How to design your football club's crest

Shapes, colours and the right file format so your crest looks flawless sublimated.

The crest is the soul of the club and the most visible thing on the shirt. A good design can be recognised from afar and works just as well embroidered large as sublimated at the size of a child's chest. These are the keys, and the mistakes we come across most often.

Less is more

The best crests are simple: a clear shape (classic shield, circle, hexagon), one or two main colours and a recognisable symbol. Too much detail gets lost when the crest is shrunk to chest size.

Try this test: shrink your crest to 2 centimetres on screen and step back a metre. If you can't tell what it is, you won't be able to on the shirt either. Crests that include the year founded, the club's full name, a motto and the town's skyline often fail here: there's too much information competing.

Colours with contrast

Choose colours that contrast with the shirt. A dark crest on dark fabric disappears; so does a white one on a white shirt.

If your shirt is a strong colour or has a busy pattern, consider a version of the crest with a border or background that separates it from the design. Many clubs have two versions of the crest: the main one and one “for dark backgrounds”. It's the cleanest solution.

Think about the away kit too: a crest that works on white may not work on black. Having it sorted in advance saves improvising in August.

The file format (where most crests get lost)

This is the point that ruins the most results, and the easiest one to fix:

• PNG with a transparent background. If you send us a JPG, it has a white box around it that will be printed on the shirt. It's a very common mistake, and today it can be fixed without leaving the website.
• Good resolution. A crest taken from the club's website or forwarded on WhatsApp arrives compressed and pixelated. If it looks blurry on screen, it'll come out blurry on the garment.
• Even better, vector (SVG or AI). A vector can be enlarged to any size without losing an ounce of sharpness. If your club has one, it's the file you want to use.

And watch out for “inherited” crests: many carry a shadow or a white border from an old version, added back then so it would stand out on a particular background. Once sublimated, that shows.

Removing the background, right in the customiser

If your crest comes with a white background, you don't need anyone to cut it out for you. In “Design your shirt”, when you upload it, the background is removed automatically (“With background” brings it back). In the catalogue customiser you have “Background” and “+holes”, and “Orig” to go back to the original. We explain it in removing the white background from your crest.

Check whether your crest really has transparency

It's a common fault and hard to spot with the naked eye: a crest that looks cut out but carries a background in the colour of the screen. When you enlarge it inside the designer you can change the viewer background — checkerboard, white, black or green — and the system tells you whether the image has real transparency or carries a background. On the checkerboard you see it in a second.

And with the “View in detail” magnifier you enlarge it on the shirt, with the buttons or with your fingers. It's the way to know whether a crest that looks fine from afar will hold up in print: if it looks blocky up close, it will look blocky in print too. The same old advice: PNG with a transparent background.

What if I only have the crest in poor quality?

It happens a lot, especially at clubs with history whose original crest is on paper or in a twenty-year-old file. Let us know: we can help you redraw it. It's better to sort it out first than to make twenty shirts with a pixelated crest you'll see every Sunday for the whole season.

No crest? Create one on the website

If the club is new or has never had a crest, at step 2 of “Design your shirt” and in the catalogue customiser you have “No crest? Create one here”. You choose the shape (Classic, Modern, Spanish, Round, Badge or Oval), the initials or the name and, if you like, the year founded. Then the colours and an icon. With “Use this crest” it goes in as if you'd uploaded it. If the club already has its own, it's always better to upload it.

And a tip for the colours: with “Take them from your crest”, the website picks up your crest's colours and puts them on the shirt.

Where to place it

The standard position is the chest, on the heart side. It's what anyone looking at the shirt expects and what works best in the team photo.

From there, order by hierarchy: crest on the chest, main sponsor in the centre or on the upper back, secondary ones on the sleeves. If you put the crest too close to a seam or the collar, it won't look good. On the sleeve you'll see a dotted line marking the recommended area. Outside it, it prints just the same — it isn't cut off —, but the sleeve is sewn into a tube and it may end up under the arm: that's why it's worth checking in 3D, which you see while you design.

Logos go in four areas — Chest, Back, Left sleeve and Right sleeve —: you choose the area, upload the logo and drag it into place, even from one area to another, without uploading the file again.

How much it costs to add your crest

Nothing. At EZ Sports Lab, the crest is included in the price of the garment, whether sublimated or basic. On sublimated kits, sponsor logos are included too, at no cost per logo (on basic cotton garments, printed in DTF, logos start from €4). It's worth checking this point with any supplier: a very tight price per shirt can hide a charge for each print, and with three sponsors and twenty players that's sixty prints someone pays for.

Sublimation: why the technique matters

When sublimating, the ink becomes part of the inside of the fibre. The crest isn't a sticker on top of the fabric: it's part of it. It doesn't crack, doesn't peel in the wash and doesn't block breathability. It's the difference between a crest that lasts the whole season and one that starts cracking in January. We explain it in depth in sublimation vs printing.

Try it on the shirt before deciding

Before you finalise anything, place your crest in the customiser and see how it looks on the real model and colour. When you upload it you see it on the shirt in 3D and on the pattern, with all its pieces. On mobile, the pattern shows one large piece at a time, with its tabs. That's where contrast, size or white-background problems you hadn't spotted on your computer show up straight away.

And as there's no minimum order, you can always order a single shirt and see it in your hands before placing the whole club's order.