Hi Guys

A VERY big thanks to Ryan Lunn (ex Rookie label) – a stalwart vet of the garment industry who specializes in print reproduction, production and colour separation (also our Featured Artist for November – remember if you are SOUTH AFRICAN only and want to be a Featured Artist – please contact me directly at eran.e@springleap.com).

Ryan put together a little do and don’t of t-shirt design based on his considerable experience in the trade. I have included it in the springleap t-shirt template pack already, but here it is in just plain text :)

1. Artwork to be done in Illustrator, Photoshop, Freehand Flash or Coreldraw. If you use Coreldraw then please export your files to Adobe Illustrator

2. Stick to 7 colours and remember that includes base. Base is nothing the artist needs to incorporate but you need to bare it in mind. If your design is going on a coloured tee it will require a base coat of white which the artist needs to factor in when looking at their amount of colours. If your design is going on a white tee, base is not required!

3. All Freehand/ Illustrator effects such as lens are meant for web and most printers cant interperate them. Please Do Not use them!

4. If you are sending a psd (Adobe Photoshop) – please supply your artwork at 300dpi and begin working at that res – Do not work on a low res and bump it up after! Please send us the original psd files – not an export.

5. Please delete any unused colours and clean up your artwork

6. For best quality results of a print – vector art has cleaner edges. But if your art is very tonal then Photoshop is fine

7. If your art is extremely tonal eg. Waterpainting. Then the artist needs to realize, that colour wise, their art may not be exactly the same on the tee as the original. The screen printers will have to choose 7 colours to mix together to make the complete image! If you know how – please supply
colour separations

8. Don’t use all 7 colours if you don’t have to. A good way to cut down on colours is to use a percentage of another colour. For example: If your print has a dark pink and a light pink. Use a percentage of the dark pink to create your light pink eg 50%. On the garment this light pink will not be solid but will be made up of small dots letting the base white show through creating a lighter shade. Using tones of other colours is great if you trying to squeeze in more colours but too much can affect the quality and impact of your print! This is called using Half Tones Please tell us to use Half-Tones when submitting your designs – accompanied with instructions of how and where.

We hope this helps!!!

Happy designing!