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.
Are there any guidelines to using the color of the garment as part of the the design? Right now, I'm planning some cartoony/lowbrow art designs on black shirts, and was thinking I could just let the black show through in the black parts of the design. I imagine I will run into trouble if the lines get too thin. I'm thinking for screen printed item's. I would like to cut down on the production expense, but not at the cost of quality. It seems that the shirts in stores go about half & half.
Any thoughts, comments or experiences (good or bad) would be appreciated.
I do many times. I'm not sure anyone would ever even notice but us. And like you pointed out, it is a common practice. I don't think you'll have a problem at all.
But then again, maybe I have it all wrong!
__________________ ScreenPrintH2O.com - An Online Community of Waterbased Screen Printers SignAmigo.com - An Online Community of Sign Makers.
The only problem with it is if you decide later on to offer the same design on a different color shirt. For instance, I am working on a design that has white, red and black colors. The customer wants the design on black shirts. They do not see any desire to have white shirts at this time. In order to save money, I can create the design with just the white and red colors and let the shirt be the black. That's fine, unless they decide they want some shirts of a different color later on. I will have to add the black as a color to the design. If they order white shirts, I could take out the white portions of the design to save a little money, but sometimes it's just not worth all these changes. Then, it is best to just create the design with all the colors and you can use it on any color shirt.
yep...what Bill said. When going on different colors you may have to create a different setup. You'd really only have to create two setups (one for light shirts and one for dark) unless you wanted to color to be exactly the same on every color shirt.
One other thing to be aware of is keeping the portions of the design where the shirt will be coming through slightly larger than you would just to view it on the computer especially on darks because as I'm sure you know you lose some detail after print. It's easier to eep detail with ink on ink than it is when you are using the shirt color as a design color...at least in my experience.
__________________ www.identityburn.com : t-shirt design for the individual - coming soon
It seems you have your answers! I totally agree that it is the best thing to do. If the person then wants another colour tshirt then you just have to make up the extra screen later, but if nothing else, you save yourself a little ink and more importantly, the time of flashing and then printing that extra colour!
Using the garment color in a design 
