If you think creating custom-made towels is the simplest designing task you’d ever have to do, you might not be entirely wrong. Still, if you think there’s no fun in any way when it comes to designing towels, you’re in for a surprise! The fact that towels are one of the closest items that resemble a literal blank canvas gives you all the freedom you would need to show off your creativity.
For a start, towels are generally not a formal item you would find be donned at a professional occasion — unless you are competing in the Olympics’ competitive swimming, but even then, who’s to say you cannot have a picture of Dumbo printed on your towels? Not only you get to design a fun piece of garment, but you also get to flaunt it during your beach trip for everyone to see!
So, what do you expect your beach towel to look like? Here’s the fun part: you can have it look like anything you want it to be! On that note, here are what you should keep in mind when customising your own towels!
Why design your own towels?
There are many reasons for it, but we are certain you may find yours down here. Regardless of what your main reason is, all the tips and suggestions below are suitable for all occasions and purposes!
Branding
If you are printing for a company, organisation, or a swimming class, your towels are your investment for branding, marketing, and publicity. It can a walking billboard that promotes your message and if designed properly, will help your brand/business for a long, long time.
Quality
The best thing about customising your own towels is the fact that you can make sure of the quality. A team of printing experts normally do not produce the materials from scratch, but for their design and printing machine to work well on the materials, they would make sure to choose high-quality ones. Of course, you can always request for fabric samples to be sent to you so you could have a feel yourself.
Cost
Printing your own towels may not be the most economical option compared to buying towels in bulk at a dollar store, but it is how you can get the biggest bang for your buck. How, and why? Because of everything we have discussed above – you are paying for quality, branding, and above all, personalised style. In this sense, then, you are spending the least by going for customised towels.
How to start designing your own towel?
Designing a towel is indeed simpler than most garments! You can hardly go wrong with it. Of course, the generic size and shape of towels are mainly the factors of this. You would normally have your design printed at the edge of your towel because having the ink or embroidery covering huge parts of the towel will not feel nice on your skin. That is why it is advisable for the design to only cover a small part of the entire towel.
Next, compare the purpose of the towels and who are going to be using them. It should not defeat the purpose, and at the same time, the people should not feel like they are using the towels simply to fulfil that particular purpose (unless, of course, it is a really fun purpose!).
To give you a scenario; if you are creating custom towels for your swimming team, the design should not be too organisation-oriented. Your team members should still want to use the towels outside of team activities. Isn’t that what you would want as well? Especially if you are expecting the towels to be a tool of your marketing or branding, you would want to design it to be more attractive and less ‘business-y’.
What kind of information would your apparel printing consultant require?
The colours
Don’t worry, your chosen base colour does not affect the cost since it is not a part of your design. However, the number of colours you pick for the design to be printed on it might. You can still have as many colours as you’d like, but just remember that the cost might increase because of this. We’ll go back to the topic of colours below!
Your budget
Your consultant would most likely suggest which printing method to go with or suggest certain changes or modifications on your towels based on your proposed budget. When talking to a printing expert, always mention your budget first so they know what they have to work with.
This does not mean you will be given the options with lower quality, but rather it is to help them see which elements or aspects do they have to change to make sure that your items would still come out the best version it could be.
The purpose of your promotion
This is very crucial to know so it will give your consultant and idea of how to produce your towels based on their uses. For example, they may guide you in choosing colours so that your towels would fit a more professional setting if you are gifting towels as corporate gifts. If you are making beach towels for your family and relatives, the overall theme can be tweaked to be more fun and carefree.
What to consider when printing your own towels?
In addition to what your consultant would want to know, you should also be extra prepared with all of these!
Size
Generally, towels come in two sizes; the smaller hand towels and the bigger bath towels. The bath towels are also divided into several different sizes. If you are customising the towels to be door gifts, getting the complete set comprising both hand and bath towels would be ideal.
On the other hand, if the purpose is more practical than that, get one that would serve the purpose. Is your towel going to be used by the whole family as beach towels? If so, opting for bath towels would give everyone more benefits than getting hand towels would.
Colours
Like any other apparels, you can use any colour you want. White looks the nicest and most luscious, but if you want it to be practical too, you may want to go with darker colours. That said, you can still use several colours in one towel so it’s really up to you!
You can choose similar colours to your logo or if you are actually printing the logo on towels, get towels with colours that complement the colour(s) on your logo. Refer to the colour wheels to figure out which colours would match well with the prime colours you are using.
Text or Image
Text is very common to find on towels, be it hand or bath. In fact, you would probably find printed text more than printed images on towels. Text will always look attractive (not necessarily more attractive than images), especially if you put more attention on the design.
The question is, do you have to pick only one; either text or image? Not at all. You can include both, but make sure it would not crowd your towel to the point it is hard to pinpoint which one is the key element to your design.
That said, even if you are printing hand towels, avoid using images or fonts that are too small or consist of thin lines, otherwise, they would crack and cause your design to not appear at all, in which case, it might as well not be there.
Printing Method
It is likely that certain digital printing can make your design look like it ‘cracks’, which some of you may find to be a downside, understandably. Regardless, given the thick and fluffy material of the towels, this is not that big of a disadvantage. The material of towels often causes this to happen, but it is not very obvious to the eyes. Plus, not all printing methods cause this! Read on to find out which printing mode would work best to hinder the ‘cracking’ effects.
There are several types of printing methods and they all could work well on towels. Screen printing, sublimation, and embroidery are among the top ones that can give you a vibrant finish. With different printing method, comes a different kind of care. If you opt for ink that stays on top of the fabric, like screen printing, the towels would require washing before use. This, in turn, can result in the towels creating and showing obvious cracks.
Artwork should not include very fine lines. Hence, if your logo is huge and does not consist of fine lines or small text, you can opt for printing methods like screen printing. Still, in general, you should try to minimise including design with small lines.
If you want to produce an all-over design, you can! You may opt for methods like screen printing to save cost, but the parts with the ink would not feel too comfortable on your skin. However, going with embroidery for all parts of the design may be costly (remember to discuss the prices before coming to any decision!). Therefore, as a solution, you can still adopt different kinds of digital printing methods onto your towels.
For the part near the edge where you would most likely place your logo or slogan/text, you can opt for modes like screen printing. On the other hand, to cover the middle, wider part of the towel, opt for a method in which the ink would penetrate through the fabric. This preserves the fluff of the towel and maintains its condition.
On the odds that you are more confused right now than you were at the beginning of this article, the alternative solution is simple: just give us a call! We are more than happy to guide you, one step at a time, through the whole process of printing your personalised bath towels.
We would personally guide you from planning up until the stage of printing and delivering your goods. To leave you on a happy note, here’s something you would love to hear: our consultation is free, our design mockups are free, and most importantly, having your items delivered to your doorstep also cost you nothing!
