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I posted this on the Zazzle forum but it doesn't look like there is much traffic there so I'm hoping someone here might know the answers to some of my questions. Any help is appreciated.
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I just got a sampling of my designs and have a few comments/questions.
First, the shirts themselves are very good quality. No problem there.
The designs on the white shirts look pretty good.
The black shirts, however, are another story. I'm not sure if I expect too much or what. The colors were MUCH less saturated than they should be.
Gradient areas (airbrushed effect) got quantized to either "on or off". (Is this me expecting too much here?)
Some of the designs on the white shirts are smaller than they should be. I have a 14 inch wide design that came out to about 8 - 9 inches. This happened on 2 different shirts. Do the designes get automatically made smaller on smaller sized shirts? There was plenty of room to make them larger.
And lastely: When ordering some of the women's sizes you get a warning that they run very small and you should order 2 sizes larger. My wife is 5 feet tall and not fat. She ordered a medium and it was too small. If a woman this small needs a large, that puts these shirts out of the running for large women. These are really children's sizes and should be stated so. OR, they should be more standard. I think there will be a lot of returns despite the warning.
I think most of this can hopefully be worked out. I am happy with the web site and the fast service. I'd like to do a lot of business with Zazzle.
Here is my gallery link if anyone can help me with my design problems.
Thanks.
Last edited by Rodney; January 23rd, 2006 at 01:35 PM.
Reason: removed url - see http://www.t-shirtforums.com/showthread.php?t=1173
Hi Jon Q, thanks for the post. I saw your post in the Zazzle thread, but I missed the part where you asked a question...I thought you were just giving your feedback on the process.
I don't think Zazzle prints designs 14" wide. I think there max print size is probably 8-10" wide. They won't resize the design based on the garment size (like XXL shirts).
The dark printing process is still a bit of a new thing, but I think you may be expecting a bit more than is possible with their printing process. Your best bet would be to send them an email and ask them if their process can handle the design and how you expect it to turn out.
Sizing is a complex issue. The sizes on the site are definitely *not* children's sizes, however, as their site states, it does run small. They are probably using AmericanApparel which sizes run smaller than most other companies.
I had a feeling I might be expecting too much from the black shirts. But if everyone's comes out as different as mine I can't see anybody wanting to use it. So there must be some technical thing I'm missing. There's basically two problems with them: gradients and saturation.
Also, Zazzle prints 10 x14 or 14X 10, which is great. But the designs on the ladies shirts came to about 8 - 9 inches on the long side. I orders some men's large and they were fine.
You may need to email zazzle regarding the missing inch on the ladies tees. There could be different reasons why this happened.
Quote:
I had a feeling I might be expecting too much from the black shirts. But if everyone's comes out as different as mine I can't see anybody wanting to use it. So there must be some technical thing I'm missing. There's basically two problems with them: gradients and saturation.
Well not everyone sells the same type designs. There are many types of designs where their printing process will work just fine (designs that are line art, text only, or more simplistic designs).
Also, what the designer of the t-shirt expects and what the actual paying customer expects are often 2 VERY different things.
A saturation issue to the t-shirt designer may be a perfect t-shirt in the mind of the customer that gets the shirt.
Sometimes we (as the t-shirt designers) can get too close to a design and forget that our customers may not be as critical as we are to the final output.
That's not to say you should throw quality checks to the wind, just that you should give the final results some wiggle room
As for the technical aspects, you may need to check the zazzle faq or email them to see if they can handle the gradients the way you're expecting.
I know that cafepress uses a similar process with their dark t-shirts and when they first launched the dark printing, some shirts came out great, while others weren't happy with the more complex graphics.
I know what you mean about the designer's expectations vs. the customer's. But this is WAY different. And since the cutomer is seeing the shirt online as one thing and getting something quite different, it would be a problem.
I'm going to check with other Zazzle designers and see what results they're getting.
The size difference, by the way was 9 inches instead of 14. So it's a big difference.
I wrote to Zazzle. Hopefully their tech support will be helpfull.
CafePress has added info to their site about how the direct printed garments aren't as vibrant as the heat pressed garments. Since Zazzle's is still in Beta as well, I'm assuming they will be making adjustments to the process and explanations as they get feedback from customers.
I had followed Zazzles instructions to the letter. Except for the two female shirts they were all sized correctly. So I think it's some other problem.
I'm waiting to hear back from Zazzle. Hopefully they can give me some answers. Like I said, love their site. Love to send them some business.
Black shirts require transparent images, is this the file type you're using?
Perhaps this is the problem with the images for the black shirts.
As for as the image size, I'd definately contact zazzle like Rodney Suggested.
If you printed them out yourself you could better judge the situation and make corrections were it's needed. But you're not able to make printing adjustments, kinda sucks. I know how you feel.
I finally got Zazzle to answer my questions. Took 3 emails to get them to do it!
Here's the story: The black shirts are beta. They're just not going to look that good unless you stick to hard edge, simple designs. But they still won't be that saturated.
They told me that the designs are resized to fit certain garments. That's why the female shirts had a smaller image. BUT, there was plenty of room for them to make it bigger than it was.
As far as the women's shirts running 2 sizes small - they said they'd look into it.
So for now I'm not going to be selling any black shirts. I still haven't tried CafePress' black shirts. Maybe they'll be better?
I'm not sure if you can help me with this, but what is the correct file type you should use for dark shirts? Is it png? Not really sure. i can't seem to figure out how to keep it transparent.
I'm not sure if you can help me with this, but what is the correct file type you should use for dark shirts? Is it png? Not really sure. i can't seem to figure out how to keep it transparent.
They should be transparent PNG files for the black/dark shirts.
Which t-shirt fulfillment service are you using and which software are trying to use to make the transparent PNG files?
Black shirt newbie question 
