Guidelines for Professional Artwork for Custom T-Shirt Printing

Whether you want to customize some t-shirts for promotion or just showcase your style in front of the whole world, we are here to cater to all your printing needs. All the details will be collected, like the choice of garment, order quantity, and more. But the first step is always to get your design ready for printing. You have to keep a few things in mind before uploading the artwork, as they can largely impact the setup of your design. It is important to fulfil all the requirements like resolution, color spaces, and file type to ensure that your artwork gets optimized for printing without any difficulty. For tips on how to submit a perfect design for printing follow this guideline till the end.

Design Guidelines For Screen Printing

If we talk about the most popular printing techniques for crafting personalized clothing, then screen printing will always be at the top of that list. It produces high-quality results, but only if you carefully handle all the inherent limitations of this process. Pixel-based art won't work for screen printing because the designs are not too small. You will need vector art if you want the design to cover a significant area of the t-shirt while maintaining crisp and accurate lines.

You have to follow the below-mentioned rules for a successful artwork submission:

Adobe Illustrator is the preferred choice for art submission. However, 300 dpi is the minimum resolution required for Photoshop.
The colors in your art can go up to four but not more than that.
0.25 points is the limitation for the thinnest lines.
Refrain from using any gradients, shadows, or color tints in your artwork.
Also, convert your text to an outline.

File Formats We Accept

Adobe Illustrator (.ai)
Encapsulated Postscript (.eps)
Adobe Photoshop (.psd)
Portable Document Format (.pdf)
Portable Network Graphics (.png)

The Right Way To Layer Your File

Photoshop gives you the option of layering, making the design process much easier and more systematic. You can organize and maintain your file, but most importantly, it allows you to edit or correct the elements in case you end up making a blunder in the design. You can simply access this option on the right-hand side of the layer bar. There will be an icon that looks like a piece of paper. Click on it to create add a new layer. (Icon reference in the image to the right)

Remember: 300 dpi is the minimum requirement for a file, or else it won't be considered a finalized artwork. This was the whole process, and in the end after separating all the elements in different layers, you will be left with a file that is organized and easier for the designers to understand. The finalized file is called Master File.

NOTE: Avoid merging or flattening your file

Resolution

You might have heard about Resolution but do you know what it means? It determines the sharpness and clarity of an image. Pixel Per Inch (ppi) or Dots Per Inch (dpi) are two standard measurements of Resolution. You have to understand that there will be a difference between a picture that is in digital format and the result when it gets printed on the t-shirt. The better the image resolution, the better the printed image quality you will get. Using low-resolution images will only end up giving blurred results.

300 dpi is the standardized artwork resolution for screen printing, but for immaculate and crisp results, artwork with 355 dpi is more suitable. The resolution will get better with even the slightest increase in pixel per inch or dots per inch count.

Note: Images with less than 200 dpi are low-resolution pictures and will never look good after printing.

Vector Art & File Formats

The designers enjoy it when your uploaded file is Vector Art because it is scalable and a perfect option for screen printing because of its easy transfer ability.

Our Priority List Of File Formats:

Adobe Illustrator files that were vector files initially and have .ai at the end
Vector files in PDF format ending with .pdf
Vector files in EPS format that has a .eps extension at the end
We can work with a few other formats, but the limitation is min 300 dpi and max 2 color

We have covered all the factors, like the importance of resolution and suitable formats for designs, in this guide. Now you have a clear idea that low-resolution artwork will never produce your expected results. It isn't easy to work with custom designs when every person arrives with a non-suitable format that is unlikely to produce good results. There are many limitations that you have to encounter while sending a perfect file for screen printing. However, we can say that now it is quite clear that vector format is the go-to option if you want flawless printing.

Flexibility is the major reason that makes vector art the most favored format by designers. A vectorized image or picture can be resized as per need, and it will not impact its quality. Let's compare the raster file and vector file side by side and see how crazy the difference is. Zooming in on vector art will not affect the picture's quality. However, you will see the image pixelating when you zoom in on the raster format.

Artwork Guidelines For Custom T-Shirt Printing

Show Your True Style With Custom T-Shirts

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