[ladybadone]

I am mostly designing in PS right now eventually will do some stuff in Illustrator.
What is the best technique for using a design on both light and dark apparel and products?
Thanks

 

[dcbevins]

It depends on how the shirt will be made. If say it is direct to garment, that process handles dark or light shirts well, allowing for an under base of white when needed, and design can less of a consideration. If it is say sublimation onto polyester, dark shirts are usually just out. Each differing method of making a shirt has it's own consideration that dictates how to design, or at least when to worry about it.

What method will you be using to create the end product?

 

[ladybadone]

I am just a designer. Graphic Design. I will be using places like teespring, spreadshirt. Also eventually some POD companies when I put up my website/woo commerce store.
I do not do any actual printing and never will. LOL

 

[dcbevins]

I am just a designer. Graphic Design. I will be using places like teespring, spreadshirt. Also eventually some POD companies when I put up my website/woo commerce store.
I do not do any actual printing and never will. LOL

Places like spreadshirt are probably going to be screen printing your product.

They take customer art and do what is needed to fix it for their process. A majority of their customers do not know about the screen printing process, about color separations, cmyk, spot colors, half tones, and other design considerations, so they try to insulate them from that need to know.

Mostly I imagine they just convert customer RGB artwork to their CMYK needs. They should, (one would hope,) be able to spot when a design isn't going to work on a light or dark shirt, and offer advice, such as color changes, or just charge you extra say for employing a white underbase.

If you don't want more specific understanding of how the process can influence design, and want to concentrate on just your drawings, then the best thing you can be aware of is the color count. The more number of colors in your design the more complicated and costly it will be in the case of screen printing. Somewhere in the more than 6-8 color range, it steps off into photo-realistic territory. If it is screen printing, you might want to start working in cmyk mode in your graphics program so they colors will be closer to what you expect.

This becomes more complicated if you trying to do photo-realistic using screen printing. Then you may have to understand more about color separations, half tones and other things so you can design with that in mind, but it isn't a light garment vs dark garment thing.

But if your goal is to have total control over your art then you must include a study of the whole process. You must know your canvas as well as your ink.

I might be completely wrong about screen printing and they are using direct to garment. In either case they should have design guidelines on their site(s.)

 

[ladybadone]

Yea I actually know what you mean. My husband owns a web/graphic/print design company. He works in lightroom, PS; Illustrator and In Design.
I do some print design too.
I was just wondering if there was a good way to take a design and make it work for both light and dark garments.
I guess I could put a white or black 1px stroke on the items that need to stand out on the light or dark garments.

 

[Amw]

My husband owns a web/graphic/print design company. He works in lightroom, PS; Illustrator and In Design.
I do some print design too.

Then you really shouldn't need our help. Your husband should be able to give you all the info you need. Plus you probably sleep next to him...so your going to get a much faster response!

 

[ladybadone]

Then you really shouldn't need our help. Your husband should be able to give you all the info you need. Plus you probably sleep next to him...so your going to get a much faster response!

HaHa
He actually does not do print design on garments. I am sure I could have ask him but I fig you guys would be more of an expert in this field than him.

 

[splathead]

Places like spreadshirt are probably going to be screen printing your product.

I don't think spreadshirt uses screen printing at all, except maybe on bulk orders.

They use either DTG or vinyl, depending on the job.

 

[splathead]

I am mostly designing in PS right now eventually will do some stuff in Illustrator.
What is the best technique for using a design on both light and dark apparel and products?
Thanks

On light garments use darker colors in your design (don't use white on a white garment).

On dark garments change the design to lighter colors. (don't use black on a black garment).

Other than that, follow the art guidelines found on the Teespring and Spreadshirt sites.