[beckeraw]

Need your expert opinion!!

Hello all! I am new to the board but glad that I found this forum. I need some an honest opinion from the experts in this business...

Task: I have a small club that I run and I decided to create t-shirts for it. The designs that I have were created by graphic designers. I now have to go to a print shop and have them printed up. I am looking to create around 30 to 40 shirts for each design.


Here is where I need your help: I want to educate myself on the different types of print methods before I walk into a shop and ask for my shirts to be created. I have been reading a lot of different things but I am still lost as to what method I should be looking for. My requirements are that the shirt design needs to hold up well. My customers will be wearing them for 2 or 3 years.

I have links to the designs that I had created so you can check them out and let me know what you think the best method would be to print these designs on a shirt.

Shirt Design 1:

Shirt Design 2:

Shirt Design 3:

Questions:

Can I use the screen-print method with these designs?

If screen-print is not an option, want would be the next best method? DTG?

Thank you for your input!

All the best!
Andrew

 

[Victoryclothing]

You should be able to screen print those just fine since they all seem to be spot colors with no gradients.

 

[beckeraw]

You should be able to screen print those just fine since they all seem to be spot colors with no gradients.

Thanks! Do you think that screen printing is the most durable method?

 

[Victoryclothing]

Yeah screen printing is a lot more durable then DTG at least in my experience

 

[ordenta]

Since these are essentially hunting clothes and going to get beat up, definitely screen print them with plastisol. If you are trying to make them more of a fashion item/brand then maybe water based screen printing. By the way, I support the second amendment and really dig those designs!

 

[beckeraw]

One more question... Do you think that these shirts could be printed with a standard screen or do you think that it would require an extra large screen? The reason I ask is that I am getting different answers back from the companies that I am dealing with. Some are telling me that they need and order of 144 shirts or more to have these printed on the larger screen.

I guess my question is what is that typical screen size or image size for screen printing?

BTW: I am basing these designs off of a large format t-shirt but I am ordering everything from a small to a 4x large. Do you think that the small size is going to be the biggest problem because the companies are going to need to make one template to fit all sizes?

 

[ordenta]

Unfortunately, this is a jumbo print. It looks nice, but the problem with jumbo or especially allover prints is they wont fit all shirt sizes the same unless you create different size art for each shirt. That can cost way more as each size has its own screen, which is no different than having different designs. So you would potentially have the setup fees for each size. Plus you could need 140++ units each size to meet their minimum order requirement. Unfortunately most places do have high minimums for jumbo prints. So to me I would just size the art to be slightly smaller than the large shirt. That would still fit the medium. I would forget about the small with that art. It obviously will fit the xl and bigger shirts no problem, but with 3x and 4 x you will lose that "jumbo" look.

 

[Troll]

I would use discharge ink for this print - at least for the base color, then water based or plastisol with a reducer or chino base added for a soft feel. Unfortunately you only want 30-40 of each design, some shops won't do that many colors for that low of a quantity. The overall is a bigger headache though as I don't know of any shops that will do less than 144 for oversized. Very nice designs though..