Coming up with a great design can be a lot of work and can take some time.
So why not be more efficient by getting as much out of each design as possible?
How to make your bestselling t-shirt design work for other products
Hi, it’s Noni from Printful’s Marketing team!
In this video, I’ll show you how you can take your existing t-shirt designs from your
file library and apply them to other products.
Using your best-selling designs on other products will help you maximize your profit.
Think of it this way—if someone's buying a t-shirt because they love the design, they're
very likely to buy a matching phone case with the same cool design.
It's also an opportunity to experiment with the designs that haven't been as successful
as you'd like them to be.
Maybe you just haven't yet found the right product for them!
We’ll look into adjusting t-shirt print files for posters, mugs, and phone cases.
Designs for these products need the least amount of adjustments so you can expand your
catalog with ease!
So how do you repurpose your existing designs?
When you upload a design file to use on your Printful products, it gets saved in your file
library.
You can use that design on any product from the Printful catalog.
All you have to do is go to Product templates on your Printful Dashboard, click on New template,
pick your new product, and then choose your design from the file library.
Then, you can make your changes to your design using our Generator.
In some cases it’ll be better to adjust your design in the software you used to create
it as that'll give you the most flexibility.
Now let’s take a look at what you need to pay attention to when using your t-shirt designs
for posters, mugs, and phone cases specifically.
Posters
Posters come in two finishes – glossy, which
helps colors pop and works well with photographs,
and matte, which is good with text or pastel colors.
Photographs, typography, and designs with bold, eye-catching colors are the best for
posters in general.
The size and shape of posters vary, and so does the print area.
Depending on your t-shirt design, you might be able to add your graphic to a poster without
any need for adjustment, or you'll need to think about how to best fit your graphic in
the available space.
For this reason, it's helpful to keep your design elements separated into their own layers
if you use design software like Photoshop so that it’s easier to move them around.
And don’t forget to make sure that your design is in high quality so you get the best print quality possible!
Having a high definition graphic is essential if you want to use your t-shirt design on
the larger posters–your design will scale to fit the print area, you have to make sure
it doesn’t lose quality.
And a quick tip: adjust your design based on the poster sizes you want to add to your
store.
You can check the file size requirements in the File guidelines tab on each product page.
Mugs
There are different types of mugs available
so pick one that fits your brand. For example, choose enamel mugs if you have an adventurous,
outdoorsy brand, or choose mugs with color inside if you have a collection of playful
designs.
There are also Magic mugs that let you keep your designs a surprise until a hot drink
is poured into them.
And if you prefer classics—go with the White Glossy Mugs that are available in two sizes.
The main thing to keep in mind with mugs is that the print area is horizontal and not
vertical, the way it is on t-shirts.
That means, if your design allows for it, you can wrap your art around the mug.
If your design can't be easily flipped from vertical to horizontal, you can pick specific
placements for elements in your design.
I’d suggest aligning them to either the left or right side of the mug, or using
our Mockup Generator tool that lets you mirror your design on both sides of the mug.
You can even make a pattern using your design and cover the mug with it. Also, keep in
mind that while you can fill in the background with a color in our Generator, this doesn't
color the entire mug.
Simple text designs work great with mugs.
But if you have a design with both an illustration and text in it—rearrange your elements to
fit the horizontal layout. For example, I want this design to take up more space on
the Enamel mug.
To do that, I'll open it up in Photoshop and move the layers containing these two leaves
to the sides of the strawberry.
After that I'll save the file as PNG and drag it into the File Library.
Then I can just place it on my mug and mirror the design so it shows up on both sides of
the mug.
Phone cases
While t-shirts have a print area with no obstructions,
phone cases are a little more complicated.
Phone cases are more narrow and differ in size depending on the phone model and you
also have to account for camera cut-outs which differ from phone to phone. Make sure that
important parts of your design aren't located where the camera cut-out is.
If you have a design with the background filled in, you might have to resize it to fit the
phone case.
If you’ve kept the background as a separate layer in your original design file, disabling
your background makes it easier to adapt your design to fit the phone print area.
You can also add some elements to it to fill out the print area if your design calls for it.
For this design, I’ll open it in Photoshop and disable the background fill.
That leaves me with a design that’s easier to position for the print area.
If you have trouble figuring out where to place your design elements, you can download
a Print file template for any product in the Product info page under the Print file templates tab.
Note that the cases are transparent, so if you leave the background empty, the case
will be see-through. Keep this in mind when thinking about how best to adjust your
design.
Leaving the background empty can be done well with Liquid Glitter cases where you can see
the glitters shining through the transparent areas on the case.
Once your products are designed, click continue and then save the product template.
Now, you can use your templates to order for yourself, or add products to your store.
I hope this video will help you repurpose your best-selling designs so you can put them
out there for everyone to see!
How have you diversified your product catalog?
Let us know in the comments below!