How to Design Custom BJJ Academy Gear: A Step-by-Step Guide

Designing custom BJJ academy gear well comes down to five decisions, made in the right order: your color scheme, logo placement, fabric choice, decoration method, and sizing. Get these right before you place an order, and the finished gear looks intentional instead of thrown together. This guide walks through each step.

Step 1: Lock In Your Color Scheme First

Every other decision follows from this one. Most academies build a design around two core colors — one dominant, one accent — pulled from an existing logo or team identity. Keep it to two or three colors total across the whole kit. A design with five competing colors reads as busy in photos and loses impact at a distance, which matters at tournaments where your team needs to be recognizable across a crowded mat area.

If your gear needs to be IBJJF-legal for competition, remember gis specifically are restricted to white, royal blue, or black as the base color — accent colors and logos have their own placement and size rules. Confirm current specs in the official rulebook before finalizing a competition gi design; rash guards and shorts have far more color freedom since they're not subject to the same base-color restriction.

Step 2: Plan Logo Placement Before You Design the Logo

Standard placement is a chest logo, a back logo, and sometimes a shoulder or sleeve mark. Decide placement before finalizing artwork, because a logo designed for a small chest patch often doesn't scale well to a large back print, and vice versa — the proportions and level of detail that read clearly at 3 inches look completely different at 12 inches.

A simplified, high-contrast version of your logo usually reproduces better across every item and decoration method than your most detailed version. If your primary logo has fine text or thin linework, have a simplified variant ready for smaller placements.

Step 3: Match Fabric to How the Gear Gets Used

Competition gis and training gis have different priorities. A competition gi needs a heavier weave for durability under repeated grip fighting, while a training-only gi can run lighter for comfort in everyday classes. For rash guards and shorts, full sublimation printing works into the fabric itself rather than sitting on top, so it holds up to the sweat, washing, and stretching that team no-gi gear takes on constantly — a meaningful durability advantage over a printed-on-top design for anything worn hard, multiple times a week.

Step 4: Choose a Decoration Method That Fits the Item

Embroidery is the standard for gis — durable, premium-looking, and it holds up to the wash cycles a gi goes through over years of use. Full sublimation printing is standard for rash guards and shorts, since it allows unlimited colors and detail at one flat cost, unlike screen printing, which typically charges per color.

Don't mix decoration expectations across a kit — a heavily embroidered gi paired with a plain rash guard reads as unfinished. Plan the whole kit's decoration level together, even if you order each item separately or on a different timeline.

Step 5: Build a Real Size Chart, Not Guesswork

A design that looks great on a size chart mockup can still fail if sizing is wrong for your actual roster. For orders of roughly 100 units or more, most manufacturers can build a custom size chart around your real student measurements instead of a generic one. For smaller orders, measure your roster against a standard adult and kids chart before finalizing quantities per size — reordering a handful of mis-sized units after the fact costs more than getting the count right up front.

Putting It Together

Once colors, placement, fabric, and decoration are locked, the design phase is mostly execution: finalize artwork, confirm proofs before production, and check a physical sample if the manufacturer offers one. See our full guide to ordering custom team gear cost for what each of these choices does to your final price per unit, and our custom gym bag guide if a branded bag is part of the kit — it follows the same color and logo decisions as the rest of your gear.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many colors should a team gear design use? Two to three, total, across the whole kit. More than that tends to look busy in photos and loses visual impact from a distance.

Can a gi be any color for competition? No — IBJJF-legal gis are restricted to white, royal blue, or black as the base color, with separate rules governing accent colors, patches, and sponsor logos. Rash guards and shorts have far more color freedom.

Should I design the gi and rash guard at the same time? Yes, ideally. Designing the full kit together keeps the decoration level and color usage consistent, even if you place the actual orders separately or on different timelines.

The Bottom Line

Good academy gear design is five sequential decisions, not one big creative leap: lock colors first, plan logo placement before finalizing artwork, match fabric to real use, pick one consistent decoration method, and build sizing around your actual roster. Nail those in order and the finished kit looks like it was designed as one team identity, not assembled piece by piece.