Print Your Theme T-shirt

Surrounded by hundreds of t-shirts’ logos, images and designs daily, you probably feel overwhelmed with all the information their owners decide to put on public display. But it is certain that you also have at least one branded, colored or personally designed t-shirt in your closet’s space, which was made by your college friends as a graduation present, given to you as a welcome-home gift, or distributed by your hiking club as a symbol of encouragement to continue climbing higher each time. But isn’t it time to create your own? Even if you have done so in the past, your current state of mind might give you ideas

From the famous Andy Warhol images to personal slogans, our favorite t-shirt has gone through many different design and style variations. Throughout this transition from one style to the next, the concept of the T-shirt and the T-shirt printing process has remained the same. As technology brought buyers and suppliers closer together, T-shirt printing is now available on the Internet by companies which design, produce and sell their customized T-shirt layout patterns in a preset or negotiable price range. In fact, companies that offer promotional items include in their catalogues samples of screen printing projects, embroidery design, airbrush, appliqué, and ironing, while most of them provide free quotes depending on the quantities needed and the complex of the design selected to be printed. However, for the mass production of personalized T-shirts the process of silk screening is mostly used.

The two main methods of printing colors on a T-shirt surface are spot colors and four-color process. Spot colors are individual colors that are printed separately. With hundreds of pre-mixed colors and an infinite number of colors that can be mixed together according to the specifications given by the graphic designing program, the customer receives the original design without visible variations. Four-color process physically blends the main four colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) on the textile to create a large variety of colors. Simply referred to as CMYK it is used to simulate photographic work and sophisticated graphics with shading and textural effects. Thus, depending on the complexity of the design selected to be imprinted on the T-shirt, the graphic designer will create transparent acetate films of each color and will print them in black. Each color is then exposed onto a fine mesh screen that has been coated with photosensitive emulsion –these screens were originally made from silk, thus the term silkscreen– and through the high-intensity lightbox the image is copied onto the T-shirt.

If this sounds like too technical for you, do not get discouraged. Step-by-step online guides, apart from the experts at your local T-shirt printing facility, can guide you through the process of selecting or designing from scratch your T-shirt logo and slogan. It is evident that through the different procedures of T-shirt printing ordering your personalized or company labeled T-shirt can be as an easy process as counting 1-2-3.

By: john