Printing and Living: T-shirt design skills and printing process

Before you design a T-shirt, you must make sure that your T-shirt is the last to be printed by that printing process. This is very important, and the design of the different printing processes is very different.

First, printing process

T-shirt printing is basically divided into three categories, screen printing, transfer printing and hand-painted three.

Screen printing is the most used T-shirt printing. 90% of the T-shirts purchased in the outside stores are screen printing. The screen printing technology is relatively complex. There are mainly designs, out of the film, printing, printing and drying steps. . Silk-screen color printing, simply speaking, a T-shirt pattern if there are red, yellow, blue three colors, it would need to print three editions, one version for each color, but the print and CMYK is not a bit In the same way, the domestic majority is spot color printing, and the superposition of CMYK dots is difficult to control on T-shirt printing.

Transfer printing technology is a kind of printing technology popular in recent years. The principle is that the pattern is printed (printed) on the transfer paper, and then the pattern is printed on the T-shirt fabric through high temperature and high pressure. Compared with the screen printing, the transfer is Printing has the advantages of rapidity and convenience, vivid colors, but also has the disadvantage of relatively low color fastness and high customization cost. If you just want to design a unique T-shirt, you may consider printing the designs and transferring them to T-shirts. There are many tutorials on the Internet. I am not here to discuss them.

The last kind of hand-painting, most of the hand-painted T-shirts are now done with inkjet, of course, there are many with strokes, the use of paint is generally acrylic paint and textile dyes, hand-painted T-shirts are relatively high cost, and who There is no guarantee that everything will be the same.

Comparing the above three technologies, if your design has only a few pieces to be printed, you can choose thermal transfer printing. Now the price of a thermal transfer printing paper is between 5 and 10 yuan. Many cities use that kind of heat. You can ask for a price in a shop that transfers printing. If you have to do dozens or hundreds of pieces, or choose silk screen printing, the bigger the print, the cheaper the plate fee will be on each T-shirt. There are some articles on the T-shirt.com China T-shirt Design Forum for reference.

Then talk about the design of T-shirts.

Second, the design of T-shirts

T-shirt design we can simply understand the graphic design, the software is generally used commonly used graphic design software, such as photoshop, CorelDRAW, etc., photoshop is a bitmap design, CorelDRAW is a vector file, select the bitmap or vector mainly to see you The requirements of the design patterns, if it is a number of lines or color blocks, text, try to use vector, because photoshop often appear in the film when the sawtooth.

Here are a few things to note when designing.

1, try to avoid particularly large color blocks, especially the chest here, large color blocks whether you use glue or ink printing will cause the location of the printing when sweating is not airtight.

2, T-shirt printing has a predecessor, back and cuffs in three positions, to avoid your pattern is always connected from the sleeve to the shoulder position, because most of the small-volume printing is a garment printing, these positions are difficult to print seams, also Bad printing.

3, if you choose silk screen printing, it is necessary to control your colors. The more colors you have, the higher your cost will be, and a good balance between your design and cost.

4, if it is screen printing to avoid the use of color gradient, because often printed out of the gradient and your screen shows a great difference, after all, printed on the fabric and printed on the paper is different.

Third, the choice of fabric

T-shirt fabrics are two kinds of cotton and polyester-cotton, polyester-cotton feel thicker, but also very soft, but wear on the body will be more boring, the price is relatively cheap. The advantages of pure cotton needless to say, if the budget permits, or choose a cotton T-shirt. T-shirt fabrics also have grammage, the difference between the number of counts and cotton yarn, gram weight is generally between 160 grams and 200 grams, too thin will be very transparent, too thick will be hot, the general choice of 180 grams is better, the number is generally 21 Branches and 32 sticks refer to the average number of cotton fiber lengths, the higher the softer they are, and the veil is divided into Pu yarns, semi-finished yarns and fine yarns, and the surface of the plain yarns will be rough, especially for dark fabrics. White yarn spots. The surface of the fabric of the fine yarn is relatively neat and the handle is also very soft.

The difference between good and bad T-shirt fabrics is relatively large, before the custom must be the other party to provide T-shirt samples.

Finally reminded, the collar is also very important, a good collar must be added spandex, it will be more flexible, many people have seen the collar fell after washing several times in the T-shirt, this is the spandex did not increase Or add less reason. T-shirts in addition to the rib collar is also useful for thongs made of T-shirts. These fabrics are generally very thick, usually long-sleeved T-shirts.

Website to do T-shirt suits, we must first calculate a good size, do not simply go to statistics who want M number, who want XXL number, because the size of various types of T-shirts are often not uniform, it is best to count a height, especially A fat person is one yard tall and calculates the postage price. According to the cost of the T-shirt itself, a reasonable price is set. There are a few websites that start customizing T-shirts with a few dozens, but as the number of members increases, In India, when the same design is printed for the second time, it does not require the cost of plate making. You must remember to discuss it with your T-shirt processor and save your screen.