Taylor’s brand is recognized everywhere because she has worked hard over the years. But if you browse through Etsy, you’ll find lots of copyright infringing merch with Taylor’s name. There’s no doubt that Taylor’s fans will buy anything with her name on it. But copyright infringement is a big no for me. There are more creative ways to make fanart merch. And with ai, you can easily create these designs so much faster now.
So, I decided to write this article to show you how you can legally cash in on the swiftie craze without getting yourself into trademark trouble.
Understand Taylor’s trademarks
An article by Michael Kondoudis lists Taylor’s trademarks. It shows that her full name and initials are protected. There are also other words she has trademarked to her name. I don’t think this is all of them, but you can also go to the US trademark office so you can check for yourself.
One interesting thing that I found is that she trademarked her last name “swift”, but her first name is free to use; which means you can use Taylor but not swift for your print on demand product.
Now let me show you the trick to understanding trademarks. You see the name “swifties”, its the unique name of her fan club. So, you can’t ever use it for any commercial purpose. But this phrase “shake it off” is common. All you have to do to avoid trouble is add another word to it like “shake it off babes” or “ladies you can shake it off”.
The secret is that with common phrases, the trademark only covers the exact words. So, you see, you can remix it to create your own fanart.
Create your own fanart terms
If you think playing with trademarked words is risky, you can come up with your own phrase. As a swiftie myself, I know a lot of these phrases like “i’m feeling 22”, “Taylor is queen”, “swiftian”, and many more.
Use Chatgpt to create fanart ideas
Another way to get t-shirt design phrases for Taylor’s fans is to use Chatgpt. Yes, I have tried it and I know you can create unique ideas that the swifties will understand. To do this, you should head over to chatgpt website and enter this prompt:
Give me a list of popular taylor swift text. make the text maximum three words and it should be funny.
Chatgpt will give you some good options. Since ai cannot identify trademarked words, make sure you remove words like swiftie or swift. If you are not sure, you can go to the law firm website to confirm that it’s not protected.
Some Taylor Swift fanart idea list
- Staries
- Swiftlets
- Swifteam
- Taybies
- Taytay
- Starliters
- Tayfam
- Starlighters
- Swifters
- Swift girlies
- Swift fanbase
- Taylor girlies
- Swift base
- Taylor fans
- Timeless Tribe
- Swift tribe
- Fearless fans
- Swift scout
- Tayvolution
- Taylor troupe
- Swiftlings
Create fanart T-shirts designs with ai
The tool I’ll be using is Leonardo ai. I picked it because it can create consistent style and the text format is very good. To start, you should go to the Leonardo ai website and login by clicking on the launch app button. If you don’t have an account, you can click here to create one. When you sign-in, you should click on the “image generation” button. Then:
- Go to the right side to create the set-up.
- Click on the preset style and select “Leonardo phoenix”.
- Go to the prompt enhance option and turn it off.
- Move to preset style, then select “graphic design vector”.
- Because I am making a t-shirt design, I will move the “image dimension” slider to change the ratio to 3:4 or 4:5.
- You can leave every other setting as is.
Now its time for the prompt using the text ideas I got earlier from ChatGPT. And it says:
graphic typography with text "Bad Blood Vibes", decorative text, isolated on a white background.
Then click on the generate button. Here are some of the generated images. You can choose the one you like and download it.
This is a very simple design, but you can even add images to your prompt. Let me show you what I mean.
For this example, I’ll change the prompt to:
graphic typography with text "I'm feeling 22 bitch", bold text, a tongue-out mouth with red lips element, isolated on a white background,
Upscale your designs
Now it’s time to upscale it with Bigjpg.com. You should:
- Upload the images
- Click on the start button
- Click the 4x option.
- Click on enlarge all images below.
- Once its done, click on the “download all” button to save your images.
Edit your t-shirt design with Canva
The last part is to sign-in to canva.com. You should go to the create design at the top. Then search for the t-shirt option and click on it. Once it loads, you can click on the upload option on the right. Select the images and click enter. Now once you click the image on the right, it will appear on the canvas. You can drag the edges to resize it and position it in the middle.
To make it transparent, you should go to the edit image option at the top. Pick BG remove to delete the background. You can repeat this process for the other design.
When you’re done, you can click on the share button, then click on the download button. Make sure you select the transparent option and click download again. All the designs will be automatically saved.
So now you can see how easy it is to create Taylor swift fanart t-shirt designs without all the copyright issues.
Hi, I’m Blessing, a pro writer and graphic designer turned AI EXPERT! My passion is helping you unlock the full potential of AI tools to elevate your skills and create a successful side hustle or brand.
I skip the hype and focus on what truly works, bringing you the best tools to 10x your creativity.