Custom Sports Apparel Designer — Sublimated Team Wear (Long-Term Contract)

Type of Work: Graphic Design Service Fee: $1,000 – $1,500/month USD, based on experience. Exceptional senior candidates may be considered above this range. Coverage required: You organize your own working time, but must maintain a 2-hour overlap with our US team on our business days, inside our window of 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. US Central Time, for customer communication and handoffs. Company holidays and your own paid days off are excluded. We agree the exact window with you at the start.

About Us
Stitches & Dye, Oh My! is a US-based custom apparel company. We create original designs for bowling leagues, tournaments, and teams. Customers come to us with colors, an idea, and sometimes a reference photo, and we design something original for them. Our third-party vendor handles production.

We produce a full range: bowling jerseys, polos, t-shirts, hoodies, hats, and accessories. Bowling jerseys are our
specialty and the most technically demanding piece.

What You Will Own
• Create original apparel designs from a customer brief
• Present concepts to the customer and run the revision conversation with them directly
• Translate vague feedback ("make it more aggressive," "the logo feels small") into specific design changes
• Prepare print-ready files to our vendor's template and spec
• Submit approved files to the vendor and answer their production questions
• Update the order record after each customer exchange so our E-Commerce, Customer Operations & Social
Media Contractor always knows where the design stands
• On request, supply specialized apparel and product design assets for social media. Routine social content is
owned by that same contractor, not you.

Our service standard: first concept within two of our business days after a complete brief, and each revision within two of our business days after complete customer feedback. The clock does not start until the brief or feedback is complete.

Requirements
Must have:
• Strong Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop skills. Canva alone is not enough.
• Portfolio showing custom apparel or team sportswear. Include jerseys or uniforms if you have them.
• Experience preparing files for sublimation or DTF printing: vector artwork, correct color mode, bleed, seam and
panel placement, roster names and numbers
• Excellent written English. You will email our customers directly.
• Ability to work from a written brief and vendor spec sheet without constant supervision
• Judgment to stop and ask when a brief or a supplied file has a problem
• Computer that runs Adobe software well and reliable internet

Nice to have:
• Bowling, sports team, or league apparel experience
• Product or apparel mockup and presentation experience

What We Provide
• Adobe Creative Cloud, Canva, and Shutterstock accounts
• Payment via Wise, twice monthly. The 1st–15th is paid on the 25th; the 16th–end of month is paid on the 10th of the following month. We cover all transfer fees, so you receive the full amount.
• Company-funded Maxicare PRIMA or MediCard Health Plus after 90 days, subject to provider eligibility
• Paid Service Days: first earned at Day 120, then one for each 30 days of service after that
• Paid Non-Service Days on US and Philippine dates, per our published annual calendar
• Annual Service Bonus equal to one month's fee, earned every 12 months of service

This is a long-term, non-exclusive independent contractor engagement. You organize your own working time. For your first month our lead designer reviews every file before it goes to the vendor. After that you gain independence.

How to Apply
Subject line: APPAREL DESIGNER — [Your Name]
Include:
1. Portfolio link with apparel work clearly marked
2. Your experience preparing files for sublimation printing
3. Which Adobe programs you use most and your version
4. Your available overlap hours in US Central Time
5. Answer this: A customer says they want "something with blue and gold, kind of aggressive looking, with an
eagle." What three questions would you ask before you start designing?

Applications without an answer to #5 will not be reviewed.

Finalists receive a paid two-part test project using a real past order.

THE PAID TESTS
Both roles get a paid work-sample test. Portfolios and interviews show the best version of a candidate; a test shows what they do under your constraints.

Before you send any test materials
Finalists have not signed the contractor agreement, so Sections 5 through 7 do not protect anything you hand them. Two things to do first.

Send a Paid Test Acknowledgment and get a reply agreeing to it:
Test materials provided by Stitches & Dye, Oh My! LLC are confidential and may be used only for this hiring exercise. They may not be posted, shared, added to a portfolio, reused, or distributed, and must be permanently deleted when the hiring process concludes or earlier upon Company's request. Finalist will confirm deletion in writing upon request. Any work product you produce for this test is for evaluation only and will not be commercially used by Stitches & Dye unless separately agreed in writing.

That last sentence protects the finalist as much as you, and saying so removes any ownership argument with someone who never becomes your contractor.

Substitute the identifying artwork. Removing a customer's name does not anonymize the order when their team logo is on the jersey. Replace the real logo with a fictional or Stitches & Dye-owned one. The real brief, the garment, the template problem, and the revision history all still work as a test without the actual customer's identity attached.