Grunge t-shirts with distressed,
large graphics that cover a shirt are crazy popular right now. It’s hard to walk into any store, whether it’s a discount superstore or a high-end boutique, without seeing this style shirt on nearly every rack. There are plenty of DIY t-shirt fanatics looking to create custom t-shirts in this style and odds are you’ve had a hard time finding a t-shirt printing company that can help you.
Right now everyone wants to create custom t-shirts that resemble the wildly popular Affliction and Ed Hardy Brand t-shirt styles. For the average Joe this can get expensive and even though “Affliction style t-shirt” printing requests are becoming very common, access to printers that can pull it off still aren’t. However, I have seen some dye-sublimation printers online that can do pretty nice all over t-shirt printing.
Your most cost effective printing method is probably going to be screen printing or possibly plot printing for super low quantities and one-offs, using one or two colors, but if you’ve ever tried to submit full coverage complex art to a screen printer you’ve probably had your art handed back to you to simplify it to a point that no longer achieves your goals. The typical set up for all over t-shirt printing requires one set of screens for each size t-shirt usually with a minimum order somewhere in the neighborhood of 72 pieces per size.
As you can imagine prices add up quickly. If you get creative, often times you can work within your screen printers screen size limitations and create some really cool effects derived from the style that Affliction and Ed Hardy use. This tutorial will show you how to create color separations in Adobe Illustrator from complex art quickly and easily. This technique can be used to create screens for custom t-shirt printing without oversimplifying your art.
You can use Photoshop, but there’s a couple reasons we prefer vector art instead of a pixel-based image.
With screen printing, it isn’t necessary for artwork to be vector, but if the design needs to be scaled to a larger size or includes text, it will look much clearer if the artwork is in vector. What exactly is vector? Vector art is created using mathematical formulas to create lines. This means that the artwork can scale really small or really large without losing integrity. This is unlike pixel-based graphics (like.jpeg or image files), which are made using tiny squares of color. With plot printing, vector art is a must, as the design is cut from a colored foil and heat pressed into the fabric. This technique gives the shirt more vivid, crisp colors and also offers a more durable design, especially with small details. Frankly, it’s just much quicker for me to rip separations from Adobe Illustrator. custom dtg printing
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