Making your own custom t-shirt that suits your unique personal style is fun and easy. That’s right easy! T-shirt printing is no longer limited to your local screen printer. You are no longer bound by minimum order quantities or costly commitments. From simple to intricate designs, online t-shirt printing companies make it easy to put your idea on practically anything and have it printed within 48 hours and shipped right to your door. If you’re worried about quality - don’t be.
T-shirt printing has come a long way over the years. Most of the online t-shirt printers use cutting edge printing techniques that result in professional quality tees. Forget about limitations - if you can think it you can make it. The t-shirt design you come up with may dictate the printing method used or you may design your shirt with the end result in mind. For instance if you are creating a t shirt with a simple one color slogan or maybe a few colors to create a cool grunge look then your shirt will probably be printed using the screen printing technique. This is the oldest and most common printing method for shirts. For those of you who are familiar with offset printing there are a lot of similarities between printing labels with pantone colors and setting up art for screen printing. Instead of using plates your image colors are stenciled onto a mesh and ink is then applied to the t-shirt by passing through the screen.
In general screen printing is good for printing between 1 and 6 colors. Just like the paper printing industry the t-shirt printing industry has made huge advances. Offset printing has gone from burning plates used for ink separation to digital direct to plate. This has really made offset printing much more efficient by reducing the number of steps to press. The same thing has happened with t-shirt printing.
There is now a process called “direct to garment printing” which uses a specialized inkjet printer to print your design directly onto the t-shirt without the need for screen separations. This is really cool, because the very same ink that is used for screen printing is used for direct to garment printing but you have more flexibility in the detail of your design and the number of colors you can use. What if you have a photo or photorealistic design or image that you want printed on a t-shirt? This used to be a quality problem. You would probably go to Kinkos or some other local shop where you would get some type of iron on or heat transfer. The quality these transfers was usually quite poor.
You would see cracking, fading and peeling within a few washes. Well, now using the same specialized inkjet printer used for direct to garment printing a very high quality thermal transfer can be made. This is definitely not a flakey iron on, when heat and pressure are applied to this transfer sheet your design binds to the fabric of the t-shirt creating a lasting and stunning full color image on your t-shirt. What else can you do to customize your t-shirt online? Do you desire that something extra to stand apart from the crowd? Ad a little texture or sparkle with flocking, metallic inks, glitter inks or even iridescent inks.
Flex Printing allows unique pigment applications such as glitter and metallic inks. If you’re looking for texture maybe try Flock Printing - the name says it all. Flock Printing creates a soft, velvety and slightly raised texture. All of these techniques are generate stunning high quality results that will probably outlast the t-shirt that’s printed on. Today, it is just so easy to get online and create your own custom t-shirts at an affordable price. Why not try it out for yourself?
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