Spoonflower is a custom fabric manufacturer that will print fabric in full color with no minimum order.

Custom Fabric Example From Spoonflower

We loved the possibilities from the start.  We immediately thought of clothing labels, printed patches that can be sewn on hats and clothing, panels for computer bags and more.

We were concerned about the quality of large-scale digital fabric printing.

An opportunity presented itself to give it a try.  We were interested in printing the full text of Emerson’s “Self Reliance” on an object for an office.  At first we focused on laser engraving a table or desktop, then we explored silk screening or large-scale “water-slide” decals that could be varnished onto a surface.  All of these were either too expensive ($800 to engrave a conference table) or to technically challenging (sliding a 4′ decal without creases).

Finally it occurred to us; why not print the essay on a few yards of fabric and have the fabric made into custom cushions?

We found a  copy of the essay online and prepared the content for printing by cutting and pasting into Adobe Illustrator.  After fussing with the letter size and spacing, we saved the text as outline and uploaded it to Spoonflower.

The cushions are to be used outside so we selected their heaviest fabric option, an upholstery weight cotton.

Here is Spoonflower’s online proof:

"Self Reliance" Proof.

Less than two weeks later, the fabric arrived by mail.

With some trepidation, we opened the package, expecting to see inconsistent and faint gray lettering, or poor quality fabric.

We were happily surprised.  The Fabric is sturdy and the print is consistent and dark:

Finished Fabric

The next step is to send the fabric to a seamstress and see how it looks finished. With luck we will move on to printing the remaining 5 chapters in a week or so.

The print looks nearly perfect in black against the light cream fabric.  It will be interesting to see how the process looks with full color art.

More images of the finished cushions to follow.

Check out Spoonflower here.

Long sleeve onesie template

Download the .eps version of this template or for more templates, visit our earlier post: “Product Design Templates“

With that as a backdrop, we set out to test what you get when you use a competitive design exchange to create a logo for $195.

The purpose of this test is to explore the identity design options available to smaller, informal tribes.

Setup
Our test tribe for this exercise is a 4th grade club soccer team in California.  Their league, LMYA Soccer, selects national team names for each club team,  we are working with Netherlands.  The uniform (jersey and shorts)  will have the league logo, but the rest of the equipment will be decorated with the teams’ logo.

The Netherlands soccer logo looks like this:

Netherlands Soccer Jersey

The tribe is looking to customize:

Duffel Bags
T-shirts
Shorts
Sweatpants
Rubber wristbands
Fat rubber bands for their cleats
Team Banners

The logo and colors should derive from the Netherlands’ identity, but not copy it.

We expect that the logo will be applied as a heat-transfer, direct fabric print, dye-sublimation and embroidery.  To work in all of these processes, it should be bold and clear without small details or small text.  It will have to work in Black and white as well as in full color.

The Competition
We posted the design competition on 99designs.com.  This site is the magnet for considerable criticism from the design community since it erodes the perceived value of proper design and design processes.  We used them nonetheless since many of our tribes have $200 or less to spend on the creation of a new logo.  For them it is 99designs(or equivalent), or clip art.

This is our second time using 99designs.  Our first contest was for a patch design for Tribal iD. In that test, we received 79 entries from 13 designers.

The results of the first contest are available here.

The new, Netherlands Soccer competition kicked off at noon Pacific time on Thursday the 13th and lasts for 7 days.  We generated a design brief using 99desings form and we filled it out as we thought a typical small, informal, tribe member might.

You can see our brief here.

Based on our earlier experience, we expect to start seeing entries within a day or two.

As the entries are submitted we have an opportunity to rate them and provide written feedback to the designers.  Last time we were diligent about providing immediate feedback.  As a result, the designers began to imitate the better rated submissions and the contest lost creativity.  This time we will respond to each designer privately and hold off rating the designs for a few days.

We will post updates over the next few days as submissions come in.

Update 1 (Day 2):

We received 4 design submissions so far.  The first three look good.  Our comments to the designers were that they are strong submissions, but a little severe for a young girls’ team.

