Get advice to help you create your t-shirt graphics. Discuss t-shirt design software, special effect techniques, or other topics related to creating a t-shirt design on your computer. If you'd rather hire a graphic designer to do the work for you, please post in our Referrals and Recommendations section here.
Hey Guys! I am still very new to the t shirt world. I am just getting started..... I have a lot of questions but I will not ask them all on this post. I have a lot of designs for tshirts in illustrator, but how do I know what size to make the document? Do I need to contact the screenprinting company I plan to use and ask about the tshirt sizes or is there a standard size for graphics? How do I find this out? Also, do I need to design with 2, 3 or 4 colors only and do I use rgb or cmyk, and last question, do i need to save the file in a certain format to finalize and send off for screen printing? Thanks for the help and patience!
All these questions can be answered by your screen printer to fit their specifications.
You should make the files the size you want them actually printed on the shirt. IE. if you want your design to print 5"x4" on the chest... make your design 5"x4". As long as the file is 300dpi you'll be fine. Since your working in illustrator and its vector artwork, you dont have to much worry about that.
if you're doing more than one color.. make your colors pantones. IE. if you're doing a red color, assign it to pantone 185c or something.
If your screen printer has a webpage, they usually say which format they prefer. A safe bet is .PDF. but its a safe bet to ask the screen printer first.
Dont forget that if you are printing on a dark color shirt to make a white base plate that is about 4 stokes smaller that the actual design.
4 'strokes' sounds like allot
1 point stroke will give you a choke of 0.5, that should be enough for the average job. for critical tight registration jobs i do a stroke of 0.5 giving a choke of 0.25.
Hey Guys! I am still very new to the t shirt world. I am just getting started..... I have a lot of questions but I will not ask them all on this post. I have a lot of designs for tshirts in illustrator, but how do I know what size to make the document? Do I need to contact the screenprinting company I plan to use and ask about the tshirt sizes or is there a standard size for graphics? How do I find this out? Also, do I need to design with 2, 3 or 4 colors only and do I use rgb or cmyk, and last question, do i need to save the file in a certain format to finalize and send off for screen printing? Thanks for the help and patience!
If you are working with 100% vector art, while you are creating, you don't have to worry about artboard size or dpi in Illustrator. But, if you bring raster (bitmap) elements into your design, then you have to work at full printing size at 300 dpi. Regardless, work in RGB mode with Adobe 1998 color profile.
Then once you find a printer to work with, your printer will have a preference for the type of file they want to work with. Depending on the printer's need you may need to export your art with certain specifications that meet the printer's needs. You must pay critical attention to that.
The more you can do to make the art ready to print and take some graphic workload away from the printer the better.
I recommend Dane Clement's book T-shirt Artwork Simplified (Photoshop & Illustrator version).
Size of graphics for tshirts 
Re: Size of graphics for tshirts 
