Why Was My Design Rejected? UPDATED w/ TEMPLATES

We don’t intend to offend anyone by declining their work for voting as we want to give all artists an opportunity, but due to our increasing traffic and submissions, we have now adopted a more stringent quality control guideline. It is difficult since alot of art is subjective, but when viewed in the context of apparel designs there are some definite metrics on which the art can be judged.

This is intended to spur artists to try pursue a higher level of craftsmanship. As an artist myself, I am in full agreement with this decision. An artist’s journey is not one of little resistance, in contrary, it is a difficult road of overcoming constant hurdles and challenges. ;j

Let’s cover the basics.

MORE TEMPLATES BY ODDETI http://www.designbyhumans.com/forums/show/579293

DOWNLOAD Model Template: http://www.designbyhumans.com/downloads/easy_template.psd

Just a basic drag and drop for creating mockups for entries.

DOWNLOAD Sizing Template: http://www.designbyhumans.com/downloads/size_template.psd

This one’s somewhat important. When you build a design, you want to ensure that the size of the design will fit well within the compositional space of all sizes of shirts. If you use this template, every 1 cm = 1 in. So the moveable 19×25 tile represents the space your design would take up at a maximum without going to an allover print. The placement of the placeholder can only vary slightly as well. If you use this while designing, it will ensure that it will look good spanning all the sizes. The sizes shown are small, to XXL.

DOWNLOAD Flat Shirt Template: http://www.designbyhumans.com/downloads/flat_template.psd

More realistic than dropping on a model template as when you drop a flat jpeg on the 3D model template you actually dont get to visualize how it is on the shirt.

Ideal art sizing

RGB 8bit, 300 DPI,
Standard 17.5×19
Oversized 19×25
All Over 40X33 (includes sleeves) base central imagery refer to oversized

Pantone Color Approximations – WIll probably add to submission/design guide page if I ever get time, until then:

Kelly 362
Light Purple 2577U
Burnt Orange 1595
Burgundy 492
Mint 621 (slightly more white)
Red 1797 or 200U
Yellow 7401
Oatmeal 406
Navy 5395U or 296U
Silver CG4U or CG5U or 421
Lt Blue 290C or 7457U
Turquoise 7466U
Grass 7489U
Hunter 5535U
Olive 448U
Taupe 410C 411C 437U
Chocolate BlackC 412C
Lead 419U 433C

Before you submit, please review our Design Guide: (Click Here For More Info)

1. We are a PG-13 website. We have young people and families surfing. Sexually overt imagery is typically rejected immediately.
2. Please save your work in RGB mode jpegs. Some browsers have issues in showing CMYK saved images, so they will not show up properly depending on the viewer’s browser. This is not DBH specific. If you intend to be a graphic artist, make sure your portfolio images are in RGB mode. Google “CMYK images browser issues.”
   
   
3. If your submissions, whether it be the art or mock is low quality, as in pixelated, distorted, etc, we will reject your submission.
   
   
4. Low quality filtered images will be rejected. ie) Cutout/threshhold filtered photos with no effort to clean up linework. Some artists will do collage work in this manner, provided it is aesthetically appealing, there will be some exceptions.
   
   
5. Not using our shirt colors – If you use a shirt color that we do not have, there is a chance that your design may get rejected.
6. If you do not use a model or shirt template of some sort to show placement on the 900 × 500 jpeg submission image, you will get rejected.
   
   
7. If the design is a rectangular image pasted on the chest without concern for the t-shirt canvas, it will be rejected, unless it’s intentionally made to work compositionally as a pasted image.
   
   
8. If we cannot print as mocked, and it cannot be reduced in size or altered to fit our printing ability, we will reject it.

We can print all over, but there is a limitation on how many colors we can print on an allover. Currently we prefer to choose designs that are 3 or less. Allover prints are hard to register and keep lined up so images with tight line work typically gets passed over.



Designs that are grungy and tonal are easy to print all overs.



9. No more front and back hit designs will be approved for voting unless the designs specifically requires a back and front print conceptually. There will also be a more stringent level of judgment for those designs.

Great examples:

http://www.designbyhumans.com/product_images/0001/6537/thenNow_m_f_detail.png?1241550580
http://www.designbyhumans.com/product_images/0001/6521/thenNow_m_b_detail.png?1241550575




10. The following are general guidelines:

We do not prefer designs with:

Bleeding hearts, emo hearts, or similar.

Wings pasted on the back of the shirt, although conceptually interesting, has been done and done.

Designs depicting violence is typically frowned upon.

Our market is predominantly male, so although we love feminine designs and may eventually cater to that market specifically, an overly feminine design, ie) flowers, might get allowed into the voting pool, but probably has a significantly reduced chance of winning.

We do not prefer TEXT shirts specifically slogan tees. Text may be incorporated into a design, but if it seems as if the text is part of the brand name, we reject it as we do not want brand confusion.
ie) A shirt says, Live Strong as a main focal point with some small doodle. A person seeing the shirt may think the brand is Live Strong, not DBH.

If we can tell what Photoshop filter was run on a photo, it’s indicative of art created by somewhat inexperienced artist. These typically do not print well as it’s very Photoshop-y. We reject those. This also applies to smudge tool, gradient tool (used incorrectly), and other various entry level design methods.

Typically, although this does not get rejected, but a person’s face as a focal point, do not sell well unless its a famous person, caricature, etc.

More to come…

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