DragonTree

Hello All,

I need some advice relating to Spreadshirt flex printing and more specifically the alignment of the 3 colour blocks in the vector.

I am about to launch a SS shop for my website, before going public I ordered a single item to get my head around the order process (site members always have questions ) and more importantly to ensure the quality of the products. After all I don't want my members to be disappointed when they receive their order, nor do I want my site URL on sub standard products.

The process of creation, order, delivery etc was great and I have no complaints with those aspects. However it seems that something went south in the printing of the vector design.

Rather than explain what I am talking about I have uploaded a image of the product to here (I have also inset an image taken from the actual vector used to produce the design):

http://www.therevcounter.com/dumping/spreadshirt.jpg

As you can see there are a few issues:

1. The "THE" part of the URL is out of alignment (slightly higher) than the rest of the URL.
2. The white border around the 3 red blocks on the left is out of alignment and therefore hidden.
3. The white border on the far right is too thin

Issues 1 and 3 I can live with, however issue 2 is something of a show stopper.

Considering the fiery hoops you need to go through to get a vector accepted in SS, I expected the printed design to be a near perfect replication of the vector. As you can see that isn't quite the case. This being said I am a newbie to all this so maybe my expectations are out of alignment with reality.

So is the problem in the printing process and can it be resolved? Is it an issue with my design? Is it just "one of those things" and I have to accept it or try somebody else (Zazzle etc)?

I have of course got in touch with SS to ask them about it and I am in no way criticising them, however as a newbie to all this is seemed sensible to get an objective perspective from others with vastly more experience in this than I.

Cheers

 

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splathead

The slight flaws are the results of hand placement. To print a 3 color design, SS must cut your image out of 3 different sheets of vinyl (one for each color) and then hand align them. For this reason, you'll probably always have something off-centered.

You could use their digital direct method (DTG) which would solve the issue.

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DragonTree

Since posting SS have come back and said:

Quote: Since we press the designs by hand on the shirt and also the plor foil does shrink a little when printed under pressure and heat onto the shirt, those slight differences may appear.

So it looks like, without redesigning the logo (which I don't want to do), the abnormalities are likely to re-occur and each print is likely to have different quirks. So it looks like flex print is a no go, which is a shame as I quite fancied a luminescent logo

Quote: Originally Posted by splathead You could use their digital direct method (DTG) which would solve the issue.

I have looked into this but it seems that SS only supports DTG on light coloured products, that also puts a spanner in the works as most customers have asked for darker colours.

Don't get me wrong here, I am still not criticising SS their response came through quickly and was professional and courteous. However it seems that my needs/logo and SS and simply incompatible with each other Although I have asked them what other options are available to me.

So I am going to look at Zazzle as they seem to be well recommended.

 

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vctradingcubao

Yep, it's very difficult doing three color designs in Flex, let alone those designs that are "touching". We only accept flex jobs with 1 or 2 non-touching colors, so I was impressed with Spreadshirt doing up to 3 colors in flex. Looking at your example, may I ask what color sequence was done when pressing, I mean, did SS press the white first, and the black last?

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DragonTree

Quote: Originally Posted by vctradingcubao may I ask what color sequence was done when pressing, I mean, did SS press the white first, and the black last?

Coming from a newbie point of view I am not entirely sure, but it looks like they printed the white first, then the black with cut-outs to display the white layer underneath (for the white parts of the URL), then red on top of all that.

Having spoken to SS about the issues one of their designers has rejigged the vector file. There is no visual difference but the layering has changed. They are now saying that it can now be printed without any glitches.

So test order placed, fingers crossed.

I would still recommend SS though, IMHO everybody makes mistakes from time to time. For me the key indicator of a good company/service is how these mistakes are handled and rectified. On this score I cannot fault SS in anyway (assuming of course that the test order is printed correctly )

 

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