Basic knowledge of advertising t-shirt design
Custom t-shirts are becoming more and more popular, and what is the custom t-shirt printing process? Do you know a lot about the process of ordering advertising t-shirts from Dallas tshirt printing?
In industrialized countries, t-shirt designers are often independent experts. They have their own t-shirt design and sewing company or sell their ideas and designs to clients such as: t-shirt factory, t-shirt distributor, advertising agency, etc. Such t-shirt designers often consider the first three issues when designing:
- Customer’s request.
- Use the latest t-shirt printing technology to achieve a unique and outstanding artistic effect
- Best cost-return ratio.
T-shirt design, t-shirt design (template design) is divided into active design and passive design. Active design is mostly used for the production of commercial t-shirts. Designers are free to exercise their subjective creativity without any restrictions. Basically, any object and any graphic technique can be used to create t-shirt designs. Passive design mainly refers to the creative design of promotional t-shirts, travel t-shirts, anniversary t-shirts, etc., which has certain limitations and must be done under constraints to achieve a certain purpose.
To design a t-shirt, you must first master the basics of t-shirt printing technology, as well as the level of the manufacturer’s printing technology and the t-shirt printing equipment used.
For example, colored fabric T-shirts are always printed with water-based glue. But if the manufacturer has mastered the production technology of thermoset resin ink and corresponding equipment. Glue printing and thermosetting ink printing have different requirements for pattern design. Glue can only be used to print simple color block patterns. While thermoset inks can be used in screen gradation, not just on white T-shirts Silkscreen printing in primary colors and spot color screening on dark t-shirts.
If the pattern designed by the designer does not match the technical process mastered by the manufacturer, the printed pattern will not achieve the original intention and effect of the designer, or even print. Therefore, a t-shirt designer must be proficient in t-shirt printing technology, especially a good t-shirt designer must pay attention to the development situation and technical characteristics of the latest t-shirt printing materials and printing equipment. in the world, thus in order to make the most of the latest scientific and technological achievements to produce new and unique T-shirts.
Silk-tone printing technology has also been gradually applied in international shirt printing in recent years. At the same time, the popularity and competition of desktop prepress systems has greatly reduced the cost of color separation and screening production. Nowadays, color separation and film screening are convenient and cheap. This advancement is like the evolution from letterpress to offset printing in the printing industry. T-shirt designers get rid of the design constraints of color block patterns (except for glue printing) and have more creative space, whether it’s photo effects. Visual effects can easily reproduce the inkjet effect on T-shirts using silkscreen printing technology. This is the advancement of contemporary technology, and it also puts a demand on t-shirt designers to master digital technology.
Introducing the process and technology of printing t-shirts on demand
Make prints
Prepress can also be called Black and White Print, Color Separation, Plate negative, etc. Its main function is to produce photosensitive printing patterns. Therefore, the master must be drawn on a transparent substrate and its image is a layer of translucent ink (black or red). The light transmittance of the substrate and the shading of the density are important parameters that determine the quality of the master print. Formation of images Plate-forming prints are mainly through manual drawing, manual or mechanical engraving, photosensitive copying, laser patterning, printer printing and other production methods .
Color separation
There are two main types of color separation methods: spot color separation and primary color separation.
Spot color separation refers to the use of any specially formulated color as a print color only and form a color image by registering several such spot colors. Five-color printing and twelve-color printing we generally refer to products printed with color images formed by sequential overprinting of five dot colors or twelve dot colors.
Since spot colours may also be printed in excess, five spot colours can also print six sets of colours or even seven different colours, therefore the number of spot colours does not match the number of colours in the image. Spot color printing is mainly used for color block printing and its reflection to natural scenes can only be simulated but not restored, which is the biggest difference from basic color printing. However, with the development of screen printing technology and the development of new inks, spot color screen printing sprang up in recent years, especially t-shirt printing, the most advanced t-shirt printing technology. now international t-shirt. It is no longer basic color printing but spot screen printing, i.e. multicolor silkscreen printing on colored background, especially black t-shirts.
Make a color separator
The color separation plate maker draft is used for the photosensitive production of the corresponding color separation screen printing plate. The quality requirements are: First, the substrate has good light transmission performance. Second, the shading density of the image is high. Third, the color registration accuracy between the color separation films should be accurate, and the image line edges should be clean and neat, and the dots should be complete and clear.
Manual print
Manual printing is the most basic traditional method, mainly for hand-drawn drafts and hand-engraved drafts.
The main manual drafting tools include: light drawing board (OA board), drawing pen, drawing compass, triangle board, curve board, paper cutter, steel ruler, PVC film scissors, PCV film ink , red tear film, red paper self-adhesive, etc.
For handwritten prints, first of all, there must be a light drawing board, the light source is generally a fluorescent lamp, if using an incandescent lamp, it is recommended to use frosted glass or stick a layer of plate paper under the glass. This way the light will be softer and not hurt the eyes. If tracing is needed at home or in the field temporarily, the emergency measure is to put a square stool on the ground, place a piece of glass on the four legs of the chair, and place a table lamp under it, which may have been used.
Ordinary ink cannot be used to draw diaphragms because they dry slowly, have poor durability, are easily soluble in water, and re-moisturize on rainy days. It is best to use specialized film ink to draw PVC film, if you can’t buy it now, you can also use Yidege ink to replace it, but it needs to be boiled to thicken. When drawing large area graphics with Yidege ink, be careful not to make the ink layer too thick to avoid drying and cracking.
5. T-shirt design on computer
With the development of computer technology and manufacturing, computer digital design, drawing and sketching has become quite popular. Compared with Hand-drawn Print and Photo Print, it has the advantages of higher quality, faster speed. It is more convenient to apply to production and the cost is getting lower and lower, especially its color separation and screening quality far exceeds that of manual work.
A variety of tasks such as t-shirt design, color grading, screening, and computer editing must be completed by operating professional graphic design and prepress software. Versatile software such as Adobe LIIustrator, photoshop, CoreIDraw, … is mainly used to design T-shirts and promotional t-shirts.