Design submissions Day 2

Update Day 3:

Four more designs.  Two of them are iterations (and improvements) on earlier designs.  Two are new.

All four are pretty good, but we still like the golden lion images best.  The more colorful versions look too much like other soccer logos we have seen.  If the contest ended today, we would be pleased with either of the oval lion designs.

Logo Submissions Day 3

Upadate Day 4:

Eight more submissions were uploaded today.  These are significantly different from the earlier designs.  All use the Netherland’s yellow, and all focus on the lion head.  The designs by Jorge have a looser style.  Our preference is still for the earlier designs.

Logos Day 4

Final Entries:

The last two entries come from Gui, one of the earlier entrants. Gui, it turns out, is from Italy.

At the end of our last contest, we felt badly about the designers who did work and did not win, so we offered to make each of them a t-shirt for free.

We were surprised when we ended up sending shirts to Indonesia and Serbia.

Runner Up

The Winner!!

Vintage Triumph T-shirt

As usual, once I noticed this technique, I started seeing it everywhere.

Abercrombie uses this decoration technique on loads of their clothing.

It gives the shirts a weight and texture and has a great retro-appeal.

Abercrombie T-Shirt

So we started doing research into the process of creating shirts like these.

As you would expect it is more involved and more expensive than direct printing and heat transfer, but the steps are pretty straight-forward.

Purchase Cut Letters:
You can buy tackle-twill, felt and other letters on line pre-cut from a variety of companies.  Since college logo stores, teams and cheerleading squads are the major users of cut letters, the readily available fonts include block text and script.

We found a site, jetcuts.com that will cut out any design and they pre-apply a sticky film to the back of the letters so that they are easy to place.

To test the process, we started with a script version of our company name.

We bought 6 copies of the letters and had them cut from orange, slightly shiny tackle-twill.

Since the letters were to be embroidered on the t-shirts we were asked to specify the method of embroidery including satin, zig-zag or bean-stitch.  We chose a bean-stitch, which makes the letters appear as if they are hand-stitched to the garment.  Our hope was that since the bean-stitch leaves a small amount of the twill outside of the stitch, with use and washing the letters will fray a bit, giving the t-shirt a vintage look.

The letters arrived a little more than a week later.  At first we thought there was e a mistake. Instead of 6 copies of the cut letters, there was only on set in the package and the letters were almost 1/8in thick.  On closer inspection, we discovered that the letters were stacked with the adhesive lightly holding them together.

Along with the letters, Jetcut sent a floppy disk with a digital embroidery file.  This was a bit of a problem since we no longer have any computers  with floppy drives, but we bought one that works with the new Macs online for ~$30.

Place the letters
The next step was to place the letters on a few garments and send them out to be sewn.  Since they arrived with a pre-applied sticky film on the back, placing the letters was a snap with a ruler and a heat-press.

Hemp Shirt with Tackle-Twill Letters

We used three different shirts; a really nice kid’s polo from JCrew, a hemp t-shirt from ONNO, and a dark heather cotton Hanes beefy-t.

Embroidery
We took the shirts to AUR embroidery in the Hunter’s Point section of San Francisco, where our friend Kiet is kind enough to help us with small orders.

With Kiet’s help we picked different embroidery thread for each of the three shirts, two of them used a contrasting color and one matched (nearly).

About a week later we picked them up.

Results
We were very pleased with the results.  Everyone’s favorite was the kid’s JCrew polo.  The letters are placed a little low on the torso to avoid the buttons, but the overall look is great.  The adult t-shirts looked good, and I have worn the hemp shirt a couple of times (a pretty good sign considering the number of t-shirts lying around) but there were some issues.

Kids JCrew Shirt with Cut and Sewn Letters

First, the lettering is too small.  From edge to edge the name is about 9in wide.  The shirt is an XXL, and the name looks a little lost in the center of the chest.

Second, the matching color thread on the kids’ shirt looks much better than the contrasting thread that we used on the adult shirts.

Finally, the shiny tackle-twill is not a prefect match for the rough texture of the hemp shirt.  We will see if the shine dies down a bit with washing, but at them moment it doesn’t really fit the look.

