T-Shirt Design

[wispy]

To be honest, there's lots of different ways you can do this. If you have pretty complex designs, as in lots of little tiny pieces and stuff that would be way too tough to cut out using an x-acto knife, you'll want to use actual screens. The process is summed up pretty well in this video:

YouTube - Learn how to screenprint your own t-shirts

With the screen, the fabric, the emulsion, a squeegee, and ink, you're looking at about $50 - $75 USD.

If you think you'd be able to cut your images out, all you'll really need is acetate paper, a laser printer, and an x-acto knife or other similar cutting tool. Then all you'd need to do is print out your design, cut it out, and then use screen printing ink to squeegee your design on a shirt like you would with the screen.

Now, this is all assuming you're doing a one-color design. Multiple colors gets a little trickier, as you have to make a screen or cutout for each color, then line them up correctly on the shirt and ink them in layers. This would be a lot pricier using screens, so I would suggest trying it with the acetate paper method first if you have multiple colors to screen.

I'm by no means an expert doing this, I've just done shirts for my band in the past, and it's a hell of a lot cheaper than having someone else do the same thing for you.

For examples of what can be done (and there's a ton of cool stuff you can do with screen-printing) check out these sites:

Emptees - Showcasing the art of tee shirt design. Promote, talk about, and love tees, tshirts, t-shirts and T shirts.

Design By Humans T-shirts - New T-shirt designs everyday - Cool Tees Designer Shirts - T shirt Art Contest

Good luck :)

[Acuity]

Brilliant - cheers bro...

[wispy]

Sorry to bring this back to life, but this is a great tutorial showing the acetate paper method:

Stencil Revolution :: View topic - Ghostpatrol guide to making t-shirts

Cheers.

[Cwilk]

Actually you can still go the poorman's route but instead of doing a manual cut, send your file out to film and use the film for your exposure. It does cost about $12.00 per screen, but this is much easier than cutting acetate.

Also, Photoshop is fine to use for t-shirt screening, you just need to know how to set up each layer or color channel if you're doing a spot color. But Photoshop is great for a full-color process screened shirt (if it's done correctly). I prefer Illustrator, but full-color screens aren't always easy to do yourself and a lot of companies can't do them correctly either.

The one thing you don't want to mess up on is printing on a dark shirt. Make sure you have a white background screen that helps your art print properly. Experiment with spot colors at first and then it gets easier.

[tommylogic]

Well Christina... how bout a tutorial. You know, workin 20hr weeks, I'm SURE you have the time.

[Cwilk]

Originally Posted by tommylogic

Well Christina... how bout a tutorial. You know, workin 20hr weeks, I'm SURE you have the time.

The sad thing is that I woke up at 11:00 today and strolled into the office at noon. My office manager called me at home to see if I was even coming in. : )

And you know, a tutorial about screenprinting might be needed. I started doing my own screenprinting when I was still in High School. My brothers had me do custom t-shirts for them.