Here at Five, we offer free artwork assistance! That's right - completely free. We want ALL ultimate teams to look great on the field, not just the teams with big budgets. It's a bit helpful to start with some specific ideas from you though.

 

So, we've put together a guide to help you get from stage zero to hero in giving your jersey designer stellar art direction.

 

Let's start with the basics.

What's your team's colors, theme, and name?

For obvious reasons, knowing what colors to use is an awesome place to start. It's even better if we can get a general theme or idea of what you're looking to see, even if it's just an example of other jerseys you love.

What kind of printing do you want to use?

There are 3 different print processes we use to make your favorite gear. Having an idea of which process you'd like to utilize in your design can be helpful, but if you don't know, don't sweat it. We are here to help you along the way.

Check out our examples of each print process below:

1. Full Sublimation allows you the full spectrum of creativity to make your wildest jersey dreams come true, but it comes at a price and about 5 weeks to produce- so plan early if you want to go this route!

2. Screenprinting, on the other hand, is more limiting in what you can do with the design but creative teams figure out awesome ways to make good use of limited space and colors.

3. Spot Sublimation is a good middle ground. It's quick, more affordable than full sublimation and allows you more design options than screen printing (like custom numbers!). Keep in mind though that we recommend only sublimating on white items as the printing colors get warped when fused with non-white fabric colors. 

Some of the nice-to-haves:

Send original, hi-res art files (if you have them).

In preference order, we prefer: .ai / .eps > .psd > .pdf > .jpg > .png

Include the name of the font. Without the font, our designers scour the interwebs to match the one your using. Save them some time and frustration by providing a particular font name upfront.

Be one of our favorites.

Sketch it up! - This is the best way to tell your designer what you want.

Don't sweat it if you're not a strong illustrator, just a general idea will do.

Be specific, be weird!

This one is optional, depending on your team's style. But after asking our designers, they said their favorite designs to work on are really out there. Here's real-life, real-art-direction we've received from one of our favorite team's to work with:

How bleeding rainbows and cute animals playing in puddles work together-

"When a unicorn is tragically killed by a rainbow and shooting stars, it bleeds-naturally. When unicorns bleed, their glittery blood falls into the clouds because they hang out in the sky most of the time. Hence the propensity of impairment by rainbow. When enough unicorn blood is gathered in the clouds and conditions are just right, it freezes into heart shapes. The heart icicles eventually get heavy enough that they fall out of the clouds. On the way down they turn into what we know as rain. The heart-shaped puddles are perfect for adorable animals of all kinds to play in.

I was thinking it would best be displayed in two parts where the unicorn scene is on one side with the clouds and icicle hearts at the bottom. Then the other side would have clouds and heart-cicles at the top and rain dropping down onto cute animals playing in puddles of normal rain."

And the result:

Thank you, Cuddle Puddle!

Now over to you!

Ready to start designing your team's gear? Hollar at us here.

Looking for some inspiration? Follow us on Instagram to see some of our favorite jersey designs daily.