Cut and Sew with Contrasting Thread

Follow up:
We still have 3 more sets of the script letters, so we are going to try some different designs.  The first, and most obvious is; we are going to put them on women’s size shirts.  On the smaller shirts, especially on a women’s polo, the size should work better.

Also, we are going to try a zig-zag stitch and a silk stitch.  Kiet says that he can adjust the digital stitch file without going back to jetcut so we will have him do one of each using a matching thread.

Most important, we are going to try a much larger sized letter.  The second batch will probably have to wait for a customer order, since we are focused on testing other things, but I will post the results when they are done.

3D printing, also called rapid prototyping or stereo lithography has been around for a few years and is in widespread use in the development of prototype objects.

A 3D printer creates a three-dimensional product by making a succession of very thin layers which are bonded together to create the whole object.

Imagine taking a small object, a cell phone for example, and slicing it into many, very thin layers.  3D printing is the inverse.  The layers are created and then assembled into a model.  This process is very useful in producing models of objects, particularly when the model cannot easily be made using a more traditional method such as carving a block or molding clay.

Because virtually anything can be assembled from very thin slices, shockingly complex and beautiful models are regularly created by the printer manufacturers to demonstrate their capabilities.

The drawback has been that the models, although highly detailed and precise, are fragile.  The uses for a complex, but breakable parts were limited to models and prototypes that could then be manufactured by more traditional means.

Recently, printer manufacturers have developed methods of building models from metals, typically a combination of stainless steel and bronze.

Using metals allows the production of objects that are useful and sturdy, as well as nearly infinitely customizable.

To test out the new material, today we placed an order for custom cufflinks from Shapeways, a young company in the Philips incubator program.  Shapeways is dedicated to pushing 3D printing out of the laboratories and high-end commercial realm and into consumer’s hands.  Early enthusiasts include model makers, artists and the “Maker” crowd.  With the introduction of simply customizable “blanks” like the cufflinks, it is easier to understand how consumers may begin to see the value that the futurists have described for years.

We look forward to working with Shapeways to create more blanks that can be customized by our Tribes to create unique and useful items.

There are three ways to share customized products with your Tribe:

1. Share a Custom Product through email
2. Invite friends to “join the tribe”
3. Place a free Tribal ID “widget” on en existing group website

There is no charge for creating a tribe, using a widget and creating and sharing customized designs.

Share a Product Through Email:

Once a product mock-up is ready it will appear on your Tribe page or widget.

Tribe Page with Product

Clicking on the image or the “View Details” button brings up the product detail page.

Product Detail Page

Below the price and above “additional information” there is a “[share this page]” link.  Click on this link to email the product to a friend.

Email Product

You have two options: cut and paste the email link into you mail program and send it, or click on SHARE and a window will pop up allowing you to send the link.

*** This is a pretty good time to ask your friend to join your Tribe.  Once they are members of the tribe, they can comment on the products and add customized products to the collection.

Invite Friends to Join the Tribe:

Joining your tribe allows your friends to comment on the tribe, comment on products and make customized products of their own.  The simplest way to invite friends is to select “invite friends by email” on your Tribe page.

Invite Friends

Just enter their email in the box on the left and they will receive a message inviting them to join.  You can also use your existing address book from Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail by entering your address and password on the right.

Place a Widget on Your Existing Webpage or Blog

The most convenient way to share your Tribe collection and comments with your friends is through a “widget.”  A widget is a couple of lines of HTML that is cut and pasted onto your website creating a real-time link to your tribe page.  Any time a product is added, removed or changed the widget will reflect the changes.  And, you can click on a product on your widget to purchase a product.

Here is an example of a widget installed on the Tam Trailblazers’ Ning page:

Trailblazers' Widget

Adding a widget to your page is simple.  On your Tribe page, press the button “Share Your Products on Blogs and More.” A window will pop up with your widget displayed and a small “snippet” of code that can be cut and pasted onto your blog or webpage.

Widget

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

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

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

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.