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The England team have revealed their new 2010 World Cup strip, which is based on the 1966 World Cup winning shirt. It’s a red jersey with the standard Three Lions logo which has above it a raised red embroidered star, to celebrate England’s one World Cup victory.
Using embroidery in this way is a classic style that adds intricacy without making a garment look too fussy. Standard uses for embroidery include:
Promotional wear – like the England strip described above. Because embroidery has a long pedigree, it carries echoes of tradition and ceremony. But as contemporary embroidery is designed and carried out using computer technology, there is no limit to the size, shape and colour of the text that can be sewn to a garment and still be legible.
Brand images – company logos and monograms are commonly used on work clothing – where a personalised uniform may carry the staff member’s name as well as the company logo.
Monogramming – famously, young women embroidered their initials on sheets and pillowcases in their ‘hope’ chests and then, when they found a husband, rushed to add his initials to their monogram before the wedding. Today monogramming is seen on everything from plush towels in a spa through to the pockets of the smart shirts worn by City traders.
Embroidery is one of the most durable ways to decorate clothing, as well as being one of the most impressive looking, which is probably why the England designers have chosen to embroider the single red star, for the 1966 win, so elegantly over the England symbol on the football shirts they hope will be worn in another victorious final.
Clothing carries a lot of social symbology – the hoodie, reviled as the clothing choice of anti-social youth, is also the garment of choice for the boxing fraternity, in fact it’s hard to find a picture of Amir Khan clothed, where he’s wearing anything else!
T-shirts are seen as the casual clothing chosen by those who are relaxed and out to have a good time, which is why Durham City Council has chosen them as a reward for good behaviour over Christmas. When drinkers in city pubs by food or a non-alcoholic drink, they are being offered a black T-shirt with an image that resembles a rock band logo, saying Best Bar None, and the hope is that it will cut alcohol related crime by reducing binge drinking. Carol Feenan, Durham County Council Best Bar None Manager, said, ‘The free T-shirts are proving extremely popular amongst both customers and staff alike.’
So if clothing carries such strong images, what does your company’s uniform say about you? Would a new style polo-shirt improve your image of efficiency and calm, or perhaps smarter shirts with an embroidered monogram would help create the air of upmarket service that you wish to convey? Maybe your casual friendly attitude would be better conveyed by a slimline fleece than your current bulky jackets? Choosing uniforms that convey the right social symbology can really help your business generate the right impression.
If you have a workforce, whether of several hundred, or just two or three, offering them a high quality piece of clothing as a Christmas gift can be a great way of rewarding their hard work over the previous year and showing them that you recognise their contribution to your company’s performance.
Polo-shirts and T-shirts are ideal presents for a younger member of staff, and if you personalise the clothing with their name, it’s an added compliment because it shows that you know who they are! Take care though, don’t get T-shirts printed with Francis if everybody calls him Frank, or spell Robyn as Robin, that just offends people and makes them believe you really don’t know who they are, after all.
For older staff, or to distinguish managers or supervisors from the rest of the workforce, a personalised fleece is fantastic gift – it’s warm, easy to wear and fashionable and can we worn at work over other items of uniform without interfering with the member of staff’s ability to perform their task. Fleeces can be embroidered with a name or initials in the form of a monogram to give them an extra air of luxury.
For hip young things, a personalised hoody is a stunning gift. Hoodies appeal to people in the media and creative industries, where they have almost become a uniform item in the way that shirts and ties are in a more established business field.
Always remember that the uniform makes a certain statement about a company or business. Because it conveys the public image of the company, you need to consider what you want that image to be – it could be the casual T-shirt in bright colours worn by happy hour staff in a bar, or the formal shirt with a monogram worn by the salespeople in an upmarket car showroom. These are very different messages and if you swap them over they don’t work: nobody wants to buy a luxury car from a T-shirt clad person, and similarly it’s difficult to relax and enjoy a drink from somebody who’s wearing a shirt that means business rather than pleasure.
Formality of dress suggests luxury and a businesslike approach, so shirts and smart jackets are worn by airline staff, while couriers wear clothing that implies speed and safety, such as high visibility clothing.
Polo shirts, as uniform clothing, bridge the gap between these two messages because while they are comfortable and easy to wear, they are also smart enough to give a professional appearance in most situations.
