Designer having issues with SpreadShirt - vinyl printing limitations - fine lines?

4518 Views 6 Replies 5 Participants Last post by nickelas, Sep 2, 2006

BlueWaterDesigns

Discussion Starter · Aug 10, 2006

I am a graphic designer who was asked to do logo work for a client, and then the client decided to put the logos on spreadshirt.com. His logos use a grunge font...and apparently the specs for this shirt company is nothing and I mean nothing smaller than .059 x.059 no dots...no lines...etc. I have drove myself crazy in deleting these items from the vector files, and increasing the line sizes, etc. I have never had these issues before with any of my designs. While their customer service has been helpful...we have sent these shirt designs in 5 times to try to get them 'approved'. Does anyone have any suggestions for now or in the future about getting designs approved easier with Spreadshirt.com. I have even replaced out the fonts to simplier ones, even though that was not what was originally designed, just to try to get them through the approval process. They charge an additional $45 to 'clean up' each of the vector files. This seems way over the top to me...and I am a designer. What about the people that don't have the knowledge or resources? How much more frustrating is it for them? I am perfectly willing to accept that I don't know everything...that is why I am here looking for answers for my client. I would appreciate any help or insite to this particular website that you can provide. Thanks
Tammy

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Rodney

· #2 · Aug 10, 2006

Re: Designer having issues with SpreadShirt

Hi Tammy, I think the issue with spreadshirt and the "line" requirements are there because they use a cutter to trim around the design and letters. The cutter can only make so fine of cuts, so they have to have minimum widths.

They are printing the shirts with a vinyl (or flock) transfer, which has some limitations. If the shirts were screen printing (or printed with plastisol transfers), or even printed using a heat transfer, the same issues might not be around.

Does anyone have any suggestions for now or in the future about getting designs approved easier with Spreadshirt.com.

So it's really just a matter of designing for the limitations of the printing method used, or selecting another printing provider.

Someone else here could probably explain the details of the vinyl transfer printing process that would make it a bit clearer

:welcome:

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nickelas

· #3 · Aug 29, 2006

I am having the same problem with spreadshirt. A design where all lines are 1.5 mm and the text 10 mm should pass, but in my case it doesn't.

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T-BOT

· #4 · Aug 29, 2006

nickelas said:
I am having the same problem with spreadshirt. A design where all lines are 1.5 mm and the text 10 mm should pass, but in my case it doesn't.

Hi Nickelas,
I dont have a spreadshirt store so my i'm not sure exactly what their pre-production specs are.

I do know that Deco Type transfers can be cut in high detail (very fine lines). I think the reason why you dont see such printed on shirts in general, is because fine lines and mico-details like little dots etc.. are hard to weed-out around it. But most important, printing FINE lines on Jersey knits like t-shirt material or Rib Knits (stretchy fabric) the durability of fine lines is NOT a good because they break down, its different from printing on paper. So, when designing for t-shirts, I would recommend to bold-up the fine lines a little.

Hope this helps you some.

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MotoskinGraphix

· #5 · Aug 29, 2006

I had no idea Spreadshirt was doing the designs in vinyl. I need to take a look at your design and I will be able to tell you whats wrong. I do vinyl transfer and there are limitations. Personally the finer the line the better I like it with vinyl so I really dont know what the problem is. Weeding transfer vinyl is totally different than sign vinyl and you can get really nice fine line text etc.

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nickelas

· #6 · Aug 29, 2006

I have uploaded it again, so let's see if it passes this time. I changed some areas that had fills, so I didn't think they would need to have outline that is 1,5mm (everything is one color), but now they do aswell. These areas had "sharp" and narrow endings, but now they're soft so maybe that'll do it.
Maybe they have some automated checking?

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nickelas

· #7 · Sep 2, 2006

Solved! When you draw "areas" (with fills), they also have an outline. So even if it's a wide area I think the outline has to be 1,5mm
cheers

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