How to Create a Custom Poker Shirt
Tutorial - Part 1
In this article we will walk you through the process of creating your very own poker shirt that you can wear at your next poker night with your friends!
Step 1- Design Concept
Well, here is what we know... You have a poker night coming up in one week and you want to get a good laugh out of your friends when you show up with a custom T-Shirt that shows a little arrogance. This will help break the tension and keep the focus off your hand so you can bluff your way to be the "King of the Chips" that night. That's it!!! a custom "King of the Chips" shirt is your idea!!! Awesome, we have the start of a design concept. All great designs start with an idea or catch phrase that you will later put some graphics to and introduce either some irony (for humor) or some serious clean graphics for a cool new look. We'll attempt to do both here.
Step 2 - Research
Were going to start by doing some online research to see if there are any other designs out there that catch our eye or do what we were thinking. First stop Google. We'll do a Google image search for "King of the Chips" + "Poker shirt" and other variations of that. Nothing that really caught our eye there. Next, we'll search on CafePress and Zazzle for "Poker shirts". We found a few that we've posted to the right, but nothing like we want. Back to the drawing board.
Step 3 - Gather Resources
What can we do to get the ball rolling here? Well, we could probably find a good Poker font online on a site like Fonts.com to start with. That will give the design some flavor. We found one online called CoffeeTin that will work great!
Now we should get some Poker graphics from a clipart site like 123RF Stock Photos. We're looking for poker chip clipart, or anything that has a poker "feel" to it. The creative process will modify and adapt here as we find usefull resources that incorporate into the design.
Here is some clipart comps from 123RF Stock Photos that we thought would be cool for a shirt:
As a side note, when buying clipart images from sites like 123RF Stock Photos, make sure to buy the appropriate print liscense so that you can use the clipart on your design. Here is a Summary of Usages & License Types on their website.
On 11-30-11 we contacted customer support at 123RF through their online chat. Through their easy to use friendly interface we asked: OK. so if we wanted to purchase clipart for use on a t-shirt we are creating that is going to be posted on CafePress and/or zazzle, what license would we purchase? The response from 123RF was specifically: In that case, you will need the extended print license. They ultimately recommended going with the full comprehensive license. For reference, the extended print license only covers up to 10,000 copies while the comprehensive license is unlimited. Either way, it is always up to the party responsible for making sure that the right license is purchased to cover the usage your clipart is intended for.
If you have questions on copyright with the images you are using on your shirts, check out this interesting article on eHow.
