Any company that is trying to get itself known needs to consider branding. Branding strategies come into play with all forms of advertising and promotion, and this includes your custom printed t-shirts. This guide takes a look at some of the important branding considerations you should make when printing custom t-shirts for your company.
Characteristics of successful branding strategies
The success of a brand can be measured in the reaction of the customer. The first thing that a good brand does is grab the customer’s attention. Some brands do this by being as ‘loud’ as possible, with bright logos, catchy slogans and lots of weird and wonderful associations. There are some brands that take such efforts to extremes, forsaking their own dignity just to get noticed as much as possible! Others are more subtle, mute their colors and cater more to a conservative crowd. But whatever your audience may be, you’ll need to focus on the second characteristic.
The second characteristic of a good brand is consistency. This means applying the same themes, color schemes, graphics and logos across all products and advertising materials, in the real world and online. Naturally there will be some changes across different media, but for things like logos and company color scheme, you should aim to make things as consistent as possible. When the time comes to make changes to branding, this should occur gradually and across all advertising channels at the same time.
A good brand is also one that connects emotionally with its audience. For so many different consumers, the selection between one product/service and another rests on emotion. This is why the best brands are the ones that incite an emotional response, and make the customers actually feel something.
Making these strategies work for custom printed t-shirts
Now that we have covered what can make a brand successful, let’s put this in context to your t-shirt printing.
It is not enough to just have a small logo that no one can see clearly, or to rely on a bland, boring design. You need to catch the customer’s attention. Offsetting the logo color with the t-shirt color can help here, as can printing the logo on both sides. You should create a completely unique logo that stands out for its design and lettering. Slogans, graphics and images can make good additions, and if you do add these options, make sure they are memorable. It is vital that you put in time and effort to finding the right design, and play around with designs and color schemes until you find something that works. It is always best to hire a professional graphic design artist to create the final logo, and make sure you are able to consult closely with them.
Always remember the key branding rule of consistency when creating your printed t-shirt design. The same colors, shades and hues found on your tees should be found on your products, labels and advertising, and your printed t-shirts should evoke the same overall response that your products invoke. The reason for this consistency is to create a memory in your target audience. Think of Apple, with their simple logo, and simple design schemes, or Tide, with their distinctive red, yellow and blue target logo. It’s the same design on different products, all consistent and memorable. One is black, white and silver, the other with bold colors, but they both evoke a single aesthetic.
Because t-shirts have a large surface area, this gives you a good opportunity to use graphics and messages that exploit the emotional connection. While it takes years of successful branding for a single logo to make the user feel all those things that they like about a brand, you can instantly connect with the consumer’s emotional side with images and graphics. So when promoting your brand identity, keep this in mind.