T-shirt design tool for order enquiries

What the designer needs

Garment and colour: Tee, long sleeve, hoodie, tote; each in the colours you actually stock. The mock-up redraws in the chosen colour.
Print areas: Front, back, left chest, sleeve, each drawn as a dashed box. Keep designs inside it; print shops commonly work to a maximum area per location, so state yours.
Text: A line or two, a few fonts you can print, size, colour, curve or straight. Limit fonts to ones your shop owns.
Shapes and simple graphics: Stars, circles, badges, banners, numbers for team kits, all drawn in code.
Ink colours: A palette of the inks you use. Screen printing is priced by colour count, so show the count as the customer designs.
Sizes and quantities: A size breakdown (S × 4, M × 10, L × 6), because that's how orders are really placed.

Drag to move, handles to resize and rotate, and undo. On a phone, select-then-adjust with sliders works better than tiny handles.

The mock-up is drawn, not photographed

Anticode's apps can't load images from other sites, so the garment is drawn in code: a clean flat illustration of a tee or hoodie, front and back, coloured to match the choice. A flat drawing tends to be clearer for checking placement than a photo with folds and shadows. It won't look like a photographed product shot, and customers should understand it's a guide to placement and colour, not an exact proof.

Sending the design as an order enquiry

When the customer is done, the app sends what they made to you through Anticode's form pipeline, by email and in your dashboard. The enquiry needs the customer's name and email; everything else goes into the message as text. Ask for a structured spec, which you can quote from without seeing the screen:

Garment, colour and print locations
Each text element: wording, font, size, colour, position in centimetres from the collar and centre line
Each shape: type, colour, size, position
Ink colours per location, counted
Sizes and quantities, and the date needed

Whether a picture of the design can travel with the enquiry is something to test rather than assume: form submissions carry text fields, and design-engine forms take no file uploads. The written spec is the dependable part. Reply with a proof made in your own design software; that's normal practice anyway.

Describing it to Anticode

"A custom shirt designer for our print shop. Garments: tee, hoodie, tote, in the colours black, white, navy, heather grey, bottle green. Print areas front and back with our maximum sizes. Add up to three text lines in four fonts, plus shapes: star, circle, badge, banner, numbers. Ink palette of 10 colours, with a running count of inks per side. Size breakdown and quantities. A Send design button that sends name, email, phone and the full written spec to us as an enquiry. Clean, workshop-like, flat garment drawings."

Where it falls short

This is the honest part. A full merch design tool, as print-on-demand services offer, does several things this sandbox can't:

No print-on-demand connection. It can't send a design to a printing service or create a product there.
No customer artwork reaching you. A customer could preview their own logo from their device, if you ask for it, but the file stays in their browser. Ask them to email artwork when you reply.
No print-ready files. Output is a spec and a guide, not separated vector artwork.
No checkout. Prices vary with inks and quantities, so quote by reply and send a payment link from your provider.
No saved designs across devices or accounts for returning customers.

If you want customers to choose from set options (colour, size, a few preset designs) with a fixed price, a product configurator is a cleaner fit. For selling finished merch, see selling merch from your website.

Questions people ask

Can customers upload a logo to the t-shirt design tool?

They may be able to preview one from their device if you ask for it, but it won't be sent to you. Ask for artwork by email.

Can it calculate a price?

It can show an estimate from rules you give, such as ink count and quantity. Confirm the real price in your reply.

Does the enquiry include a picture of the design?

Plan on a written spec. Test whether an image can be included before telling customers it will be.