Refresh Your T-Shirt Branding: Why Embroidery Is Necessary!
Embroidery remains pretty much the go-to quality choice of many company and corporate brands.
As a statement of professional identity branding, a beautifully embroidered company name and logo can always be relied upon to impress customer audiences.
Technology continues to add to the creative possibilities in garment branding. So too, the techniques of embroidery, which have become newly threaded with exciting design potential.
*Early T break: Seven-times Grand Slam tennis champion, René Lacoste, first placed a crocodile emblem on the left breast of his shirts from 1927 as the American press had begun to refer to him as “The Crocodile.”
While the demand for neat, fine lettering picked out in a single colour has become classic t-shirt branding, digital technology now offers companies and organisations a number of eye-catching, embroidered finishes.
Colours… Subtle use of “gradient” hues can help firms to freshen up small, tired looking mono-coloured lettering, which often get lost against dark tone backgrounds. Sports and leisure organisations will already be familiar with ‘bold’ font and block style embroidery on a range of promo garments from caps, bags and jackets.
Taking ‘bold’ techniques across to t-shirt design will certainly help audiences with “catching the brand” when seen on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Instagram!
*T break: Legendary tennis player Fred Perry first wore his iconic laurel wreath logo stitched into the fabric on the left breast of his sports t-shirt at Wimbledon in 1952.
As well as a stunning range of colours you can even choose different types of embroidery thread and stitches.
Threads… Polyester thread is durable and strong, and most often used for sports team kits or industrial uniforms, while rayon thread is more shiny and smooth with a softer finish for more delicate garments in leisure, retail or promotional applications.
Stitches… The most common embroidery type is the ‘satin’ stitch, which is used in the majority of lettering and design outlines, followed by the ‘running’ stitch – a dashed line style typically used to capture very small details or used to re-create the look of hand sewing. The ‘fill’ stitch creates large areas of colour and can also be used as a foundation for more complicated embroidery designs.
*Late T break: In 1972, US fashion designer, Ralph Lauren, began depicting a polo player and pony – the “sport of kings” – on a t-shirt line actually entitled ‘Polo.’
It’s important to remember that an embroidered logo can look very different when sewn onto different garments. So choice of fabric weight, thickness and weave can all affect how the stitches will look and ultimately, how well the branding image performs.
