Product Design Templates

Here is a list of downloadable, copyright-free templates for apparel customization. Click on the link and the file will either show up in your browser where you can save it to your hard drive, or it will download directly to your hard-drive.

If neither of these work, try right-clicking on the link and select “download link.”

If all else fails, email us at info@tribalid.com and we will send it to you.

• Generic T-shirt Template (multiple sizes on different layers)
• Women’s Polo Shirt:  White, Dark Grey (front only)
• Men’s Polo Shirt: White, Black
• Men’s T-Shirt
• Long Sleeve T-Shirt: Black, White
• Organic Long-Sleeve 6-12 Onesie
• Hoodie Template: White, Black
• Baseball Cap (unstructured adjustable fit): Tan, Black

• Patagonia Men’s Shelled Synchilla Jacket (can be used as a general men’s windbreaker template)
• Men’s Wool Jersey: Dark Grey

Send us an email request if you need others:  info@tribalid.com

Do you Play Polo? Creating your Own Brand Icon

I like Polo shirts, from Polo.  I wear Underarmour, Nike, Carhartt and The North Face.  I would like to wear more Patagonia, but they don’t fit quite right.  I love the quality of the clothing manufactured by these brands.  But am I a Polo guy, or something else?

I think a lot about comfortable/modern architecture and design, and I write a blog about it called Farmhouse Modern.  Should my brand reflect that or the Ralph Lauren identity?  I don’t play polo.  I don’t own a jet or even one classic convertible sports car, I do however, own a pneumatic nail gun and a chicken coop.

What about Underarmour? I wear a bunch of their clothes.  Is it more me to wear the Underarmour “U” or my 6 year olds lacrosse logo?  I do not play professional sports, and I do not require performance underclothing while enduring freezing nights at my post in Afghanistan, I do run up and down the sidelines wondering where the line is between supporting and badgering.  You get the point.

It’s not that I don’t support these brands and their desire to let their logo symbolize quality and style.  It’s just that I am more about my life and my groups and my aspirations, than I am about their generalized, idealized images.

So how does this relate to Tribal ID?

It is pretty easy to create your own brand.  It is not very difficult to have the best of both worlds.  If you are going to wear a logo on your polo shirt, bag or t-shirt, why not use a logo (really a small icon) that comes from something that really matters to you?  (In some cases you can even add your identity to your favorite brand’s shirts)

An easy first step is to create your own polo-player/alligator… for a new polo shirt.  Here’s how:

1. Create a version of your logo/identity that will look good small
2. Try a few color combinations
3. Buy one

Create A Small Logo/Icon

Most of the polo shirt logos are small, and have 1 or 2 colors.  A good target size is 3/4″ wide by 5/8″ tall. Start with one color.  I like high-contrast, but not clashing colors (white on black, grey on navy…), but clashing and even same or subtly different shades from the shirt body color work for some.

Take out any text unless the text is the full 5/8″ tall.  Text embroiders poorly below 1/4″ and is not great even at that size.  Full-height text (IBM, LEGO, JTR) works fine.

Exaggerate spaces between elements.  Small gaps do not work very well in embroidery at this size.  Consider moving elements 1/16″ or so apart.

Remove tiny details.  Try viewing the logo at 40 pixels by 40 pixels.  If it looks good it will probably work on your shirt.

Try a few color combinations

In the design process, you have the opportunity to change the embroidery thread color and the shirt color before giving the OK on the design and producing an actual shirt.  The technology is pretty good for creating a “mock-up” showing how the shirt will look…pretty good, but not perfect.  Before committing to a large order make sure to get a sample.  If you don’t love it, get another sample made.  The beauty of made-for-one manufacturing is that it doesn’t cost much to make a single unit.  You cannot tell how an item will look until you have it in your hands.

TIP

It is much easier to create a new icon from scratch than it is to reduce an existing logo to icon size.  Give it a try.  Start with the major elements of your existing logo, but work at 3/4″ x 5/8″ scale and see what comes out.  I like to use mikons.com for this.  It is easy and free.  One you have a design that you like it can be uploaded into Tribal ID and we will create an embroidery file (.DST), and together we can build some shirt mock-ups in different colors.

Example:

The Green Room logo was created by Beth O’Rourke of Minibike.
The shape is wrong for use as and icon and there is too much detail.

To change this into a usable icon, let’s cut the words off, clean up the lines, and remove the green gradient from inside the “room.”

The result looks like this:

I used Illustrator to create the simplified version. The steps were:

1. Resize the artboard to .75in x .625in and scale the image to fit the artboard snugly
2. Copy the existing logo into a new layer
3. Erase extraneous details
4. Remove points and adjust the drawing outlines to match the original drawing
5. Remove all colors
6. Save for Web and Devices at 40px x 40px to see if it looks OK
7. Save as Illustrator 8 EPS (required for conversion to embroidery file)

The Next step is to select a “blank” shirt to modify.

Using a design template, mock up the shirt with the icon at 3/4″ x 5/8.”  Here is an eps template you can use for a women’s polo: Women’s White Polo Template (EPS).

Cut and paste your design so that it fits into the orange outline on the left chest.  Try different color combinations.

Here is an example of how it might look:

Women's Polo Mock Up

How to Use Tribal ID Part 1, Creating a Custom Collection

Creating items customized with your tribe’s identity involves three steps:

1. Create a Tribe
2. Select items to customize
3. Apply designs to the items

Although Tribal ID is still in early BETA, meaning that we chose to launch it before all of the functionality was complete, all of the basic steps are possible, although with a bit of human intervention.

