When you look at the typography t-shirts, you may think that these simple texts are no significant efforts. However, even with the smallest and shortest sayings, how the fonts look like is one of the most important decisions that a designer has to make.
Imagine brainstorming for messages to deliver on the shirts, choosing from thousands of t-shirt font styles, trying multiple arrangements and combinations, so much hard work, even with the experts! But as long as you understand the basics, you will soon take little time to choose the most suitable fonts and get yourself started to design and sell some stunning typography t-shirts.
I hope this topic doesn’t bore you, because here are the tips to use some cool fonts for t-shirts that you cannot miss!
Make sure they are good fonts for t-shirts
We all have seen many t-shirt designs with typography on it, but which fonts are considered good? To answer the question, the good fonts on shirts, including both digital and screen printing fonts have to meet these criteria:
They convey the appropriate meaning
A sentence can be understood in so many different ways just with different fonts used. Thanks to the media, we can easily recognize how sports, horror, documentary, and other themes appear as typefaces. So, keep in mind that even when people haven’t read the words, they can still feel what the texts are about at first glance. A wrongly chosen fonts can mislead the customers right away.
Therefore, the first step when choosing t-shirt fonts is to make sure you understand your own brand and your target market. Which message you want to send through your designs, who will want to wear these shirts, what are they into, etc., you need to spend time researching to answer all of those questions, then you can find the fonts that suit your theme.
Also, even you have finally chosen your suitable fonts, you don’t want to sound like shouting through your sayings. So, don’t put your fonts in all caps, uppercase letters may even look bad standing next to each other.
They are easily readable
It also depends on which you want to emphasize: looks or readability. Your choice will strongly influence your visual elements in distinct ways. However, if you want your message to get across and understood clearly, you should go with the fonts that are easy to read. People will not spend too much time figuring out what your texts are about and will immediately move on to the next shirt if they are not interested.
The fonts are created for different uses, some are great for body texts, others are only used for headlines and titles. Based on the font category, you will know which are born for which purpose.
There are also decorative fonts with all the curls and fancy characters. It’s alright if you want to catch others’ attention with these decorative fonts, but having them overused will not only make it impossible to read but also ruin your design.
They are scaled proportionately
Another problem that the designers always struggle with in this industry is choosing the most suitable font size for t-shirt printing. You won’t want the texts to be too big, too small, or not balanced with other elements on the shirts.
When arranging the fonts, no matter how you want to stretch them to fill a certain space, don’t distort it. If you do so, the fonts when appearing on the garment may be broken and look unprofessional. What you need to do is pick other fonts that are taller, wider, or more narrow, depending on your preferences. The music bands have done really good at making their concert shirts featuring very cool fonts, so don’t hesitate to learn from their designs.
Don’t pair random t-shirt fonts together
There is a lot to talk about font pairings because so many mistakes can occur at this stage!
I believe you have at least be triggered by one design that has too many texts in different fonts. Even if you haven’t, first rule: don’t do that. Multiple fonts will confuse people since they don’t know which this design is trying to say and where to look at. So, when making a design, stick to two to three fonts. One font is acceptable but will make your design look boring if that’s a long text.
Next, you should be very critical when choosing fonts to go together, don’t just pick randomly. An important tip for your design is pairing fonts that have a strong contrast, one should be stronger, more dominant, and the other one is smaller, lighter. This will help not only balance the design but also establish a hierarchy where customers know which is more emphasized.
Think about the headlines and subtitles, or company names with their slogans put below, those are the perfect examples for font pairs. So, make sure you choose pairs that convey the same theme but are not too similar. A popular mix to display on shirts and any other design is between serif and san-serif fonts.
Free and cool fonts for t-shirts
Having known the basics for good font designs, now it’s time to create some designing ideas and choose the suitable typefaces! Remember to make up your mind first about which style you want to go for, or you will get lost in thousands of fonts available out there!
On the internet, there are multiple sites where you can find and download free fonts. DaFont is one of those sites where a huge number of free and demo fonts are available. They are categorized into different styles and themes for better search. You can even submit a font you have created on the site!
I hope this will be of help to you on your next projects. Don’t hesitate to try different fonts and you will create the best typography t-shirts in no time!