Being the un-creative type that I am, I originally thought of Spreadshirt as a fun way for a ten year old girl to waste a couple hours of their life designing shirts online or a new-age baby sitting tool. As it turns out, I was right, for the most part anyways.
Although fun to play with, Spreadshirt is not a very logical design application. It is more difficult to use than the traditional paint program, producing only slightly better results. If you’re a perfectionist like me or serious about designing, this program will frustrate you to no end. Working the program is not worth the results it produces. The first issue I noticed was the minimal choices. When it comes to colors, just the standard color-crayon box colors, which depending on the shirt style varies, usually making less choices accessible. As well as colors, the text choices are very few.
Even though there are a lot of graphics available for design use, most of them are hardly better than standard Clip Art. And maneuvering the graphics is not worth the effort. There is no way to zoom in on it to make it go exactly where you want. Want to overlap things neatly? Forget it, it wont happen. Because, for one, the program wont allow it. And for two you cant add more than two graphics on one shirt at a time. Furthermore, you can only place text and graphics in the allotted areas: front, back, left sleeve and right sleeve. You cannot put anything down the sides of the shirts or around the neck areas which are, unfortunately for them, very fashionable right now.
Moreover, from what I can tell, there is no way to save your designs. If you’re anything like me and you’re a perfectionist, you will spend hours on a project only to find out there is no way to save it. The only way to “save” it is to add it to your cart. Either you buy it, or you lose the design to ridiculously high prices. Every graphic and letter added to the design adds more money to an already overpriced clothing item.
NOT TO MENTION… There is no way to see the completed item without buying it first, so there is no way of knowing if it turned out to your satisfaction level or if the quality is any better than an iron on T-shirt kit you can buy at Target for half the price.
Spreadshirt has the potential to be a great site, but it definitely does not live up to it. As of now it is just a frustrating form of amusement for bored teenagers. With some upgrades though, it could actually become a useful tool for businesses with advertising needs or up-and-coming designers.
