T-Shirt Printing – What Is Involved?

For t-shirt printing and other promotional garments and merchandise, screen printing is often employed using one of three different methods. ‘Spot Colour’ printing is widely used and works well with many types of graphics. The most suitable method used for the printing of graphics that are not photographic in nature is Spot colour printing.

A graphic design professional typically determines the exact Pantone colours that the ink will be matched to in order to produce a high fidelity image. Pantone coated or noncoated color types are selected to clarify the ink hues of the pattern. An international colour reference used in publishing, printing and design whereby each colour is identified by a unique Pantone name and number and is called the Pantone matching system.

When colour identity and uniformity is an issue, for example in branded promotional garments or a large selection of products, this method of spot color printing works very well.

“4 Colour Process” is another method of t-shirt printing. The type of printing that is used, relates mainly to images dealing with either photography or illustration, as well as having a large degree of colours, tones, and graduations used. The method used to print images found in magazines and books is the 4 colour process as well.

The inks, though they are translucent, will merge together on the white background, which will reproduce the tones and hues of the original. This is of course a rather more difficult process to achieve on a fabric than it is on paper. But the method that is utilised is virtually identical.

This t-shirt printing method only works well on white garments and is unsuitable for coloured fabrics.

This type of printing is only right for use in print runs of one hundred or more. This is because it simply costs more to set it up. A process called “Simulated Process” is used in cases where t-shirt printers copy full colour pictures using coloured cloths. Using method similar to spot colour printing to achieve the overall look and feel of the original image the artwork is separated into various colours and shades.

For transferring heavy metal imagery and fantasy imagery from CD covers to black T-shirts for band merchandise, this popular method is used by printers everywhere. Due to the higher set up prices which includes the separating of the colour as well as an increased amount of colours used to print the pictures, this works out to be the most expensive way of printing.