You work hard to make the best t-shirts possible. So, why would you go cheap on design software? Designing your own products is easy with Canva t-shirt design software. With ready-to-use, pre-made templates that are easy to personalize with your own images, fonts, and colors, t-shirt design online has never been easier. It’s a beginner-friendly t-shirt design!
Anyone with a printer can make something look good. But what about creating something truly unique? Fashion designer shirts are more than just looking stylish. Fashion T-Shirts are about uniqueness, originality, chic designs, incredible detail, and unique ideas.
These are all very important things to consider if you want to create truly unique t-shirt designs that your customers will absolutely love! That’s where Online Graphic Design Software For T-Shirts comes in.
Inkscape
This open-source image editor is specialized in vector graphics, making it the free counterpart to Adobe Illustrator. It’s among the most respected free design software because of its huge range of advanced tools and effects, allowing you to make whatever t-shirt design you have in mind with useful features like path-based text.
Vexels T-Shirt Maker
Whether you’re designing merch for your brand, selling custom T-shirts online, or even looking to quickly design cool custom T-shirts for your friends and family, Vexels offers a smooth and beginner-friendly tool for all your needs.
With Vexels, you get access to a huge collection of templates and graphics you can use to design your own custom T-shirts.
The best part of Vexels, however, is its beginner-friendly online editor where you can easily find graphics, icons, and artworks. As well as edit pre-made templates, change colors, add text, and even upload your own designs.
Pros
- Access to over 70,000 high-quality graphics and templates
- Easily create and edit designs using the online editor
- Download designs in print-ready formats
- Comes with commercial licenses for selling on POD platforms
Cons
- Requires a subscription to sell the designs on your store
Krita
You know Krita was made with designers in mind because they have a set of tutorials to guide you through the more complex aspects of the software. Created by artists and completely free, Krita includes customizable brushes and tools for you to fine-tune your designs and is particularly suited to cartoon or comic-style illustrations.
Print Shop
Print Shop by Design Hill lets you create custom shirt designs that are printed and shipped to you.
This tool uses a builder with some drag-and-drop and some click tools. The template options are what make this t-shirt design software stand out. You can add artwork from a ready-made gallery and include any additional customizations you might have. It’s quick and easy.
Pros
- You can choose shirt options and design in the same place (one screen website design)
- Templates make design easy
- Tool checks for print quality of graphics to ensure quality
Cons
- The interface is a little clunky
- Hard to use if you don’t have a ready to import design or use one of their templates
- You have to buy shirts from this website
GIMP
The granddaddy of free photo editing and graphic design software, GIMP has long been the free alternative to Photoshop for millions of users. Stocked with customizable tools and updated regularly by its team of volunteers, GIMP is as good as you’ll get without spending a penny.
Design a Shirt
Design a Shirt is another free t-shirt builder that’s built into a website that allows you to order shirts. The tools allow you to add images and text on all different colors and styles of shirts.
The best feature of this tool is the Idea Gallery, which includes some basic templates to help you start a shirt design project. Search by type of shirt to jumpstart projects.
The software is a combination of click to place and drag and drop. It can be somewhat clunky at first but does allow for good control of the design.
Pros
- You can see the design come together on the screen
- Change the shirt color of style and see your design on it
- The idea gallery can speed up projects if you don’t know what you want
Cons
- The interface is a little clunky
- Clipart options are very “clip art-ish”
- You have to buy shirts from this website
CorelDraw
Graphic designers use CorelDraw for a range of vector designs. It’s particularly useful for t-shirts because it comes stocked with clipart and images that you can use, and has a clean, intuitive design. Some new users may find it difficult to learn, but there’s plenty of manuals and tutorials for budding designers.
CustomInk
This in-browser designer is made specifically for t-shirts and is one of the easiest designers to use. There are hundreds of images included from various categories, and easy options to add names and numbers for shirts for your sports team or project group.
Custom Ink allows you to create a t-shirt design and order all in one tool. You can add text, images, and custom graphics as you build a design on-screen.
The shirt builder has a ton of images to help you get started from athletic logo styles to emojis to occupational imagery. Just drag and drop the image onto the shirt preview and you are ready to go.
One of the best features of this online t-shirt software is that it has a background grid that ensures your text and image elements are in safe printing zones for different shirt sizes and styles. The rest of the interface is pretty sleek, too.
You can create shirts for selling or a little league team in minutes from start to finish.
Pros
- Easy to use builder
- Robust graphics options, even licensed team imagery
- Ability to add names and numbers for sports teams
Cons
- You need a basic idea of your design to get started
- You have to order shirts from this website after you create the design
PlaceIt
Placeit is the one true design tool in this list and doesn’t require you to buy shirts after you design them, but that comes with a catch – not all the shirt designs are free.
Design can be as little as $2.95 or free with a subscription.
This t-shirt tool though has some of the best-designed options in terms of templates, and the interface is easy to use when it comes to custom designs. Then you can export your design for use anywhere you like. (Although they do offer shirt orders, too.)
Pros
- Easy to use interface
- Better clip art than alternatives
- Can order shirts anywhere
Cons
- Designs are not on shirt mockups for you to see
- Not always free
One More Option …
One more option when it comes to free t-shirt design tools is to download a template, customize it in whatever tool you prefer, and then upload it to a printer.
This semi-custom option requires a little more time and work but gives most designers the control they want when working on a shirt design. (You can even upload basic artwork to one of the vendors above and add additional elements with their tools.)
This option is great if you have an idea of what you want, but don’t have a lot of time. Marketplaces are packed with simple templates, there are great professional designs to choose from, and most are “free” with your current subscription. (Envato Elements is great for this reason.)
The trick here is to create a single design that will work on whatever color shirts you order because you won’t be able to change it later.
Pros
- Semi-custom design in your software of choice
- Many shirt download packages have multiple shirt variations (such as the example above)
- Order shirts anywhere you want
Cons
- Takes more time
- Requires cost or a marketplace subscription
- Have to finalize design before working with a shirt vendor
Conclusion
On this website, you can create your own t-shirts with several shirts built-in. This would be great for the DIY-ers. Thousands of free graphics are available to use straight from the website. For those that would rather not pick their own colors or graphics, there is an option to purchase customizable shirts that already have designs on them. Once you have chosen a design, you can pick your shirt type and size.