Occasions
Family reunion shirts
The reunion shirt is the group photo. It is also the thing one relative volunteered for in March and is panicking about in June. Here is how to get it right.
What goes on a reunion shirt
Almost every reunion shirt is built from the same four ingredients, and the design work is in how they are arranged rather than in inventing something new.
- The surname, or the pair of surnames the family descends from. This is the loudest element and it should be.
- The year. Put it on. In ten years the shirt in the closet is only useful if it says when.
- The place. A city, a park, a lake, a church. It anchors the memory to somewhere.
- A line that belongs to your family and nobody else. A motto, a count of generations, a grandmother's phrase.
A prompt that works
Vague prompts get generic shirts. Write the prompt like you are describing the family to somebody who has never met them.
Something in the shape of: "Shirts for the Whitaker family reunion, July 2027, at Freedom Park in Charlotte. Fourth generation gathering, about sixty people, ages two to ninety-one. Grandmother always says the family motto is Still Here. Classic and warm, not cartoonish, something the older folks will be happy to wear to church the next morning."
That prompt contains the surname, the year, the place, the scale, the age range, the phrase, and the taste boundary. The generator uses every one of those.
The taste boundary at the end of that prompt does more work than anything else. Telling the generator what the shirt must not be is the fastest way to stop it drifting somewhere you did not want.
The size run is the part that goes wrong
A reunion is the widest size range of any order anybody places. You have toddlers and you have great-uncles, and the two ends of that range are exactly the ones that get left out when an organizer guesses.
Collect sizes rather than guessing them, include youth and toddler sizes in the same order so the children match, and make sure the top of the adult range is genuinely available rather than nominally available. Then order spares in the middle sizes, because cousins appear.
Names on the back
For reunions this is worth the add-on. Sixty people who mostly know each other by face and half-remembered stories, all wearing their own name, is the difference between an afternoon of squinting and an afternoon of talking. Branch names work too if the family organizes itself that way.
Plan backwards from the date
Reunion dates do not move. Work backwards: pick the date, subtract shipping, subtract production, subtract a week of slack, and that is when your size list has to close. Then subtract however long your family takes to answer a group text, and that is when you have to send the link.
Tell us your date early. We will tell you honestly whether it works.
Questions
Can we include toddler and youth sizes with the adult shirts?
Yes, in the same order and printed from the same file, so the children match the adults. Say so when you set up the size collection.
Do you print sizes above 2XL?
Yes. Ask for the full range when you open your size collection so nobody has to raise their hand about it.
Can we reprint next year and have them match?
Yes. Your print-ready file stays attached to your order, so next year comes off the same file. Update the year in the design and everything else stays as it was.
What if we want different colors for different branches of the family?
That is a common request and it works well. Email us with how you want the branches split before you order, because it changes how the run is set up.