While women have always had a dazzling array of clothing choices to cover their upper body, men have traditionally been limited in their choice of clothing to cover their upper body. In fact, men only have two options: they can wear a shirt or a shirt. While shirts are generally plain (with some vertical stripes being as exciting as it gets), the t-shirt has always offered far more choices. The t-shirt is essentially a blank canvas, anything can be printed on it, and for the last 50 years or so, when the t-shirt was a staple of clothing, pretty much anything has worked.

Despite the limitless possibilities of the t-shirt, the reality is that most people tend to wear extremely boring and boring shirts. Most high street stores sell very similar designs and as a result you see many men roaming the streets dressed identically in boring t-shirts. At the budget end, you’ll see a lot of shirts with incomprehensible slogans, designs, and random dates designed by someone whose native language is clearly not English. Something along the lines of “Tokoyo 1972: The Spirit and The t shirt individuell bedrucken Glory” or often a fictional sports team “The San Diego Pythons: All Divisional Champions 1983” or imaginary academic institutions “Paris State University”. These discount stores have tried to expand their range in recent years, you can now get many funny and amusing slogan t-shirts, often related to drinks, like “I don’t think like you’re drunk”, “When If you find it, please go back to the pub etc.” Of course you don’t want to be the kind of person to wear a shirt like that.

But at the higher end of the t-shirt market things aren’t much more inspirational. We can see countless men and women wearing t-shirts bearing the brand name of a company with which they have no real connection (apart from the fact that they paid them a significant amount of money to promote their brand) . Why do people do this? Is it because they want to fit in, want to be like other people and believe that by wearing the same t-shirt as other people will help them? Or because there is a lack of alternatives?

But what if there was an alternative. What if you could find a place to buy well-designed, interesting, and (in some cases) really amusing t-shirts? These would be limited edition t-shirts so not everyone would have the same t-shirt as you and you would have a wide variety of t-shirts to choose from.

The answer lies on the internet, and more specifically in the form of a new phenomenon, that of the daily t-shirt sites.

Artists and designers from around the world submit designs for t-shirts on a daily t-shirt website. The designs vary widely, some are artistic, others are funny or parody shirts of famous movies, people, etc. The possibilities are endless. However, the quality of the design will be excellent as these designs are submitted by extremely talented artists, designers and illustrators. Community members of the site vote for the designs they like the most. This process is sometimes referred to as crowdsourcing. The most popular designs are then selected for printing, but this is where the process differs from simpler t-shirt sites. The t-shirts on the daily t-shirt site are only on sale for a limited time, usually 24 hours or until the design sells out. While they’re on sale for this limited time, you can grab the t-shirt at an incredibly low price, but once the shirt is gone, it’s gone forever. This is your chance to buy a highly original limited edition t-shirt that you can be sure very few people will own. Not only that, you get a high quality product at an incredibly affordable price.

This is the daily t-shirt website, finally an option that allows men (and women) from all over the world to own interesting and unique t-shirts for a very low price. There’s no excuse for boring t-shirts anymore!

Need something printed on a t-shirt?

Everyone else in the world too! You may not have noticed until now, but there are many t-shirts in the world today and almost all of them have some kind of printing – but where did they come from? Of course we can all get a printed shirt from the mall or department store, but where do department stores get their printed shirts from and where can someone like me get shirts printed for an event, activity, club or organization? All information about printing your shirt can be found here! We will guide you step by step through the conception of an idea, the design, the placement on the shirt and the selection of a screen printer.

Conception of a t-shirt printing idea

Before you do anything, you need to decide what you need the shirts for. This may sound silly because you obviously have an idea of what you need t-shirts for, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this article! However, this decision may affect whether or not you can skip some steps of the process. For example: if you are the leader of a scout pack and you need t-shirts to distribute to the members and you are not making a profit from the t-shirts, you must at least have an idea for a design for the t-shirts you must have printed will. However, if you’re a softball coach looking to make money to pay for your team’s uniforms, you might decide to join a screenprinted apparel donation program (which many screenprinters offer).

Fundraising programs allow the customer (you) to give the screen printer a general idea of what you would like to see in the design of a print (or prints) and what types of garments you would like to see offered. This type of program puts the burden of design on the screen printer and keeps you from getting too bogged down in the details. In many cases, the screen printers provide the vendors with the flyers and order forms they need, so all you have to do is hand them out and make a profit! Make sure you ask your chosen printer about these programs, as they may not specifically advertise them.

T-shirt design

Now that we know what we are printing the t-shirts for, we can design the print for the shirts. There are two options when considering your t-shirt design:

• The screen printer can design your artwork.
• You can design your artwork.

While you can go with the first option, it’s still important to be informed about the design of your shirt for several reasons:

• -Screen printers may charge you for designing the artwork.
• Not everything can be printed, there are a few limitations.
• You need to decide what design elements you want your artwork to have (destroyed, contemporary, traditional/conservative, classic).
• -You must decide where you want the design(s) printed on the shirt.

