Print Placement on Caps
By The Velocity Wear Team
The usable positions on a cap are the front panel, the two side panels, the back above the closure, the peak and the underside of the peak. The front carries the main mark. Everything else is secondary and takes a small logo at most. Each position is a separate machine pass, so each one is priced separately.
Where can a logo actually go?
The front panel is the obvious home for the primary mark, and on a five panel it is a single uninterrupted area. Side panels take a small secondary logo, an icon or a short word. The back panel above the closure suits a wordmark or a small badge. The peak takes a narrow strip along the edge, and the underside of the peak takes a design nobody sees until the cap is lifted, which is a nice detail on a retail piece.
What does not work is anything crossing a seam, a curve or a stiffening edge. The crown is not flat, and both embroidery hoops and transfer presses want a flat surface. Artwork that spans two panels distorts where the panels meet. Keep each element inside one panel and the result stays clean. Build options for each shape are on the wholesale caps page.
How big can a front logo be?
Smaller than the panel looks. The usable area stops short of the seams, stops above the peak stitching and stops below the top button, so the real canvas is a modest rectangle in the middle. A mark that fills the whole visual front on a rendering will hit the physical limits of the hoop or the press.
Height is the tighter constraint on low profile builds, because a shallow crown gives less vertical room. A wide horizontal wordmark suits a dad cap; a tall stacked logo suits a high profile structured six panel. Check the artwork against the build before you commit to the shape rather than after.
What does the centre seam on a six panel do?
It splits the front into two halves, which matters for anything centred. A symmetrical logo sits either side of the seam without complaint. An asymmetric mark, or one with fine detail running through the middle, breaks where the seam lifts. Embroidery can bridge a seam but the stitching sits slightly proud along it, and a printed transfer will show a ridge.
A five panel has no centre seam on the front, which gives a clean uninterrupted area and is the reason it is preferred for detailed or photographic front artwork. The trade-off is a different silhouette, set out in 5-panel vs 6-panel caps.
Which positions add cost?
Every position after the first. A cap is hooped or pressed once per position, so a front logo plus a back wordmark plus a side icon is three operations on every single cap. That multiplies across the run, which is why a three-position cap costs meaningfully more than a one-position cap even though the artwork is small in each case.
The starting point is $12 a piece at the 50-piece minimum with one position, and the bands run 50 to 99, 100 to 249, 250 to 499, 500 to 999 and 1,000-plus, with up to 35% off the 50-piece price at the top. Decide the positions before you request a quote so the number you get back is the real one. Colour interacts with placement too, since thread sheen varies by surface, which is covered in colour matching bulk caps, and the vocabulary is in the glossary.
