I’m going to teach you the 5 most important money saving hacks i’ve learnt to reducing your screen printing production costs when learning how to start a clothing line or t-shirt business. These tips will enable you to make money so you can continue to do what you love best.
Hit a dead end? Looking for the perfect inspiration for your next t-shirt tag design?
Finding the right inside t-shirt tag design is challenging. Not only is the inside tag designed to give your customer the essential information, it’s also an attention to detail that reflects who you are as a brand.
When printing light coloured inks directly onto dark coloured garments with opaque color inks, like plastisol inks, the colors lose their intensity. To get around this, it’s best practice to first print a layer of white ink, known as an underbase. The underbase is printed first then dried to the touch with a heat gun or flash-curing machine before the rest of the color screens are printed. By using this method the colours will hold their vibrancy.
When screen printing multiple colors it can be very hard to align the print areas of each screen perfectly, even if the screens are aligned perfectly the white ink underbase can bleed a little, you would then see hints of white where there shouldn’t be. For this reason the underbase artwork is reduced in size slightly, this is called “choking” the artwork. Choking the underbase gives the screen-printer a little bit of room to completely hide the underbase so it’s invisible to the naked eye.
Did you know that some factories electrify t-shirts to create a flock t-shirt graphic? Me neither!
There are three ways (that we know of) to produce a flock print on a t-shirt or garment. In this definitive designers guide to flock printing t-shirts we will go over the differences, art requirements, available colors and best practices for flock printing from a graphic/apparel designer’s point of view, but before that, what is flock or flocking?
In this definitive designers guide to metallic inks, we cover: creating a metallic ink effect in Adobe Illustrator, screen printing with metallic inks, proper garment care instructions and there’s even a free high-resolution metallic ink texture giveaway.
Excelling in client communication is the key to delivering a graphic design that exceeds clients expectations, positioning you as a leader in the field of Apparel design, and hits the target market smack bang on the head.
It takes little time to ask the right questions if your know what to ask, and will safely guide you from accepting the job through to final design delivery and money in the pocket. Don’t fall prey to the number one designer downfall of diving head first into the design phase without truly understanding your client.
To combat this designer flaw we have compiled this list of questions you may like to ask your next client to better understand them, their clothing label and target audience. We hope this is a great help to you and your freelancing or design department.
Company/Brand Details
1. What is the name of your clothing label?
2. When was the brand established?
3. Who is your main competitor?
4. What makes your brand different from your competitor?
5. Where are your products sold?
6. Where do you see your brand in 5 years, 10years? 50years?
7. What motivated you to start your business/clothing label?
8. If you had to describe your clothing label in one word, what would it be? Why?
9. Does your label have a slogan or tag line?
10. Do you have a corporate logo or font I should use?
11. Do you have a branding guidelines package we should follow?
Design Preference
12. Do you have a preferred colour pallet? Why?
13. What colour garment/s is the design to go on?
14. Where is the placement of your design to be printed, also, does any additional placement require different artwork,? Please list.
FRONT
BACK
LEFT SLEEVE
RIGHT SLEEVE
HIGH-BACK NECK
BACK BOTTOM HEM
15. Are there any competitor t-shirt designs you like? Where can I see these?
16. Will the design be printed on more than just a t-shirt? E.g. Fleece Hoodies?
17. What is the size range of T-shirt the designs will go on?
Target Audience
18. What is the age range of your target audience?
19. Is your clothing label for Men? Women? Unisex?