Whether it’s the distinctive uniform of Eton, or the mad get-up of Ronald McDonald, uniform is a key element of team success. That’s why sports teams have identifiable mascots in outsize costumes – because they are a focus of team identity.
Schools use uniforms to identify their pupils, and the more exclusive the school, the more distinctive the uniform will be. The Alfred Marks recruitment agency, in the 1950s insisted that all its secretaries went to work in white gloves because it distinguished an Alfred Marks temp from those of any other company.
So uniform both picks people out, and gives them a sense of identity. While it may be as simple as a T-shirt and apron for a guy throwing pizzas through to the full overalls and work boots of an exhaust fitter, or a carefully monogrammed shirt and suit for a hotel receptionist, uniform clothing helps your team to feel united and to recognise their place in the huge machine that is the world of work. Similarly, team uniforms for sport are vital to helping create a united spirit – and the reward of wearing the yellow jersey, for a cyclist, or swapping shirts with an opponent on the football field is recognised as a huge incentive to perform well during team events.
Giving your team a uniform need not be expensive, but it can bring huge rewards in terms of group cohesion and motivation.
Producing good printed T-shirts is the responsibility of your printed T-shirt supplier, but they can only work with what you give them.
Finding creativity within your organisation, or working with a designer to create a design are two ways to come up with a logo, slogan or other printable image, but before you make a choice, it’s a good idea to look at printed T-shirts online, or in shops to get some sense of what people are currently choosing to wear – a design may express your concept of your business perfectly but if it looks dated or runs too much against current fashion trends, it may never get worn. If you impose it on staff they may resent it and not like wearing it because it doesn’t look ‘cool’ and that causes demotivation.
If you want to sell your T-shirt or use it for promotional purposes, it’s vital that people want to wear it and be seen in it!
Designers come up with great ideas, but they don’t always match the business profile you want to present: they can be too ‘funky’ if you have a business or too ‘grown-up’ if you have a band you’re trying to promote. Because designers work to a brief, it’s up to you to tell them everything you can about what your design should express, who you want to wear or buy it and where you expect them to wear it.
If it’s a T-shirt for the beach, they can design for that, but if you’re asking for printed clothing that people would wear to a committee meeting, it needs to be a completely different kind of design and it’s your job to lay out the specifications clearly enough so that they can produce the right image for the right people to wear to the right places to achieve your aims.
A logo is an encapsulation of your brand and everything it does, and on printed clothing, your logo has to look good but also to express that brand – something too obscure might look great but convey nothing of your business, while something too straightforward may say everything you want to say, but make for the most boring T-shirt in the world!
Wearing a team or group T-shirt has a lot of advantages when undertaking some kind of community activity:
1. It allows group members to identify each other easily and to form relationships if they don’t already know each other
2. Group leaders can spot their team easily and organise them, which is especially important in outdoor settings
3. Printed T-shirts build a sense of community in a group of people and allow them to recognise that they share values and interests
4. Promotional clothing like a T-shirt with a slogan gets your community group message out to the public like almost nothing else can.
But you need to do some research and planning before investing in printed T-shirts for a community group or team.
• Not all T-shirts are the same – when obtaining quotes for the work, make sure you have similar brands and weights of T-shirt in the quotations or you won’t be comparing like with like.
• Check for extra charges – sometimes you have to pay a supplier extra to have more than one location (place where the T-shirt is printed, eg front and back or front and sleeve) and some suppliers aren’t scrupulous about telling you that those locations will incur an extra fee.
• If your T-shirts are to be given away, remember that white blanks are always cheapest and that T-shirts used as gifts or prizes don’t have to cost the earth.
• Make sure you can get a range of sizes to suit the members of your community group – not everybody is a ‘medium’ and it destroys group cohesion if one person isn’t wearing the team T-shirt because you didn’t get large or small enough ones printed.
• Let your team personalise their T-shirts a little – teenagers in particular love to cut off sleeves or wear badges and will often end a group task by writing or drawing on each other’s T-shirts – view it as a compliment and don’t get heavy handed with them.
Embroidered clothing covers a wide range of garments and items from polo shirts, T-shirts sweatshirts, hoodies and jackets through to caps and bags. Embroidery is popular because it durable and easy to launder as well as looking smart and professional.
But for embroidered clothing to achieve everything you hope for, you need to take some care in choosing your supplier, your design and your article to be embroidered.
