Sorority Shirt Design Ideas
Designing custom shirts for your sorority allows you to create unique wearable art that can bring your sisters closer together. Whether crafting a shirt for recruitment events, philanthropic causes, or simply fostering a sense of camaraderie, thoughtful design choices play a pivotal role in capturing the essence of your sorority's values and personality. At Good Ink, we create custom apparel for sororities at colleges and universities across the country. We've taken our experience and insights with sorority apparel creation and compiled a comprehensive design guide you can use to draw inspiration for your sorority shirt designs.
Why Design Custom Sorority Shirts?
Sorority shirts are a great way to show pride in your chapter and the sorority you represent. Having different shirt designs allows your members to show off their pride in being part of the organization around campus and other events. Custom casual apparel can also be worn and designed for any occasion. Being able to wear custom-designed matching sorority shirts and apparel creates a sense of community among members, and lets others visually see the personality of your group represented through your clothes.Common Sorority Shirt Design Elements
Add Your Greek Letters
Due to the nature of traditional sororities abbreviating their names into Greek letters, lettered-style shirts are some of the most popular designs to consider when committing to or trying out a new style. This style makes it easy for your chapter to stand out on campus with big bold letters. Using letters can also make it easier to customize your designs because you won't have to fit as much text into your design. Letter designs are great to pair with pocket tee shirts, as you can opt to place your letters on the pocket for a simple, clean look where you can maximize color. In addition to including your letters on a pocket tee, if you are looking to bring them out front and to the center with a bold, flowing script, baseball tee styles are a great way to have a color block style with a comfortable ¾-length sleeve. For outdoor events, these are a great choice and are stylish and fun for casual occasions. You could also customize sweatshirts for fall or winter events.Include Event Details
Many say that some of the best perks that come with being in a sorority are all the opportunities to attend different community-building events throughout the college year. These events allow sisters to build trust and bonds that last for a lifetime, while also contributing to their communities at the same time. Some of the most common events we see sororities creating custom tees for are as follows:- Bid day
- Big-little
- Christmas
- Dad's day
- Game day
- Halloween
- Homecoming
- First day of class
- Formal
- Founder's day
- Mom's day
- Family/parent's weekend
- Philanthropy
- Recruitment
- Seniors
- Sisterhood retreat
- Socials
- Spirit week
- Spring break
- St. Patrick's Day
- Valentine's Day
- Work Week
You can incorporate the event into your shirt by including the event name or the event date in the design. If the event is a holiday, you can also incorporate traditional colors for that holiday into your design (red for Valentine's Day as an example).
Include Your Sorority Chapter's Identity
Your chapter is a symbol of your character, social purpose, and leadership style, and representing your overarching sorority is possibly the most important part of the design process. You can include the full name of your chapter instead of, or in addition to the abbreviated letters. Below are some of the most popular traditional sororities found in colleges throughout the country. If you don't see yours on the list - don't worry - we can still help you create custom apparel!- Alpha Chi Omega
- Alpha Delta Pi
- Alpha Gamma Delta
- Alpha Omicron Pi
- Alpha Pi
- Alpha Sigma Alpha
- Alpha Xi Delta
- Chi Omega
- Delta Delta Delta
- Delta Gamma
- Delta Phi Epsilon
- Delta Zeta
- Gamma Phi Beta
- Kappa Alpha Theta
- Kappa Delta
- Kappa Kappa Theta
- Kappa Delta
- Kappa Kappa Gamma
- Phi Mu
- Pi Beta Phi
- Sigma Delta Tau
- Sigma Kappa
- Sigma Sigma Sigma
- Zeta Tau Alpha
Pick Appropriate Colors
While deciding on the color of sorority shirts for your event is largely dependent on the preferences of your group, there are a few popular colors that stand out amongst the rest. Pairing bright, vibrant colors that pop as your base with white or neutral fonts is a popular combination as they help brighten up events and can be styled easily with neutral pants and skirts. Some of the most popular vibrant colors to consider in your design process are bright blues, reds, and pinks. If loud colors aren't your thing, neutral tones bring a modern look to your chapter's style and are arguably even easier to pair and accent with other designs and pieces. If you decide on a basic white shirt, you can take advantage of using large black and bold fonts without overcrowding your outfit as well. Growing in popularity are earth tones, which you may recognize seeing our heather sage, military green, heather slate, heather stone, and chestnut color options. These tones go great with our v-neck tee styles and can be complemented with floral patterns and other accessories! Ultimately, color choice is a decision best voted on in your chapter, but at Good Ink, we have a large variety of palettes to select from! Our team of designers can also help you decide on a color scheme for your shirts.Choose a Trendy (But Legible) Font
Greek apparel, especially sorority shirts, can take on so many different kinds of designs. However, the vast majority of designs will be centered around the sorority's name or letters, which is why selecting the right font is so important! Font mainly comes down to personal choice, but it doesn't hurt to browse fonts that are trendy or timeless, yet still easy to read. You don't want your chapter to be confused with another on campus, because the shirt wasn't decipherable at first glance. Some popular choices for sorority shirt fonts can be found below.- Script fonts: Mallicot, Sophia, Honeycomb, Madelis, Lobster, and Milkshake
- Greek fonts: Greek Freak, Greconian, Afjat, Commodus, and Graeci
- Serif fonts: Cinzel, Droid Serif, Collegiate Heavy Outline, Hudson NY Slab, and Freshman
- Handwritten font styles: Brusher, Hensa, Samble, Showtime, Patrick Hand
