Blog · Behind the studio
· 6 min read
Most of our customers design on their phones, so we sat down with a phone-sized screen and made a real shirt from scratch: a front design for a family reunion and a name on the back. Here's exactly what that looked like.
We started with the Basic Round Neck tee (₱128, front print included). On the product page you choose the colour and size, then tap Customize. If you open a shared link straight to the design studio, it loads the shirt for you.
The studio opens on the front of the shirt with a dashed box labelled “Front print area 30 × 40 cm”. That box is the real printable area, so what fits inside it is what gets printed.
Tapping Text opens a panel from the bottom of the screen with a text box, a font picker, a colour swatch and a live preview. We typed “Dela Cruz Reunion 2026” and tapped Add text.
The text landed inside the print area with centimetre rulers along the edges and a size label underneath. Ours read 26.4 × 2.4 cm, so you know the real printed size and not just how it looks on screen. A toolbar for font, size, alignment and colour stays along the bottom while the text is selected.
Getting a design centred and the right size by dragging on a small screen is fiddly. The “More” button on the selection toolbar opens Size & placement, which has one-tap spots:
We tapped Center chest and the text snapped to exactly 25.0 cm wide, centred. Below the quick spots you can also type exact X, Y, width and height values in cm, which helps when a group wants every shirt identical.
Templates holds ready-made graphics (we saw wings, a cross, a sunset over pine trees and more). We picked the sunset. It's added right away, and the Front tab shows a small badge counting how many elements it holds.
One tip: a new graphic is placed over what's already there. Ours sat on top of the text, so we moved the text up. Use Layers to reorder elements, or Bring forward and Send backward on the selection toolbar.
We switched to the Back tab and added “Lolo Ben” for the back of the shirt. The price on the Add to cart button changed from ₱128 to ₱178 as soon as the back had something on it. A back print is a ₱50 add-on, and there are no surprises at checkout.
Sleeves and inside or outside neck labels have their own tabs too, on shirts that support them.
| Print location | Max size | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Front | 30 × 40 cm | Included |
| Back | 30 × 40 cm | +₱50 |
| Left or right sleeve | 10 × 9 cm | +₱30 each |
| Neck label (inside or outside) | 7.5 × 7.5 cm | +₱20 |
The eye button hides the guides and rulers so you see just the shirt, the way it'll look printed. From the menu you can share the product, or use “Share my design” to send a link of your design to family or your org before anyone pays. Useful when ten people have opinions about the font.
When it looks right, tap Add to cart. Payment is half upfront, with the rest on delivery.
Yes. The Shawn's Custom design studio runs in your phone's browser, so there's nothing to install. You can add text, photos, templates and clipart, place them in centimetres, and order from the same screen.
Our test design, with front text, a graphic and a name on the back, took about five minutes on a phone.
A back print adds ₱50 to the shirt price. The front print is included.