Socks are knitted, not printed, and that changes what your artwork can be. It is the single most common surprise in a first sock order.

Why print is the wrong answer on a sock

Print sits on top of a fabric that stretches in every direction and is then washed hot and tumbled. It cracks, it stiffens the panel it is on, and it goes patchy long before the sock wears out.

A knitted logo is the fabric. It stretches with the sock because it is made of the same loops, and it is still there when the sock finally fails.

The needle count is your resolution

A knitting machine has a fixed number of needles around the sock, and each stitch is one pixel. That is your resolution and it is far coarser than anything you are used to.

So hairline rules vanish, small type closes into a solid blob, and fine gradients are simply not available. None of that is a limitation of your logo — it is what happens when a vector drawing is rebuilt out of loops of yarn.

What to change, and what to keep

Open the letterforms out and thicken the strokes. Reduce the number of colours; every extra colour in a knit is another yarn carried along the back of the fabric. Simplify detail inside a crest rather than shrinking the whole crest.

Keep the shape and the proportions, because that is what people recognise from across a start line. A club name that reads at arm’s length is worth more than a faithful reproduction that reads as a grey smudge.

Where to put it

The cuff is the obvious place and the only one that is visible when the sock is being worn inside a shoe. The ankle panel works on quarter and trail heights. The sole can carry a mark, but nobody will ever see it.

We redraw for the knit free and send a proof before anything runs, and we hold the redrawn file so the reorder next season comes back identical rather than nearly identical.