before you offer your design for sale to avoid being sued for damage claims. There are also free fonts that are released from copyrights. In any case, you’d be well advised to be in the know about the regulations for the font of your choice before you publish a design.
Create a Typography Design Online
If you don’t feel like creating your own typography design with PhotoShop, Illustrator or other software, you can find a few free tools that allow you to create simple but beautiful typography designs online. Canva is a fine example of a tool offering many gorgeous templates and fonts. Use them to create your design in just a few clicks. Please note: a small fee is due for commercial use.
Brush Lettering – Handwritten Digital
Currently, a big trend in typographic designs is brush lettering, aka “hand lettering”. As the name suggests, the characters of the brush fonts look like they have been written by hand with a brush or pencil. Free brush lettering fonts can be found online – literally hundreds of them. Alternatively, you can also pick up a brush, write your own calligraphic slogans on paper and scan them before you use them as a T-shirt design. DIY tutorials such as this one can be found online on various blogs and DIY pages.
You can find more inspiration here. We prepared a Pinterest Board for you where you can see various typography desings.
Did the typography trend get a hold of you? Would you like to read more about this topic or any other tutorial on our blog? Tell us in the comments!
All of my t-shirts on my website (http://www.lightenupgear.com), which is a Spreadshirt Shop, are type tees. One of my favorite shops is WordBrands.com. 🙂
I love typography, and absolutely mad about it when it comes to my spreadsheet designs. Thanks spreadsheet for shining a light on typography and it is true, a lot of my biggest sellers come from a few strokes of the paint brush inside of Illustrator.
I love this article!! I just opened my Spreadshirt shop literally three days ago for the explicit purpose of selling my typography designs on clothing (and hopefully other products), so this article is extremely timely for me!!
And yes, is really appreciate more DIY tutorials, particularly ones that focus on typography and design.
Thank you!