How I Create T-Shirt Designs Using Canva


Hello, this is Mandy Lee, and in this lesson, we’ll go over how to create t-shirt designs in Canva. Canva is one of the most popular online design and creative tools.

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The Canva t-shirt design tool is one of the simplest and quickest ways to create t-shirt designs, even if you’re not a designer. Canva has everything you need to easily produce stunning t-shirt designs if you run a print-on-demand t-shirt business. Your designs can be added to any platform, including Merch by Amazon, Teespring, Redbubble, and other print-on-demand marketplaces.

The pre-made templates make it simple for anyone, including beginners, to produce stunning t-shirt designs. So, to get started, go to the Canva t-shirt design tool. Simply click the link in the article description to access the Canva t-shirt designer.

This will bring you to the Canva custom t-shirt page. You can discover more about the Canva t-shirt design tool and their t-shirt printing service on this page. They provide a plethora of pre-made designs that you may use as templates for designing your own t-shirts.

When you create a new t-shirt document, you can use a t-shirt template to generate your design, or you can start from scratch. To begin, return to the top of the page and click the “Start Designing” option.

This should bring you to the Canva t-shirt design builder, where you can begin designing your t-shirt. If you look at the left-hand menu, you’ll notice that the first option is your templates tab. Here you will find a variety of templates that you may change and use to make your t-shirt design.

There are numerous template categories to pick from, including group t-shirts, lifestyle and hobbies, school, professional, pop culture, and many more. When you click on a template, it will display in the editor on the right. The template can then be customized in any way you like by changing the text, graphics, colors, or any other element.

For this example, though, let’s start with a blank template and design a brand new t-shirt from scratch. If you already have a picture in mind for your t-shirt design, navigate to the “Uploads” tab in the left-hand menu. Then, click the “Upload an Image” button, choose where you want to upload your image from, and locate the image you want to include in your design.

For this example, I’m going to make a coffee-themed design, so let’s start with an image of a coffee mug. When your image has finished uploading, drag it over to your design template. Once on the template, you can rearrange your image, resize it, crop it, or change it in any manner you like.

Let’s add some text now that I have an image for my design. Look at the menu on the left and select the “Text” option. You can begin with the text header or scroll down and select one of the pre-made text templates.

They have a plethora of extremely cool templates that look fantastic on t-shirt designs. I suppose I’ll start with this text template here for my design. Simply clicking on the text should cause it to appear on your t-shirt design template. You may move it around, resize your text, adjust the colors, and even change the typefaces once it’s on the template. Simply use the editing tools in the top menu to change your text or image in any manner you like.

So my text for my coffee design is now “Coffee, a Hug, and a Mug.” If you don’t already have a picture for your t-shirt template, you can find one in the Canva image gallery. Let’s look at the menu on the left-hand side and click on the “Photos” button to discover photographs to add to your design. This is where you can search the Canva gallery for images to use in your t-shirt design.

Let’s head up to the search box and see if we can find a coffee cup to add to my template. When I search for “coffee cup,” I see all of the images of coffee cups in the Canva image gallery. They feature a lot of free images, but you need to join up for a Canva Pro membership to view all of the Canva gallery images. I’ll include a link in the description so you may test Canva Pro for free for 30 days.

So I believe I’ll just use this coffee mug in my design. Let’s select the image and drag it to my template. So there you have it. Using the editing options in the top menu, I may now rearrange, resize, or alter the image.

You can now download your design to your computer after you have finished generating and tweaking it. Let’s go to the top and click on the drop-down option here to download your new t-shirt design. Then we may select “Download” to discover our download options.

Make sure “PNG” is selected under file type. If you intend to sell your design on Teespring, Redbubble, or any other print-on-demand marketplace, the following settings are critical. You must ensure that the size of your image is large enough so that it does not seem pixelated on your t-shirt, and you must also tick the box next to “Transparent Background.”

My t-shirt design would have this red square behind it if I hadn’t chosen a transparent background. However, you’ll need a Canva Pro account to scale your image and add a transparent background. If you haven’t already joined up for Canva Pro, click the link in the article description to test it out for 30 days for free. Not only will you be able to resize and remove the background from your images, but you will also have access to all of the images, articles, and audios in the Canva Pro library, as well as tons of new fonts to use in your designs, all of the premium t-shirt design templates, and a plethora of other tools and features that can assist you in building your business.

So, for this example, let’s increase the size of my t-shirt design to around 3000 by 4000 pixels. This ensures that the design does not seem pixelated when printed on t-shirts or other items. I’ll also choose a translucent backdrop to remove the red box beneath my design.

We may now click the “Download” option after increasing the image size and adding a transparent background. Your new t-shirt design has been saved to your computer.

So, now that I’ve downloaded my design, let’s see how it appears. Not terrible at all! The background has been deleted from my “Coffee, a Hug, and a Mug” design. My new t-shirt design is now complete and available for submission to Merch by Amazon, Redbubble, Teespring, or any other print-on-demand marketplace.

So that’s a fast rundown of how to make t-shirt designs with Canva. To get started with the t-shirt designer and Canva Pro for free for 30 days, click the link in the article description. If you liked the story, please like it and subscribe to the site if you haven’t already. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I’ll see you in the next tutorial.