Thanks to the wonderful powers of the Internet, you can get custom shirts cheap. Many a shirt printing company offers the opportunity to do online shirt design through its website, allowing you to quickly create awesome customized shirts for any event or occasion. That means business owners can create affordable work shirts, event organizers can design cool shirts for their family reunions, and team leaders can make awesome custom team shirts for their recreation sports leagues.

This is of particular benefit to rec teams, since it allows them to have superior quality designs for lower prices. Basically, these custom team shirts have an incredible value. However, although the companies can offer some support, advice, and corrections, the design is ultimately up to the person in charge of ordering the custom team shirts. To help you make the best possible shirts for your team, here are a few design pointers.

Your Team’s Name.

Part of a rec league’s fun is getting to choose your team’s name. While many might opt for a raunch-humor name, these only get cheap names. Why not get more creative and witty? Try some wordplay based on the sport and the tone of the league. For example, if it’s a softball league, you could name your team something like “Scared Hitless.” If you’re allowed to drink while playing as many Kickball leagues allow, you could choose to make a name that plays off of that. For example, “Designated Drinkers.” A zany option would be to choose something completely off the wall and unrelated to the sport, like “The Jamaican Bobsled Team.” Many popular teams are named after animals or warriors, but combining the two could produce a funny result, like “The Ninja Bunnies,” or “Trigger Happy Kitties.”

Once you’ve picked a great team name, you want it large on the front of your custom team shirts in a nice looking font. You can choose something bold, to make your team look more aggressive. If you still feel like having some fun, you could choose something elegant that seemingly contradicts the gravitas of the team. How funny would “The Thunder Ducks” look in cursive?

The Logo.

Many people hate clipart because it looks generic, tacky, and low quality. While some of the pre-designed artwork that screen printers offer look a little bit like clip-art, there are still some really excellent, high-quality choices. Whatever you choose though, it’s best to keep it simple. You don’t want to have more than one large graphic on your custom team shirts, otherwise it’ll get too busy. People should be able to appreciate the shirts at a glance. By limiting the amount of big graphics on your shit, you effectively keep their focus on one thing. You can have smaller, support graphics that can pull the custom team shirts together, but just be sure to keep it simple.

If you follow these simple design tips and make a bit of forethought, your custom team shirts will come out great. If you have any questions about designing custom team shirts, feel free to ask in the comments.