Print placement

Print placement covers the industry-standard distances that decide where a design lands on a blank: a full-front print typically centers about 3 to 4 inches down from the high point shoulder or collar seam, a left-chest design sits roughly 3.5 inches down and 4 inches over from center, and a full-back graphic usually starts around 4 to 5 inches below the collar to clear the yoke seam. These aren't arbitrary — they're the positions that read correctly on a body, front-facing and centered, rather than drifting toward the collar or sagging low.

Buyers who design their own layout at home in a photo editor almost never account for this, because a flat mockup doesn't show how a shirt actually hangs on a person or a hanger. A logo placed dead-center vertically on a flat template often prints too high once the shirt is worn, crowding the collar instead of sitting comfortably below it. We adjust submitted files for placement on a large share of first-time custom orders for exactly this reason.

Good placement also accounts for garment size — a full-front print centered 3.5 inches down on a Medium needs to shift slightly for a 3XL, since the collar-to-chest distance grows with the size grade. A shop working from standard placement rules adjusts for that automatically; one that prints every size at identical coordinates ends up with a design sitting too high on the larger sizes.

The common mistake is assuming placement is purely aesthetic preference. It's closer to a technical spec — miss the standard distances and a print reads as amateur even when the artwork itself is clean.