There are several ways to approach the same tasks in our store, but for ease of explanation this tutorial will cover one way to do each one. From the home page at badwolfshirts.com, click the “Design Studio” tab. Options on the left allow you to choose a product (youth or adult, one-sided or two-sided printing), pick a shirt color, add text, and choose or upload artwork.
Using a Pre-Existing Design (You Can Still Change It!)
The quickest design option is to use a template already available in the store. From the Design Studio, click “Artwork” in the left-hand menu and select “Design Ideas.” You will be shown a list of all of our play titles. Choose one and then select a design (some plays have more options than others right now; we’ll be adding more for all).
Your chosen design will appear on the smiling model. If you want to order the shirt as-is, simply click “Checkout” underneath the picture. If you want to alter it, you can do that too. Each image and word is a separate “layer” in the design. This means you can change any one layer without affecting the rest. You could delete a word, add a word, shrink an image, change a font, etc. Just click on the layer you want to edit or delete. The appropriate menu for that layer (text or image) will appear and allow you to make changes. To delete any layer, click the X. To add an additional layer, choose “Add Text” or “Artwork” from the left-hand menu. Have fun with all the nifty design tools! When you are happy with your design, click “Checkout” underneath the picture.
Creating Your Own Design
If you’re a blank-slate kind of person, starting from scratch is also easy to do. From the Design Studio, click “Artwork” in the left-hand menu and select “Clip Art.” From here you can select “Bad Wolf Art” and “Clip Art.”
Using Bad Wolf Art
The Bad Wolf Art category contains black-and-white illustrations by our own designers. Many of them are the same images shown on the covers and pages of our plays. We’ve organized them into several different categories, including “Historical Figures,” “Characters,” and “Nature.” Feel free to be creative when using these! An illustration of Alice (of Wonderland), for example, could be used as any number of characters. Most have no background, so you can use them on any colored shirt without a white box showing around the image.
Using Clip Art
The Clip Art category contains a huge variety of stock images, both color and black-and-white, that come with the software. You’ll find everything here from holiday icons to business-related symbols to skulls (!). If you’re designing shirts to use as play costumes, especially check out the Music and Design Elements categories. These are great for adding a bit of flourish to your design, such as a musical note or a fleur-de-lis. The Mascots category has a ton of animal images to supplement Bad Wolf’s animal illustrations. (Again, don’t hesitate to use our store to print t-shirts for anything you need—it doesn’t have to be used only for creating student costumes! We wanted to be sure to include a solid selection of stock art so that our store would be fully functional, and you could get the same low prices on any shirt you create.)
Uploading Your Own Art
If the images in the store don’t cut it for you, you can also add your own. From the Design Studio, choose “Upload Image” in the left-hand menu. The screen will show you the acceptable file types. Once you upload an image, it will be displayed on the screen along with tools that allow you to remove the background or individual colors. (Note that the tool can only remove the background if there is a clear delineation between it and the rest of the image.)
Designing Shirts with Character Names or Numbers
We’ve added some simple templates for quickly creating different shirts for each actor in your show. From the Design Studio, click “Artwork” and then “Design Ideas.” The first category there is called “Character Names/Numbers (All Plays).” Choose this and you’ll see a variety of character names (some with numbers) shown in fun fonts. Select a design and click on the text to edit it. You can change the fonts, sizes, and placement.
Sharing Your Designs with Others (So They Can Buy Their Own)
One of the coolest features of the store is that you can create a design and then send it out via email or social media so parents or colleagues can purchase their own shirts! (No more having to collect money, manage sizes, or put a big purchase on your credit card and hope to get reimbursed.) In the Design Studio, before clicking “Checkout,” click “Save and Share” instead. You’ll be prompted to create an account and save your design, and then the links will appear for sharing the design.
Your recipients will receive an email containing an image of the design and a link to where they can order or edit it, along with any notes you added.
TRY IT NOW AT BADWOLFSHIRTS.COM!
Have other ideas or requests for the t-shirt shop? Write a comment below or email us at contact@badwolfpress.com.