How do you want your artwork?
Many of our customers who want their own designs printed onto t-shirts and sweatshirts sometimes aren’t aware of the various design packages there are out there and that they don’t always work well with each other.
Today I thought we’d go through what we need from you, our wonderful customers in order to make yours and our jobs that little bit easier, oh and a little cheaper for you of course.
We generally use “Adobe Illustrator” or “Corel Draw” for design and printing purposes. These software packages use something called vectors to create designs.
Vector based graphics is the use of geometrical objects such as points, lines, curves, and shapes to represent images in computer graphics. The difference between this process and the use of software such as “Adobe Photoshop” and the like is that these software packages use pixel based graphics, which when manipulated can become distorted and “pixelated”. These programs are great for photographs and web based art but unfortunately in a lot of cases, not for detailed printing purposes where we have to literally play around with your designs to make them proportionate to t-shirts and fix certain flaws in the smoothness of a design or when the design needs to be broken down to get the full range of colours featured in your logo or artwork.
Our printing equipment also interprets lines and curves for cutting the vinyl we use or for creating an outline stencil for our screen printing machines. In order for them to work effectively and give you the great finish that you expect, we need the initial artwork to be in a format that we can use with ease.
If you are a designer or the person that designed your logo or image is a designer, they will generally know what this process is and 9 out of 10 times the artwork will be perfect when we receive it (YEY!). Alternatively, if you are one of those regular people whom the very idea of drawing on a computer scares to heck out of you then we can also help you! We have a re-drawing service (fees applicable) where one of our skilled designers will completely replicate your artwork into the correct format for our purposes. Once you are happy with the finished design, not only will we use it for the printing, but we will keep a copy for any repeat orders and provide you with your design just in case you need it in the future. You will most likely find that any type of printing or re-production process will require this format.
Do not be disheartened though, we may still be able to use your Photoshop file that you’ve slaved over every evening this week! send it over and we can take a look, more often than not we can use it or advise you accordingly.
Alternatively if you only want one t-shirt with a design you recently sketched out on a notepad or something you’ve mocked up on an art package and wish to have a t-shirt made for a night out or just to show off your artistic abilities, then have no fear! We can simply print your design using a special heat pressed transfer which will literally be an exact replica of your design, applied to the garment of your choice.
All in all, anything you want, we can do so if you’re not quite sure how to go about getting what you’re after, give us a call or drop us an email and we’ll advise you of the best and most economical way of getting that great finish that you’re looking for!
