Team Tips

How to Get Cool Team Clothing

You've worked hard to prep your team. You've paid your fees, made your plans, spent hours in preparation. Why not look like a million bucks? Look at the photo albums from our past years (drop down above) to see how cool it looks to have full color shirts or CLICK HERE for some samples.

Production Options for Team Clothing

1. PREFERRED: Use Cafe Press: Cafe Press is a unique offering (I've found no other offerings that work as well). They can apply your logo and customization to each shirt. They have perfected a process called direct print in which they inkjet with permanent ink directly onto your item. And, they offer hundreds of items that can be customized with your logo.
   1. PROS: One design can be applied to many items. Each item can be customized without penalty (for example, we make a shirt for each person with their name). Online system is easy to use. Quick turnaround (2-4 days). Good quality garments (even our shirts from 4 years ago are still going strong). You can open a free store if you want just one one of each item (no customization) Basic stores (unlimited items) are about $6 per month. But you can close the store after the season.
   2. CONS:  Really none except cost. A typical shirt will cost  $14-17 but you only have to make what you need (no minimums). If you compare this to option 1 above it's really a good deal.
       
2. Do it Yourself: Using any number of iron on materials from a variety of vendors you can make great shirts yourself. There are now iron on transfers for light and dark shirts. The key to getting these to work is to FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS.
   1. PROS: Do it at home, can be done in a night. Can be done  in color (any thing you can design). Can be customized (since you are printing a graphic for each shirt).
   2. CONS: More expensive than you would expect (materials, ink, shirts).  You will spend, between ink, iron-on, and the shirt, at least $10 per item. Prone to error (which means you typically have to discard the garment). Relatively short wear life (may break up or fades after a few washings. Time consuming (doing 10 shirts will take you a few hours).
   3. WHERE TO FIND SUPPLIES:  Your local Staples, BestBuy, Office Depot, etc. will have the iron on inkjet material. Shirts can be purchased from local sports stores or Wal-Mart/Target (for white). Shirts should be 100% cotton for best results.
       
3. Use a Silk Screen Vendor: Silk screening is a process that uses inks pressed through screens into the garment. The screens provide a mask for the design.
   1. PROS: Relatively low cost in 1 or 2 colors. Can be put on almost any type of garment. Shops will offer a wide range of garment choices (which effects cost) Extreme garment life (image will rarely fade or crack). In large quantities (48+) this is a very affordable way to make shirt. You can often go to full color screen printing at this level
   2. CONS: Limited colors (fixed range).  No customization (every shirt is the same). Expensive with more than 2 colors. Typically must be ordered in large quantities to be affordable (24 or more). Set up fees are typically charged. Delivery time is typically 10-14 days for most shops.
   3. WHERE TO FIND VENDORS: Start in your local area. There are silk screen shops in almost every town and it's good to buy locally. After that, check online.

Tips for graphic design

Designing good graphics for your team's shirts is not difficult. Cafe Press provides templates for teach item (or class of items). Here's our suggested tools.

1. Buy Adobe Photoshop Elements: This is Adobe's basic image editing software and it can be purchased for less than $100 (it is often bundled with Premier Elements for $150. Premier is a very good video editing package). It's available at almost any technology/office store.
    
2. Create Graphics at the Actual Size at 200 dots per inch (pixels per inch) in RGB (Red/Green/Blue) color model. Cafe Press offers templates for each item that you just need to open in Photoshop and then add your graphics.
    
3. Make sure you have good starting graphics: You can download Postscript version of the FIRST logos for all programs. Postscript logos (ai, ps, eps, and pdf extensions)  can be converted to images at any resolution.
    
   1. For your team's Logo:
      Ideally it should be created in Illustrator or Freehand as a postscript, vector based graphic. This will let you apply it to any item at any size and allows for transparency. These can be converted to images at any resolution through PhotoShop. Have fun. Use color. Be creative. Hire a local graphic designer if you don't have the skill set on your team.
       
   2. For US FIRST resources go to:  http://www.usfirst.org
      Choose your program then choose "Marketing Tools" from the menu.
      Be sure to review the Intellectual Property Document from US FIRST. Specifically Section II paragraphs 1 and 2.

Happy designing! Let's see a sea of great shirts this year....

// Marco