Custom Work Gear: 4 Simple Steps to Customizing Your Own

by John Amato

Providing your work crew with high-visibility work gear is a vital requirement of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) act.

OSHA requires employers to ensure their employees work in a safe environment free from hazards that may cause injury or death.

Offering protective and high-visibility work gear is a primary means of ensuring your personnel’s safety.

Today, we’re looking at four simple steps to customize your work gear so you can promote your brand without‌ breaking OSHA rules. We’ll also compare the influence that custom and non-custom work gear have on your brand and employees.

1 - Select Your Work Gear

Custom High-Visibility Safety Vests

high visibility custom safety vest

When choosing custom high-visibility safety vests, ensure they’re compliant with ANSI/ISEA 107-2015 standards. This code (recommended by OSHA) sets the guidelines for creating safe and professional high-visibility work gear.

The most crucial characteristic of compliant safety vests is their fluorescent colors. OSHA specifies the following luminous colors as the best options for high visibility safety vests:

  • Yellow
  • Orange
  • Bright red
  • Orange-red
  • Yellow-green

These colors stand in sharp contrast to the immediate environment. Thanks to their special pigment, they absorb UV light and send it back to an approaching vehicle or worker to maintain the wearer's visibility—even in dim conditions.

Besides helping keep workers safe by making them visible to vehicle drivers and plant operators, custom high-visibility vests provide an excellent opportunity for:

  • Personnel identification
  • Promoting brand awareness
  • Creating a professional image
  • Organizing employees into departments

Custom Construction Hi-Vis Work Jackets

high visibility custom safety jacket high visibility custom safety jacket

Like all hi-vis safety gear, your company’s safety jackets need to conform to OSHA guidelines, which include:

  • Affixing 50 mm wide retroreflective strips vertically, around the waist, and with a shoulder-to-waist “X” on the back to enable visibility in dark places
  • Ensuring safety work jackets are well-fitting without billowing strips to avoid entanglement in moving machinery
  • Protecting workers from fire, chemicals, static electricity, and radiation by making custom safety work jackets from flame-resistant and insulated material
  • Ensuring safety work jackets are ‌long or short-sleeved and avoiding sleeveless jackets

Having addressed OSHA’s concerns, the custom construction hi-vis work jacket provides you with an excellent opportunity to promote your business.

For example, you can customize the jacket to include your company logo.

However, while there’s a lot of free space left on the jacket, you need to design your company’s logo so that it’s the right size and doesn’t obscure the jacket’s safety features.

Don’t make the logo too small to be seen either.

According to the ANSI-ISEA-107-2015 (Section 7.2):

  • The total surface area covered by custom text and logo on the front and rear of a high-visibility safety jacket shouldn’t exceed 465 cm.sq (72 in.sq)
  • Custom text and logo should not create horizontal gaps over 50 mm (1.97 in.) on the retroreflective material of a hi-vis safety jacket

The best places to put your company logo include:

  • Chest pocket
  • Upper back
  • Lower back

Custom Safety Hoodies and Sweatshirts

brightly colored custom hoodie brightly colored custom sweatshirt

Keep your personnel comfortable by adding custom hoodies and sweatshirts to their work gear.

Having apparel made from luminous safety colors and soft fluffy material, as with All Mechanical Insulation Inc, will improve professionalism and comfort without compromising safety.

Workers are more likely to wear the safety gear beyond the worksite, further publicizing your custom embroidered company logo.

Protect your crew and promote your brand by choosing from Jupmode’s wide range of worksite safety apparel.

Custom Screen Printed Safety T-shirts

custom construction t-shirt custom construction t-shirt

Custom Screen Printed Safety T-shirts provide maximum comfort and mobility because of their flexibility and breathability.

You can have them made with built-in UV protection, too, to shield workers from the hot sun.

Custom Hard Hats

yellow worksite hard hat

Besides their power to make your workers visible and protect them from potential on-site head injuries, custom safety hard hats hold a great opportunity for brand publicity.

Their bright colors, such as orange, yellow, red, or white, provide a unique backdrop for printing your company's name or logo.

