[MUSIC PLAYING] Before beginning to design yourself, always check with your print on demand partner for exact dimensions and artwork requirements to ensure your designs will work in their app. In this lesson, I'll give you some general guidelines that normally work pretty well. When setting up your art file, use RGB color mode 300 DPI or dots per inch and 12 by 16 inches or 3600 by 4800 pixels.
When saving your files, the PNG file format is recommended and widely accepted among print on demand companies. A quick tip is to make sure you always turn off the background color creating a transparent background. This will ensure that the design looks correct on your t-shirt. Let's talk about software. If you're a little more advanced, you can use paid design software such as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator or completely free options like Photopea or Gimp.
If you're more of a beginner and want a quick and easy way to create great designs, use a tool like Placeit.net or Canva.com. Any of these options will work great, especially for simple text based designs. Using the guidelines outlined in this lesson, create three to five designs for your store. If you want to outsource your designs, we'll teach you how to do that quickly, easily, and inexpensively in the next lesson.