Create a Tribe:

This step is simple.  On the homepage, enter the name of your Tribe in the box next to the “Create” button.

Home Page (varies slightly the second time you visit)

Don’t worry if you are not sure of a name, it can be changed at any time.  When you have entered your tribe name hit the “Create” button.

Tribe Details Page

On this screen you enter a description of your tribe, add Tags,upload an image, pick a color and a font.  The description and tags are used by our search engine to help people find your tribe and to browse other tribes to get ideas.  Everything on this page can be changed at any time.

Tribe colors and fonts are used on your Tribe page, a free page created by Tribal ID to display  your images, products, members and comments, and on a widget that you may choose to install on your existing Tribe site or blog.

Upload a Tribe Image

Your Tribe image is used to decorate your Tribe page and for creating customized items.  You are not required to upload a tribe image at this point, but it makes the Tribe page look better.

To upload an image, prepare a good, clean version of your logo or art in .jpg, .png or .gif format.  For the Tribe page the image will be displayed at 326 x 326 pixels.  Uploading a much larger or smaller image, or an image that is very tall or very wide will cause it to look distorted on the page.

When you are ready, click on the “Choose File” button and a box will pop up that allows you to select your file for upload.  Simply click “Submit” and your Tribe is ready.

Once you hit the “Submit” button you are taken to a Tribe homepage.  A sample product “blank” is displayed, and the Tribe name or Tribe image appears in the image display area in the upper left.

Select Items to Customize

In this step you select items to customize “blanks”, upload additional images for use in the customization and send the information to our designers to create examples of how the product will appear after customization.

You can browse the items in our blanks collection in two ways.

1. A large product image with a sample set of  blanks appear on the right of the page. You can select the large product image to choose the product for customization.  Or, you can click any of the smaller images beneath and they will repalce the large image, and can then be selected for customization.
   

   Select blanks to Customize

2. You can also search for a blank by typing into the box next to the “add products” label above the large product image.  A list of blanks will be returned that match your search.  If you do not see something interesting, try changing your search.  For example, “Cap” returns different results than “hat.”  If you still do not see anything interesting, remove your search term and hit “Search” and you will see a comprehensive list of customizable blanks.
   

   Product Search Results

If you cannot find a product that you like, email us at info@tribalid.com describing what you are looking for and we will look for a blank that matches your needs.

Apply Designs to Your Selected “Blanks”

When you hit the “Customize” button or “add +” beneath a blank you will be taken to a page that asks you to enter a description of the customized product, select or upload an image to use in customizing the blank, and type in a description of the customized product.

Product Customization Information

The Product Description information is where you write, in your own words, what the customized product is and why it is interesting to your Tribe.  For example, a custom tattoo may be “a great way to scare the kids.”  The manufacturer’s information and the basic product description will be supplied by us.

Next you have the opportunity to upload an image file for us to use in the customization.  Don’t worry if you do not have a design that you like, we can help you create one.  If you do have an image, upload it in .jpg, .png or .gif format and type in any instructions into the “enter instructions here” box.  As a general rule of thumb, 300dpi images reproduce well. For example, if you want a large image across the chest of a man’s t-shirt, upload an image that is 2400px – 3000px wide.

The Special Instructions area is where you tell us how you would like the blank to be customized.  e.g. “put a 2″ tall logo in black and white on the pocket and the text “save our schools” in a matching font in white across the back shoulders.”  We will contact you in the course of designing the product, but this gives us a head start.

Creating Your Custom Products

We will receive your instructions and contact you.  Many items have a wide variety of customization options.  They may be printed, engraved, embroidered or decorated with heat-transfers.  We will contact you to discuss options and to work through any issues related to design, file type, colors and design placement.

When we have finished creating mock-ups for you you will get an email from us saying that the product is ready and it will appear on your tribe page ready to order.  Customized product designs can be removed, changed and new products can be added at any time.

For now, all prices include shipping and handling.  Tax will be computed if the order is shipped in California.

Once an order is placed it takes from 2 days to several weeks to create the products, and in many cases we will contact you in production to get your feedback.

Have fun and don’t worry about creating too many designs.  We are learning about what people like and don’t like and using that information to make the site better.

Click here for How to Use Tribal ID Part 2

Creating custom products for your “Tribe”

Tribal ID exists to help people create custom products that reflect their group identity.  New technologies make it cost effective to create custom products for nearly the same price as mass-produced goods.  These technologies include direct textile printers, desktop engraving machines and digital presses.  All of these technologies remove the time, cost and skilled labor that used to be required to customize apparel and non-apparel products.  As a result individuals and small groups can now easily and quickly create merchandise that carries their brand rather than mass-produced, impersonal decoration.

Great new companies are emerging to take advantage of this technological change and are offering a growing list of items that can be designed online and produced in units of one, often within a couple of days.  These companies are making traditional branded promotional and art items like t-shirts, hats and mugs.  But a new crop of companies are taking it a step further and building a wide variety of items from laser engraved computers and cutting boards to individually customized digital cameras.

With the new opportunity to create customized products comes a challenge.  Not everyone has the skill, time or courage to develop their own designs.  By using the group communication tools made popular by Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and a variety of group sites like Google Groups and Ning, groups of people, typically organized around a passion, can work together to create a look that can be applied to items.  By building collections of group-branded products, these “Tribes” have the opportunity to wear or carry a representation of their passion.

Tribal ID makes it easy for groups to create unique items that reflect their group identity.

This blog will chronicle our efforts to help groups find and customize interesting items, and will offer advice on how to build “I have to have one” items.