Family reunion shirts that people actually keep
Most reunion shirts are worn once. What separates the ones that stay in a drawer for years, from the year and the wording to the thing to leave off.
Almost every family reunion shirt is worn on the day and never again. That is not because the idea is bad. It is because most of them are designed to be recognised in a group photograph rather than to be worn afterwards.
Put the year on it
A year turns a shirt into a record of a specific occasion. Without one it is a shirt with a surname on it, which is harder to justify wearing on a Tuesday.
Leave the list of names off the shirt
Printing everybody's name on every shirt is a lovely idea that produces a wall of small text nobody can read and that dates immediately when somebody is missed. A single name on each shirt, the wearer's own, works better and looks deliberate.
Wearable beats commemorative
- One colour, one or two lines, large
- A place or a year rather than a slogan
- A garment colour somebody would have bought anyway
Ordering one design with a different name per person takes the same single form as ordering the same shirt for everybody.
Sizes across three generations
A reunion is the widest size spread of any group order: toddlers and grandparents in the same list. Collect ages for the children and sizes for the adults, and expect to need almost every size available.
Order for the people who are not coming
Somebody always cannot make it, and a shirt posted afterwards is the cheapest kindness available at a family event. Add two or three to the order.
Who is paying
Decide this before you collect names, because it changes the design. If one person is paying for everybody, keep it simple and order. If people are chipping in, the shirt has to be something each of them would choose, which usually means less of an inside joke and more of a place and a year.
The photograph is the point
Most reunion shirts exist so that one group photograph looks like a group. That is worth designing for directly: a single strong line, large, in one colour that separates from whatever everybody will be standing in front of. Small text disappears at the distance a group photograph is taken from.