5 Programs to Help You Design T-shirts

The world of design has been growing and evolving for quite some time now, and I’m sure many of you already know the tools we’re going to introduce you to today, or even some more, but we can’t list them all because we’d never finish!

If you are thinking of making your own t-shirts, you want to create your own look or send messages to your friends through your garments, this post will be a great way to get started in this type of design.

The T-shirt is one of the most used garments in all environments and styles, from the most elegant to the most casual include T-shirts in their out fits. And to a large extent this is due to the great capacity of the T-shirt to be customised.

Do you want to know a few t-shirt design programmes?

Affinity Designer

This is the design and illustration tool that is setting trends in the world of creativity. Why? Because it has everything you need to make your designs and illustrations, and at an unbeatable price. 54€ in a single payment.

In addition, it is available for Mac, Windows, and also Ipad, where you can use it with its free brushes, which will help you to make incredible illustrations.

Perhaps it will be difficult to adapt if you come from the Adobe world, but it is a tool that is worth it. Very complete and you won’t have to spend a lot of money on it. As you can see, it’s a great option.

Adobe Photoshop

This is one of the great graphic design and photo retouching programmes that everyone knows about. Although from its beginnings it is focused on photography, you can create almost anything. From paths, animations, RAW retouching, etc…

You can find it for both Mac and Windows, and more recently for iPad, and although it is undoubtedly very complete, it may be overly complex if you start to get into the world of computer illustration. It’s a bit like shooting flies with cannons.

Its monthly price is 24.19 €/month, and if you are not a professional, it may be a price to think about. It is, however, a very complete tool, covering a wide range of design aspects.

CorelDraw

It is one of the oldest and most famous tools, both for vectorising and illustrating.
It has vector illustration tools, and provides you with a large bank of images and templates.

From the beginning, Corel Draw was the design tool that stood up to Photoshop. It was the perennial rival, but with one weakness: it was only available for Windows.
But that has changed, and since 2019 it is now also available in its Mac version.

Its strong point is that you will have access to more than 10,000 images and clip arts, as well as 2,000 templates to create any type and style of design.

Right now you can find it for a one-off payment of €719 per month or a monthly subscription of €29.08/month.

Adobe Illustrator

It is a very popular vector design program. Like Photoshop, it was a direct competitor with Coreldraw and Macromedia Freehand, until 2005, when Adobe bought the Macromedia company, and ADOBE implemented Illustrator as a unique vector tool in its packages.

This programme is for a slightly more advanced level, but it gives incredible results, and much more if you use it with a graphic tablet or in its iPad version.

As we said, it is a special programme for illustrating and vectorising, and it has always been the fetish programme of every graphic designer.

Besides, we love everything from Adobe.
You can find it for a monthly fee, or a slightly cheaper annual fee, within the ABODE Creative package.

Procreate

It’s one of the most modern, but if you’re an iPad and Apple Pencil freak, you can’t miss this app.

It is not as complete as the previous ones, but with it you can design, retouch, illustrate, create fonts, and everything you can imagine. Literally, it’s like turning your iPad into a powerful Wacon tablet.

It’s available for iPad only, and at an unbeatable price. You can get it for a one-off payment of €10.99.

Price will no longer be an excuse to start illustrating and getting creative.

Here we have left you some programs so that you can start designing your T-shirts. We hope they have helped you, or at least that they serve as a reference of what is happening in design and illustration software.