Choose your supplier with care
When choosing an online supplier, do some research into who owns the website, long they’ve been in business and who else they’ve done work for. Examine the embroidery samples they show on their site and make sure that they match up to your expectations. Ask questions of suppliers because reputable companies will be delighted to demonstrate their expertise and fly-by-night operators will reveal themselves as inadequate in their answers.
Make sure they have an in-house digitiser or a reputable out-source because if you don’t check on this part of the supply chain you can end up finding your exquisite design has been rendered by a person who has little or no design background and may not even have cultural references for what you want to achieve, so they may not recognise words or images that you wish to have processed. Similarly, third parties who complete embroidery work are often late to deliver, so in-house embroidery services mean that deadlines will be met. The shortest number of links in the supply chain means efficiency and reduced costs.
Choose your design with care
Make sure your logo or image is simple and colourful. Graduation is impossible in embroidered threads so you need to ensure your design has block colour. Also make sure the design works across all media such as letterhead, clothing and other promotional items without needing modification.
If you are using text, make sure it’s not too small to be easily read, and if you have large areas of blankness, consider how you can revise the artwork so that there aren’t big expensive areas to be filled in with embroidery that will then look bulky rather than elegant.
Fleece clothing has become the comfort blanket of choice for autumn wear. It’s smart enough to be sported in the office, especially on Dress Down Friday but cozy and relaxing enough to be a real weekend favourite. It also works well in a range of colours, which can’t be said for all clothing – anybody remember green denim? Exactly. But fleece is as wearable in black or charcoal grey as in the powder blues and soft pinks that women particularly enjoy.
Fleece is a fabric that is easy to wash and dry and packs beautifully, coming out of the suitcase without a crease – it’s also a fantastic fabric to decorate and to use for promotional clothing because its light weight and simply styling make it suitable for both indoor and outdoor wear.
A sleeveless fleece offers a superb combination of warmth and protection, but it also provides long-lasting performance, so it’s a brilliant choice for companies that have to watch the pennies as it can be on show throughout the year, is almost impossible to wear out or destroy, and is always popular with staff (or volunteers if you run a charity or club).
The sleeveless style of fleece is the first choice for people who need to have freedom of movement: sports coaches, drivers, delivery personnel and those working in shops selling bulky items all adore a fleece with a logo that can be worn over other uniform items. Because the fleece section covers the torso it keeps the core muscles warm and relaxed and that means that the arms and legs tend to remain warm too because heat lost from the core muscles causes a deep chill in the rest of the body.
If your company has what used to be called a ‘professional’ image, then formal clothing will probably be part of the equation. And if you choose to supply your staff with uniform clothing, you’ll be investing in formal work shirts for them to wear.
If you’re going to provide uniform shirts, getting them embroidered or monogrammed with your company logo adds very little to the cost of the item but provides massive branding and team building advantages.
When selecting work shirts, don’t try to economise too much. Look out for discounts on volume of purchase, rather than cheap shirts per se. If your staff are going to be laundering their clothes regularly, they need to be high-quality, sturdy garments that look good in the long run. Cheap shirts tend to show their cheapness very quickly. 100% cotton shirts have a soft comfortable feel, but shirts with a polyester blend are less trouble to launder, crease less, and last longer.
Colour is incredibly important in creating a professional image – whether you’re a company that services computers or a firm of lawyers dealing with international issues. The associations most people have with colours are:
Red shirts = aggressive/powerful
Navy shirts = trustworthy
Grey shirts = conservative/boring
Black shirts = trendy/entertainment industry based
White shirts = the ultimate colour of professionalism – white shirts have not connotation at all, because they are what most people expect to see!
Women may want to wear other colours and you’ll have to bear this in mind, light blue and cream are shirt colours that would work for both sexes.
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Customised Uniforms | Promotional Clothing | Embroidered Polo Shirts | Printed T-Shirts | Embroidered Shirts | Personalised Sweatshirts | Promotional Fleeces | Embroidered Clothing | Screen Printed Clothing
Transfer and Cad Cut Printed Clothing | T-Shirt Printing | Cheap Clothes
Customised Uniforms | Promotional Clothing | Embroidered Polo Shirts | Printed T-Shirts | Embroidered Shirts | Personalised Sweatshirts | Promotional Fleeces | Embroidered Clothing | Screen Printed Clothing
Transfer and Cad Cut Printed Clothing | T-Shirt Printing | Cheap Clothes