Free Tools For Creating Print on Demand Product Designs

Business - Make Money Online

By: DreamsInBloom 06-Apr-2011

Introduction:

Print on Demand websites such as Zazzle or CafePress are websites where you can place designs on products, such as t-shirts, mugs, mousepads. You then earn money from when people buy these items. Zazzle lets you do this for free.
You probably won't make money quickly on Zazzle, but it is a fun and enjoyable way to make a little bit of extra cash on the side. And some people after working at it for awhile have done well.
Zazzle's free, print on demand setup makes it easy for people to start making products to sell online without investing any money in inventory, materials and such. To make it even more low cost you can use free tools to create those designs and lower those costs even more. Since there are many great free tools out there this is easy to do.

Gimp

GIMP stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is comparable to Photoshop and can be used to edit photographs or to create images from scratch. A lot of free tutorials explain how to use it and new ways of using it can be found all the time. In some cases tutorials for Photoshop can be adapted for use in GIMP.

Inkscape

I think most people will like GIMP, but Inkscape is actually my favorite program by far. Inkscape is a vector art program. It may not be as powerful as it's more well known competitor Adobe Illustrator. But it is very capable of creating great work. And I personally find it easy to use and have created designs with it I could never have made otherwise.

Color Pickers

There are actually a lot of good, free color picking tools out there to choose from. A color picker basically lets you pick any color shown on your monitor and it will tell you what the RGB or hex code for that color is so you can use it in your design. Some of these color pickers have additional features as well. The color picker I've been using is called EclipsePalette, but there are many to choose from. A search on Google will turn up several.

Color Palette Sites

There are a lot of color palette sites online that will help you pick colors for your designs. For example, if there is a color or color scheme on a webpage that you would like to use in your design, but you don't know what the colors hex codes are some of these sites will help you identify them. Or if you need help finding colors to compliment the main color you've chosen these sites can help you with that as well. You can also save the color schemes you like. Check the resources below for a list of these sites.

Picasa

If you take photographs for your Zazzle products and need a way to organize them and also would like a simple, but effective editor for things like cropping, adjusting light and a few other things then try out Picasa. This program by Google has its limitations, but it still is useful in many ways.

Final Thoughts

If you are looking for a way to make some money with your creative abilities, checking out print on demand sites for t-shirts and other products can be a great way to go. Free tools like this make it even easier.

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dashboardc33 3/2/2012
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Awesome list! h5!
DreamsInBloom 4/6/2011
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You're welcome, cuteordeath. Inkscape is one of my favorite programs. For those who can't afford Adobe Illustrator then Inkscape is a great alternative. There are lots of tutorials online for it too.
cuteordeath 4/6/2011
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Thanks for mentioning Inkscape! I have been wondering if there are any good free vector art programs out there. :D