The short answer
- Give every participant one good tee, and put organizers, volunteers and mentors in their own color or design so roles read at a glance.
- Add one functional item, like a lanyard or badge holder for check-in, and save heavier pieces such as hoodies and crewnecks for organizers and prizes.
- Order from registration data with a size cutoff, and work back from the event date: standard decorated production takes 2 to 2.5 weeks after order confirmation and payment, finalized artwork, and all order details are received, through arrival.
Start with the participant tee
The tee is the piece every hacker gets, and the one they keep wearing after the weekend, so it deserves most of the thought. Pick one design for all participants and a blank people would choose for themselves: a soft, well-fitting tee is worn long after a thin promotional one is gone. Keep the front clean and let the back do the heavy lifting. The BigRed//Hacks tees put the event graphic on the front and HACKER lettering above a grid of sponsor marks on the back, so sponsors are credited without crowding the design. Browse blank t-shirts by weight, or see custom t-shirts for decoration options.
Give each role its own look
On the day, participants need to find an organizer fast. BigRed//Hacks solved it with color: blue tees for hackers and black tees for staff, inside the same visual system. The same idea works for volunteers, mentors and judges, through a second color, a role word on the back, or both. Small runs are fine here. Each design and color needs only 3 pieces, so a mentor shirt for a handful of people is a normal order. See how the minimum counts.
Hackathon swag ideas beyond the tee
Pick one or two of these rather than all of them. Each should either help the event run or be something a builder actually uses. Unlike apparel, most of these accessories are bulk orders rather than 3-piece runs, and each product page says which.
- Lanyards and badge holders. The MLH organizer guide calls lanyards an easy piece of swag and suggests printing name, pronouns, role and event contacts on a double-sided badge. See the lanyard and badge holder.
- Crewnecks or hoodies for organizers. The SteelHacks XIII crewneck pairs a small chest wordmark with a Pittsburgh skyline across the back. See custom crewnecks and custom hoodies.
- Prize merch. An embroidered quarter-zip or heavyweight hoodie that only winners get becomes a badge of the win. MLH also warns that popular prize items get backordered, so order prizes early.
- Desk gear for builders. A keycap or mousepad with the event mark ends up on a desk instead of in a drawer.
- Water bottles. Useful through a long weekend of building: an insulated bottle or a clear one.
- Small extras. Custom pins, crew socks and caps or beanies make good table drops or raffle items, and one-size pieces need only a headcount.
- A tote to carry it all. A canvas tote holds sponsor items at check-in and keeps getting used afterwards.
How many to order, and in which sizes
Ask for shirt size in the registration form and order from those answers. Not everyone who registers attends, so if you have check-in numbers from a past year, use them to set the total. Add spares for sized apparel: a missing size cannot be re-run for one person, while a few extra tees always find a home with late volunteers.
Hackathon crowds often skew toward the middle sizes. The size split published in the MLH organizer guide has medium as the largest unisex size at about 43 percent, then large at about 29 percent and small at about 13 percent, with women's sizes listed separately. Real answers from your own registrants always beat a curve. The merch size calculator turns a headcount into a total with spares and a size split for hackers and staff at once, and the size breakdown guide explains the reasoning.
Work back from the event date
Production cannot start until the artwork and the sizes are final, so the dates before it matter as much as production itself. Put these dates in the planning doc early.
Lock the design and every sponsor logo
Set a sponsor logo deadline and ask for vector files. The print file cannot be final until every logo is in, so this date drives everything after it.Close size collection
Ask for shirt size in the registration form and give it a cutoff date. Order from those answers, plus spares, rather than from a guess.Confirm the order
Standard decorated production takes 2 to 2.5 weeks after order confirmation and payment, finalized artwork, and all order details are received, through arrival.Keep rush as the fallback
Rush takes 1 to 5 business days after finalized artwork and all order details are received, with rush fees, when blanks for your styles are in stock.
The hackathon merch page checks your event date against production timing, and the merch timeline guide covers each stage in detail. If the date is close, see rush custom merch.
Where the budget should go
Spend first on the participant tee, because it is the item nearly everyone wears again. Keep the extras few and useful, and make prizes fewer but better. If a sponsor funds one item, such as lanyards or bottles, that item can carry their mark alone, which often reads better than one more logo on the back of the shirt. Cost drivers are broken down in what custom t-shirts cost.
Getting it made
blankup has produced hacker and staff tees for BigRed//Hacks and crewnecks for SteelHacks XIII. Send your headcount, roles, sponsor list and event date through the quote form for written pricing, usually within one business day, or start from hackathon merch to see what we make.