5 Best T-Shirt Design Software To Use in 2023

Jul 31, 2019

updated May 2023

Designing your own T-shirt is a cool way to make your own clothes stand out from the crowd. Whether you want to design your own logo or have unique graphics printed on a t-shirt, hoodie, cap or even tote bag, the technical implications remain the same. But with such a wide variety of design software on the Internet, it might be difficult to find a starting point.

We’ve been doing for some years now and that’s why we thought of putting together some of our favourite software that will hopefully help you come out with the best new designs for your printed t-shirts. If you’re ready to work on some proper and awesome designs for your future t-shirts projects but have no idea where to start from, then this guide will help you find a simple t-shirt design software that will support your creative endeavours. So let’s jump straight into the guide.

 

1. Adobe Photoshop

A close relative of Adobe Illustrator is Adobe Photoshop, which is more versatile than Illustrator. Although you won’t be able to create vectors, you have a wide range of tools to create cool effects on high-quality pictures. While you won’t be able to create a design for screen or embroidery, you can opt for DTG printing.

The downside, just like with Adobe Illustrator, is the price. Although Adobe Photoshop is not as complex as Illustrator, you can still have a hard time figuring out how it works.

2. Adobe Illustrator

Most of the pros will choose Adobe Illustrator as their favourite designing software. The reason why Illustrator is so great for t-shirt printing designs is that it utilises vectors which you can combine and change in order to create layered illustrations, logos, typography.  If you didn’t know already, most of the printing companies ask for vector graphics in their screen and embroidery printing processes so this is another consideration when trying to decide on a reliable t-shirt design software. As it is a professional software, it will be quite a big task to understand how it works. However, they are offering tutorials and resources that will help you learn the process of creating the vectors you need for a cool t-shirt design.

There are also a lot of websites out there offering free templates that can be imported into the software to help with your creative process.

The only downsides are the obvious price that you’ll have to pay to use it and the complexity of the actual software. It could take you some time to figure out how everything works.

3. GraffixPro Studio

This entered our top due to its simplicity and ease you can work with even if you are a beginner. It will allow you to create pretty cool t-shirt designs that are suitable for various printing techniques. It also includes a large library of templates and a choice of over 45 fonts that you can utilise in your designs so this will further simplify your work.

The cons of GraffixPro Studio is again, the price and somehow limited options for fonts and templates, which could potentially hinder your process.

4. InkScape

We believe that in order to create beautiful designs, you will need a small budget to invest in a reliable software, but this free, open-source design software will do the job too. InkScape is a free software that is very similar to Adobe Illustrator. Although you might struggle a bit with working out how it works, there is a very helpful community out there to answer any of your questions that you might have. You’re still going to be able to produce graphic vectors just like in Illustrator too.

The downside to it is that InkScape doesn’t include any tutorials around t-shirt design techniques and finding t-shirt design templates will be quite hard too. There is support available from other users who have gone through the same thing and they are offering their own expertise and templates.  The working interface is not as user-friendly as the other ones and it might take time until you get accustomed to it.

5. CorelDraw

And for our last choice as a trusted t-shirt design software, we have included CorelDraw. As it is one of the most popular choice, we thought it should be mentioned too. The main reason why it is so widely used is because it has a wide range of fonts, colour choices and arts that are not present in most of the other software. In addition, it offers a huge amount of clip arts, images and templates that can help you create as many designs as you want.  The only downside is that the software is not specifically meant for t-shirt designs so learning how to use it could take a bit of time.

Now that you have a list to choose from, you only need to put your mind to work and create the best new T-shirt design. And if you further need a team to handle your printing for you,  whether you require bulk t-shirts printing, vinyl t-shirt printing, screen t-shirt printing, customised hoodies or anything in between, we can do it for you.

Although each software has its pros and cons, it’s up to you to decide which one fits your style. Regardless of what you go for, these T-shirt Design Software are guaranteed to support the creation of your next design. Let us know what you’ve created and we will make a top 10 with our favourite designs!