Midjourney T-Shirt Design: The Big Game Changer

Want to learn how to use Midjourney t-shirt design to make money?

Midjourney and ChatGPT are absolute goldmines for anyone who knows how to monetize it.

And one of the easiest ways to do this is to use Midjourney to create merch and other print-on-demand products that you can sell on Amazon, Redbubble, Teepublic, Spreadshirt, and many more.

You see, the beauty of print-on-demand is that it’s one of the few online business models that allows you to build a passive income stream.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to use Midjourney to create awesome t-shirt designs and sell them online.

Let’s dive right in.

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Midjourney T-Shirt Design: The Big Game Changer
Here’s the answer. Great article by @ChrisHeidorn right here: https://tokenizedhq.com/midjourney-t-shirt-design/

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Midjourney T-Shirt Design Is a Game Changer

Anyone who’s currently in the Merch game understands how much of a game-changer Midjourney and other AI art generators are.

To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some AI merch design generators pop up within the next 12 months.

But until then, Midjourney t-shirt design can already massively improve your workflow.

You see, the vast majority of best-selling shirt designs are nothing more than high-quality illustrations combined with good typography.

And with Midjourney t-shirt design, almost anyone can now create those high-quality illustrations from their own desktop in a matter of minutes.

You have considerably more control over the final design and you can spin up some of the wildest concepts just for fun.

Midjourney allows you to cut down on production time and production costs.

And it also levels the playing field because these sorts of illustrations used to be reserved for those who could afford to hire an illustrator.

But now, anyone can do it.

So let the games begin!

I know what some of you might be thinking right now.

But what about all those illustrators whose business models will be destroyed?

They will have to adapt.

Just like every other business will have to adapt.

I adapt or I die.

So if you feel like you may be affected by this, get your act together, roll up your sleeves, and do something about it.

The Merch Process

There are about a million different videos out there that are dedicated to Merch and print-on-demand.

That’s why I really don’t want to waste too much time explaining it all over again.

There are dozens of really great YouTubers out there you cover all of this in much more detail and pretty much any language you can think of.

However, I do want to give the newbies among you a quick overview of how this business model works.

Research

You start off by researching various different niches.

A niche might be:

• Hippie Culture
• Live Action Role Playing
• Pickle-Ball
• Crocheting

Sounds very specific?

Yeah, that’s the point!

If you try to go for the most obvious niches, then you’re in for a rough time.

There’s just way too much competition.

So instead, you want to focus on very specific niches that people are passionate about and that aren’t too mainstream.

And most importantly, make sure enough people are actually searching for this stuff.

Niching down too far is a real thing.

Ideas

Generating ideas is probably the easiest part.

You can search the web for popular or funny quotes.

You can also dive deep into the forums that are dedicated to these niches and try to figure out what resonates with the audience.

Or you can just ask ChatGPT.

That’s right, ChatGPT will help you with some ideas and I’ll show you later how this works.

Create Designs

I think this part is pretty much a no-brainer.

You take your idea and you bring it to life.

In our case, we’re going to use a quote and try to combine it with a nice illustration.

And that illustration will come from Midjourney, hence why we refer to it as Midjourney t-shirt design.

However, even though Midjourney can help you create an awesome design, you will still have to learn how to use an image editor.

Once again, this is not something I really want to cover much in this video.

There are countless other channels that are much better at teaching those skills.

List Your Designs

The final step is to upload your designs to one of the many large marketplaces that have organic traffic.

Why is this important?

Well, unless you want to spend money on ads in order to promote your own online store or have some other way of reaching people for free, no one is going to find your product.

Marketplaces such as Amazon have more than enough traffic.

The only thing you need to make sure of is that your listing is optimized in a way that makes it easier for people to find it.

While Midjourney t-shirt design makes creating designs really easy, this is possibly one of the biggest challenges that most people face in print-on-demand.

It takes a lot of trial and error to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Alright, I’m sure you’re anxious to finally start creating some designs in Midjourney.

So let’s get right to it.

Generating Ideas & Creating the Design

I’m going to skip the research part and go straight to idea generation.

The main idea of this video is to show you what sort of prompts work relatively well and make it easier to edit the designs afterward.

So let’s start off with the dinosaur niche.

I personally know that there’s a big market for t-shirt designs with T-Rexes doing all sorts of weird things.

In this case, I want to cater to people who love T-Rexes and also like playing the guitar.

So I open up ChatGPT and I simply enter:

"I need 10 funny t-shirt quotes for people who like t-rexes and enjoy playing guitar."

Then ChatGPT does what it does best and it gives me a list of quotes.

And I’ll be very honest with you here, I was shocked at how good some of these ideas were.

I’m going to pick “Rawr means play me a riff in T-Rex” because shorter quotes are generally easier to implement in t-shirt designs.

Now I still need an illustration to go with it.

So let’s open Discord and enter the following prompt in Midjourney:

/imagine
t-shirt design on white background,
t-rex playing the guitar,
flat illustration style
--ar 4:5

The reason I’m using an aspect ratio of 4:5 is that it’s very close to the typical dimensions used in print-on-demand.

Ideally, this will give me a design that is easier to fit into those dimensions.

And what do you know, these are really nice Midjourney t-shirt designs.

The only problem I see here is that these splashes of color in the background might make it difficult to cut out the background.

That’s why I’m going to try something else.

/imagine
sticker design on white background,
t-rex playing the guitar,
flat illustration style
--ar 4:5

I only changed the word “t-shirt” to “sticker” and I did this because stickers tend to be displayed with fat white borders around them.

This makes it much easier to remove it.

