What Does T-Shirt Printing Involve?

For the production of printed garments for promotions, merchandise and fashion there are mainly 3 particular methods of screen printing employed. ‘Spot Colour’ printing is widely used and works well with many types of graphics. Spot colour printing is best used when printing graphics which are usually not very photographic in nature.

The colored ink that is used in reproducing graphic images are chosen by a graphic designer and more often than not are Pantone specified colors. In order to isolate the hues of the ink in the image, Pantone coated or noncoated references are selected. The Pantone matching system is an international colour reference used in publishing, printing and design whereby each colour is identified by a unique pantone name and number.

Spot colour printing is well suited to printing branded promotional garments or items in which colour identity and uniformity needs to stay the same throughout a varying range of items.

An additional method of t-shirt printing used is called 4 Colour Process. This is the best way to print photographs and illustrations which contain broad colour ranges, tones, and graduations. 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 certainly a much harder procedure to do on material than it is to do on paper. However the method employed is essentially the same.

If you are going to use this kind of t-shirt printing it will obviously only work on white garments and will not work for coloured fabrics.

The print set up costs are higher than that of simple spot colour designs and as such only suitable for larger print runs of 100+. When t-shirt printers reproduce such full colour images onto coloured fabrics a method called ‘Simulated Process’ is used. Much like spot colour printing, the art is divided into tones and colours to preserve the essential qualities of the original.

This is a standard method used by all printers and most popular for example with the reproduction of heavy metal and fantasy imagery taken from CD cover artwork and reproduced onto black t-shirts for band merchandise. Colour separations and the number of colors necessary make this the most expensive printing option, and the higher set-up costs mean it is usually reserved for larger runs.