Team T-Shirt Design
For the Great Midwest Relay, I volunteered to do our twelve person team's t-shirt design. We decided to get basic white technical short-sleeve shirts from a place called runningbanana.com, which came recommended to us by another runner. Each shirt is $36 shipped, so I'm hoping they're high quality, comfortable, and survive at least a few washes. The interesting thing about their process is that they use "dye sublimation," a technology used by a lot of personal printers optimized for digital photography. The design is dyed directly into the fabric rather than silkscreened over it, preserving the fabric's breathability. Posted below is the design, which will appear on the back between the shoulder blades:
…And there you have it. I'll post a review of runningbanana.com's product itself once it arrives, which may be the middle of next week!
Comments
Second, I've thought about this for a while now, but why doesn't someone offer the ability to do custom designs on *existing* popular brand name apparel out there (Nike, Asics, 2XU, etc)? In other words, get your favorite designs or logos on your favorite brand name latest-fashionable shirts, like sponsored athletes or sponsored teams often wear, instead of your designs on no-name threads? The process would work as follows: a company like RunningBanana offers the ability to print custom designs on a wide selection of existing brand name shirts out there. You pick the shirt you want (e.g. white Nike Dri-fit top, 2XU tri top), send your design, they order the shirt, use their dye sublimation on the shirt, charge you the premium over the shirt's original price, and send you the shirt with your sweet team design on it. This way, you know exactly how the shirt will fit and feel, because it's your favorite shirt!
Is this banned by the original manufacturers or something, to prevent third parties from modifying or making a profit on their products? (New business opportunity??)
Regardless, the RunningBanana apparel looks nice though. Hope it works out!