First, I’d upscale the image.

Then I download the image and open it up in my image editor.

I personally like to use Affinity Designer.

Next, I’ll eliminate all of the unnecessary backgrounds.

Once our illustration is ready, we can add the typography, which will complete our Midjourney t-shirt design.

You may have noticed that added a black background layer.

I did this because 80% of all shirts are sold in dark colors.

So my text will need to be white.

There are many ways you can do this but try to make the font as big as possible.

People who buy t-shirts with quotes want them to be readable from as far away as possible.

Alright, we now have a t-shirt design that looks pretty decent.

We can now deactivate the black background and export it as a transparent PNG.

All you need to do now is upload it to a platform of your choice, create a listing, optimize that listing, and wait for the first sales to come in.

More Examples

So let’s get back to the prompt that I used.

/imagine
sticker design on white background,
t-rex playing the guitar,
flat illustration style
--ar 4:5

I decided to use the “sticker” keyword because the generated image was easier to edit.

But that’s not always the case.

Take a look at this example for a firefighter design:

/imagine
t-shirt design on white background,
firefighter design,
flat illustration style
--ar 4:5

I kept this prompt very simple.

And if we now look at the images, you’ll see that they are pretty awesome.

The fact that most of them are on a black background is due to the firefighter theme.

That makes cutting out the background a little trickier than usual.

But look what I turned the bottom left Midjourney t-shirt design into.

That’s pretty neat, isn’t it?

And trust me, these are exactly the type of designs that sell in this niche.

Things took a very interesting turn when I used this prompt:

/imagine
design on clear background,
firefighter design,
flat illustration style
--no mockup --ar 4:5

Notice how I removed any mention of “t-shirt” and also strictly said that I don’t want to see mockups?

Well, turns out this produces a really interesting flat design style.

You rarely see this stuff in Merch, but I can totally see this selling well!

Let’s quickly walk through some more examples.

/imagine
design on clear background,
angler design,
flat illustration style
--no mockup --ar 4:5

In this example, I’ve tried to create something that we could use for a fishing t-shirt.

I’ve used the word “angler” which is a common term within that niche.

These are great starting points for a t-shirt design.

If you wanted to focus more on a particular fish, then you could use this prompt:

/imagine
cutout seabass design on white background,
full color, vector illustration,
flat comic style

By the way, you don’t necessarily need to use the same style as I am using here.

I just find them quite useful for Midjourney t-shirt designs.

Make sure you experiment with different styles until you find what you need.

And as you can imagine, this also works with other objects.

So say you wanted to create a t-shirt design for people who like sailing.

Well, then you could do something like this:

/imagine
very detailed icon of an anchor on white background,
rope and shells, vector illustration, flat comic style

This gives us some beautiful images of anchors and you can cut them out and either use them as they are or add some text if you like.

So by now, you should have a fairly good idea of how Midjourney t-shirt design works.

In most cases, all you need to do is create a design element that fits the theme and complement it with some aesthetic typography.

Now, for the final chapter, let me quickly share the 3 most common mistakes that people make in print-on-demand.

The 3 Most Common Mistakes

One of the biggest mistakes that most people make when they get into print-on-demand is the way they approach things.

If you’ve experimented with selling t-shirts before, then some of this might sound familiar.

Mistake #1: Ignoring the Buyer

While it might seem intuitive that whatever you find appealing will also be appealing to others, this is the easiest way to fail.

Graphic designers and illustrators are actually most at risk here, because they’re in it for the art.

They assume that the general public actually knows what is artistic and what isn’t.

They also assume that the customer wants to buy something artistic.

They don’t.

The vast majority of people have horrible taste.

They also don’t really care about artsy a design is.

They buy stuff that they are passionate about.

They also buy stuff that shows the world who they are.

So Rule #1: Create for the customer, not for yourself.

Mistake #2: Create It and They Will Come

So you’ve created a Midjourney t-shirt design that you’re pretty sure people will like.

You know this because you did some research and saw that a similar idea is being sold on various marketplaces.

They even have a few reviews and a decent BSR on Amazon, so surely they must have sales.

So you list your own design on Amazon but it just won’t sell, even though your Midjourney t-shirt design is so much better.

Why is that?

Well, it all comes down to eyeballs.

That’s right, if no one can find your design, then no one is going to buy it.

Remember, if 1 in 100 people who see your t-shirt end up buying it, then that’s already a REALLY good conversion rate.

Make no mistake, eCommerce is all about conversions.

So make sure enough people are actually searching for the product you are creating.

And also make sure you optimize your listings in a way that they are more likely to be found by the right people, not just any people.

Mistake #3: Underestimating the Work

So you created 10 designs and waited for a whole week.

But you still don’t have any sales and you’re starting to get frustrated.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!??!

Your expectations are out of whack!

If you want this to work, you are going to have to create hundreds, if not, thousands of Midjourney t-shirt designs.

And you’ll need to learn to accept that this is a long-term game.

You can get a lot done within a few months, but in order for this to become a meaningful source of income, it will usually take years.

Unless you know how to run ads.

But that’s not something a beginner should do.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Before we close off this guide, let’s quickly address some of the most common questions related to Midjourney t-shirt design.

Conclusion

Midjourney, as well as other AI art generators, are a massive opportunity for Merch sellers to up their game.

Not only can they increase their productivity, but they can also substantially cut their illustration costs.

You better get on board now because the market definitely will!

Here at Tokenized, we want to help you learn as much as possible about the AI software industry. We help you navigate the world of tech and the digitalization of our society at large, including the tokenization of assets and services.