These two options stand out in printing your logo onto hard hats:

  • Direct printing: Involves printing your logo directly onto the hard hat.
  • Decals: Sticking logos onto the hard hat; however, they may fade over time.

As in all work gear customizations, ensure your company information is not so extensive that it defeats the safety gear’s purpose.

Maintain a maximum length and height of 3 inches for the logo and text. The best spot to place your logo and text on a hard hat is in front, above the brim.

The table below will help you compare the effects of custom and non-custom work gear on your brand and employees.

Custom Work Gear Non-Custom Work Gear
Instills a sense of belonging by identifying workers with your company Lacks a unique mark to associate workers with your company
Increases brand credibility before current and potential customers Doesn’t promote your brand and shows a lack of creativity
Its uniqueness raises employee morale and teamwork Makes employee feel neglected and unvalued

2 - Create Your Design

In creating your design, the contrast between the work gear’s color and your company logo should be your primary consideration.

For example, as safety work gear is fluorescent, a black logo creates a naturally vivid contrast. Its non-reflective nature also makes it the most compliant color to ANSI standards.

Besides the logo and text color, ANSI 107 standards limit the total surface covered by your customizations to 72 square inches.

You can divide the 72-inch quota and spread it across the safety apparel.

You can have your logo and text printed on the work gear‌ by:

photo-snippet-custom-work-wear

3 - Choose Your Designer

Choosing your designer is a process that involves comparing businesses’ ability to meet your needs at the most competitive price.

Below is a cross-section of the main factors you need to consider before settling on a company that’s best suited for designing your work gear.

Product Range and Availability

You can never overemphasize the convenience of sourcing all your custom safety work gear—including vests, t-shirts, jackets, hoodies, and hats—from a single supplier. It minimizes logistical costs such as shipping and offers other benefits like bulk discounts.

Another critical factor is the custom design options a company offers. For example, does the company do embroidery, color printing, heat transfer, or a combination? Can they supply the actual work gear? Or is customization all they can do?

Jupmode designs, produces and supplies specialized, custom printed and embroidered clothing and promo products in bulk.

Some of our flagship products include:

Reliability

First, reliability involves a design company’s dependability and ability to service your order within the agreed timeframe.

Second, reliability refers to the company’s product compliance with the American National Standard for High Visibility Safety Apparel and Headwear (ANSI/ISEA 107).

Can they show proof of certification on demand?

Did you know? CAN/CSA Z96-02 and EN ISO 20471 are the equivalent safety standards for Canada and Europe.

Affordability

As with your other expenses, the company supplying you with custom work gear should justify its prices.

Therefore, it’s essential to shop for the most affordable and well-suited supplier of custom work gear.

The following video provides handy tips for purchasing hi-vis work gear.

Expert Tip: Choose a shirt with a soft material that will be worn more often than a standard shirt.

4 - Promote Your Brand

  • Custom embroidered polo shirts: Offer comfort and confidence and boost company image when meeting current and prospective clients.
  • Custom work hats and beanies: Trucker hats protect against the sun’s UV rays, and beanies keep you warm during cold weather.
  • Custom logo water bottles and coolers: Keep employees hydrated and make excellent giveaways to current and prospective customers.
custom outdoor trucker hat custom embroidered beanie

You can also contact us for more customized promotional products, such as:

Choose Safety and Comfort

At Jupmode, we firmly believe that workers are more productive when they’re assured of safety and comfort at the workplace. This is the philosophy behind our success in partnering with other businesses.

For certified work gear such as hi-vis t-shirts, and hats, fill out this form and tell us how we can help you. We’ve got state-of-the-art embroidery, color printing, and heat transfer equipment to create your company's best custom work gear.

Our customers are enjoying a thriving partnership with us.

See for yourself:

customer-testimonial-custom-work-wear

Protect and Promote

Providing your crew with certified work gear guarantees workplace safety and gives you peace of mind.

Besides, custom safety gear presents you with an excellent opportunity to promote your business at no extra cost. Jupmode will help you optimize safety and brand visibility on every piece of custom work gear you order.

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