When designing the artwork for your shirts, you should first settle on the basics:

• What is the main message I want to convey with my shirts?
• Do I simply want to put a logo on my t-shirts to identify members of a group with my organization or do I not want to promote a company, organization etc.?
• Do I have to provide details?
• Do I need to provide a date for the event, company phone number, troop or pack number?

This is an important point – as a screen printer I have to constantly ask companies if they want their phone number and address on their shirts – some companies don’t provide this information but they almost always do.

• -What kind of design elements or theme would you like to use?
• You should know if your shirts need a more conservative look (usually for corporations), a contemporary look (for bands, youth organizations), a classic look (high schools and universities usually fall into this category) – just to name a few.
• -You should decide on a graphic to use for your shirts (if any). It is often advisable to see what your screen printer has to offer as it can more easily provide a higher quality image. Many screenprinters either have talented graphic designers in-house or are members of a graphic club where they can download graphics from the Internet at a discounted rate.
• -Where should my design be printed on the shirts?

In some circles, there are only a few known pressure points on T-shirts: printing on the left chest, full back and full front printing. However, as people have become more experimental, many screen printers now offer more printing locations. While the t-shirt printer should work with you and print all over the shirt, here are a few interesting places to print that I’ve seen:

• -Right or left side printing
• -Right or left upper chest print
• -Fine print between the shoulders
• -Sleeve prints
• -Forearm pressure
• -Lower back pressure
• Allover print

The purpose of your shirt usually determines where you decide to place the prints on your shirts. You don’t normally see a plumber with side prints – companies tend to opt for conservative prints on the left chest and back. However, if you are in high school in high school, you might want a side print with a destroyed look for your class shirts, probably not a left chest. My best advice is to look at other people’s shirts and see which print styles/locations you like and which you don’t.

Are my graphics good enough?

This is a very important question because if you don’t start with good, clean looking graphics, your t-shirts or apparel will inevitably end up looking different than you imagined. When screenprinters print on shirts, they use the artwork given to them (or created by themselves) to make films that are used to make the screens for the print (read more about the screenprinting process here). Knowing this, there are a few things to keep in mind when designing graphics for screen printing.

Draw your artwork with clean, black lines

When drawing your artwork by hand, you generally do so with a black sharpie or other type of marker to create thick, clean lines. Use some sort of guide if you must to get straight lines.

Do not shade or colorize areas on the artwork

Instead, give the screen printer more than one copy of the artwork – one with black outlines only, and another inked or with the color name inscribed.

Taking these into account will save your screen printer extensive work on your artwork, which in turn should keep you from paying additional fees for the artwork. It will likely surprise and impress the screen printer too!

Choosing a screen printer

Now for the big question: how do I choose a screen printer to print on my shirts? Obviously this is one of the most important steps because as you have read from the article the screen printer can play an essential role in creating the artwork and can advise you on your design before it is printed. So it’s usually good to pick a good printer that you’re comfortable with and can call quickly with your printing questions. Use some or all of the following steps when you can to help in your decision about choosing a screen printer:

Search for local printers

I can’t stress this enough! Contrary to what you might think, there is definitely a screen printer near you! A lot of people think that you have to pay a premium to order shirts online because there isn’t a print shop near them (myself included before I got into the business) – but that’s just not true! The city I live in (yes it’s a city – not even big enough for a city!) has 3 screen printers!! I guarantee there is one near you.

Local screen printers are most likely the best option as they will work best with you. You may even know more about the group or organization you’re getting your shirts printed for than someone you found online in another state ever would. The better a screen printer knows what your shirt requirements are, the more likely they are to make good, solid suggestions for shirt design and style – which in turn will help you!

Local screen printers may not have the cheapest prices, but many of them are extremely competitive considering they are a small business. Your best bet for pricing is to look up the printers in the phone book, give them a quick call, quickly explain what you want, and ask for a quote (they should give you a quote right away).

Check out her portfolio

A run-of-the-mill screenprinter probably doesn’t have a proper book filled with the previous jobs they’ve done. But they probably DO have a lot of their previous work hanging around their shop. If you are concerned about the quality of a screen printer, visit their store and take a look around. A quick visit can tell you a lot about a screen printer’s equipment and capabilities.

Look at their price

While I think you should find a local screen printer to do your work for you, I don’t want you to be taken advantage of. Generally, a plain Jane t-shirt like the ones Gildan makes costs right around the $2 mark. Anything beyond that is profitable for the screen printer. t shirt mit foto There are other costs like equipment and ink for the screen printer, but in general this rule works. Before you start bothering the screenprinter about how much profit they make, consider how many parts you want to print and how complex the design is – it can take a lot of time and effort to set up a job and it takes the screenprinter to do it worth.

Hopefully these tips will help you through the selection process. There are definitely more things to consider, but they are not as important as the few I would like to highlight.

Conclusion

Getting your own design printed on your shirts can be very fun and exciting – who doesn’t want to feel like you’re designing something yourself and then wear it proudly for everyone else to see? Good screenprinters have a similar feeling – the pride in making others happy and providing them with a quality product. Hopefully these tips will help you achieve a quality print and screen printer that you will be completely satisfied with!