How to Design Your Own Vintage Tee
- 1). Choose an event or theme that brings to life a slice of the past by perusing T-shirt catalogs and visiting websites of companies featuring vintage tees to spark your imagination. Evaluate designs, typefaces and colors, as your re-creation of a bygone era's art will look more authentic if you're a stickler for detail.
- 2). Boot your computer and open a new document in your favorite draw program. Choose a drawing tool to render the outline of a tee to scale so you don't have to make adjustments to the finished art when the design is complete. Import copyright free graphics from stock photo studios or your own files if your design calls for one or more.
- 3). Use your software's layers feature to combine individual elements--for example, draw a large peace symbol to fashion the background of your vintage tee on layer one. Import a photographic image of two fingers forming a peace sign to create layer 2. Continue to add graphic elements, removing backgrounds if you intend to flatten the design so all of the layers show through. Consult a T-shirt tutorial for help laying out your art.
- 4). Access your color picker to select hues that represent the era you're recalling on your vintage tee: hot, neon versions of green, red, pink, blue, yellow and orange to represent the Woodstock era or mottled greens, browns and blacks for World War II-styled military vintage tees. It's OK to borrow colors from your reference material (Step 1), keeping this in mind: replicate design and colors too accurately and you could set yourself up for copyright infringement accusations.
- 5). Choose typefaces that are appropriate for the era you're saluting on your vintage T-shirt; opt for fonts like Desdemona if your design is vintage 1920s or Papyrus to add copy to a tee that commemorates a truly old occasion or sentiment. Make sure the font you pick will survive enlargement before committing or you'll ruin a beautiful design with pixelated copy.
- 6). Access your Filters menu for dynamic ways to customize your vintage t-shirt before you group everything together. Output the design art on paper. Tweak the arrangement or other elements if changes are needed. Pick one of the many fabrication techniques currently available to produce vintage tees: silk screening, embroidery or hot iron decal transfer. Prep the art for printing.
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