Guide to Artwork for T-Shirts (Great Dane)

VOLUME

4

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO:

ARTWORK FOR T-SHIRTS

Inside: Learn how to use basic design principles to create great artwork.

Raster vs. Vector, what's the difference?

Optimize your customer's artwork for your decorating method.

888.478.2457 | info@stahls.com | greatdanegraphics.com

ULTIMATE GUIDE SERIES: ARTWORK FOR T-SHIRTS

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Table of Contents INTRODUCTION Intro

2

CHAPTER 1 Design Basics Composition Focal Point Balance Image Size Illusion of Space Cropping

3 3 3 4 4 5 5

CHAPTER 2 Working With Color Spot Color Process Color Simulated Process Color RGB Color Pantone Color

6 6 7 7 7 7

CHAPTER 3 File Formats and Types Raster Vs. Vector File Types What file types should I accept?

8 8 9 10

CHAPTER 4 How to use this eBook:

Using Artwork Legally Get the Most out of Stock Art

12 12

CONCLUSION Table of Contents - links to each section or page number in the eBook

FOOTER BUTTON - links to the Table of Contents

About the Author About Great Dane Graphics

EBOOK TITLE - at the top of each page, links back to the Table of Contents

Links & Hyperlinks - dark blue underlined text links to more information found on the Internet

WORKSHEETS Color Theory Basics File Formats

14 14 15 16

© 2017 Stahls’. All rights reserved.

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Introduction

Great art sells and sets your business apart. To grow your business and be more profitable you need to provide your customer with eye catching designs for their custom garment needs.

You could hire a freelance artist or you can do it in-house without hiring an art department.

This ebook will help the non-artist understand what goes into creating art for T-shirts from basic design principles and terminology, to ways to find and customize art without being an artist. Set your business apart from the competition by becoming your own art department.

Other eBooks in "The Ultimate Guide" series from Stahls':

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Chapter 1

Design Basics Designing great T-shirt art is not difficult, provided you keep a few basic design principles in mind.

COMPOSITION

COMPOSITION

A well-designed piece of artwork must look unified. All the elements in the design should have a sense of balance that’s pleasing to the eye. If the elements seem separated or unrelated, the design won’t work and will appear disjointed.

To create a well composed design it's important to consider size, proportion, and positioning of the elements. The colors you use are also an important consideration.

PROPORTION

CREATE UNITY & BALANCE SIZE

POSITIONING

FOCAL POINT Focal point is the point of emphasis in a design, it’s what draws the viewer in and encourages him to get a better look. This is also known as the WOW factor. Create the focal point with size, placement, or color.

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Size When using size to create a focal point, generally the most important item is the largest. As size decreases so does importance. However, it is important to note this is not always the case: you can set a component apart by making it the only thing smaller than the rest.

Placement Focal point can also be created through the placement of the individual items within a design.

Separating or differentiating an item from the other elements will tend to get it noticed before the rest.

Color Finally, color can create a focal point. For example, in a design where everything is the same shade or brightness, coloring the most important element in a contrasting color will attract the eye first.

It is important to keep in mind while you can use each of these ideas separately to create a focal point, you will generally use more than one at a time to create a great looking design.

BALANCE TERMINOLOGY

Symmetrical Balance:

The balance of elements within a design can also affect a design’s composition. An out of balance design can be disturbing to the eye. Two basic types of balance are symmetrical and asymmetrical.

When trying to understand the idea of balance, visualize a vertical line through the center of your design.

Symmetrical Balance: Whatever is on one side of the imaginary center line will be “mirrored” on the other side. This gives a design equal “weight” on both sides of the line.

Asymmetrical Balance:

Asymmetrical Balance: What is on one side of the line isn’t necessarily on the other side. Yet, by using color, placement, or size, a visual balance can be achieved.

Tip

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To create visually pleasing designs, look into the "Rule of Thirds" and the "Golden Ratio" for guidelines to help create more professional looks for your customers.

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IMAGE SIZE Composition is also affected by the image size. When laying out a full size design, I try to keep size in proportion to 13" x 15". This will keep the width and the height of the design from getting too far out of proportion. The size may vary, but use these dimensions as a guide.

When considering what size to print an image, remember to keep the shirt size you'll be printing on in mind. For instance, if you are going to be printing on kids' shirts, the design shouldn’t be too large.

Otherwise the design could end up under the arms or tucked down into pants. But, for a full-size front or back design, usually bigger is better. So, make the image fill the available space comfortably.

Tip TERMINOLOGY

Monochromatic Colors are created from using a single base hue of a color and modifying its shades, tones, or tints. This is done by adding white to the color for tints; black to the color for shades; and gray, or another color, for tones.

Tint example:

For more design size advice download The Ultimate Guide to Design Size and Placement eBook.

ILLUSION OF SPACE Some other ways of creating interest in your design would be to create the illusion of space. Show depth in the image with size, placement, color, and transparency.

For example, by using transparent elements and fills of various percentages of color you can create movement in a design. Or by using monochromatic colors for all elements in the background of an image and brighter colors on the focal point, the eye will be drawn to the largest, most colorful element.

Tip

Keep in mind "white space" (empty space in your design) should be considered when placing your elements and creating your composition.

CROPPING Consider cropping an image to add interest to your design. If you start with a very busy image, getting everything to fit on the page may require the elements to be small. To make some of the elements larger, you can zoom in, cut off, or crop part of the image.

Shade example:

Tone example:

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Chapter 2

Working With Color Working with color means different things to the screen printer and the digital printer. Most people with a digital printer want to print color — and lots of it. Why? Because they can, and it’s easy. These printers are usually C, M, Y, K (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black).

Some have additional colors to help with blending and the reproduction of organic colors such as flesh tones. Some will have white ink to print on dark garments. Digital printers can pull up any image or photograph they want, optimize it a little, and then print it!

Screen printers have a few more considerations before they can print. How many stations or print heads are on their equipment? They must print films for separations, which translates to one film for each color. Then the image must be burnt onto a screen. Ink is added to the screen and one color is printed, and the process is repeated until all colors are printed. Sometimes flash curing in between colors is necessary.

One advantage the screen printer has over the digital printer is the ability to print plastisol ink as a spot color. This ink will be much more vibrant on a shirt than the CMYK counterpart for the digital side. Using spot colors provides the ability to match customers' corporate or team colors more easily.

SPOT COLOR Spot color is probably the most common type of job for a screen printer because it’s been around since T-shirt printing began. It is usually a simple image with few colors. The colors it contains are typically simple and solid fills.

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Those who own a DTG (Direct-to-Garment) printer should try to avoid this type of image if possible. Sometimes the solid smooth colors can look streaky if the nozzles in the print head are not very clean.

PROCESS COLOR Process color is used when you want to reproduce photorealistic prints. This would include images from a photograph or full-color painting for instance. Because four colors are required to create it, it is sometimes referred to as 4 Color Process, or CMYK Process (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black). It is the process used by direct to garment digital printers.

A screen printer will need four screens to print with process color. You will need to be in CMYK mode in your photo editing software to print your separations. The separations for process printing usually need four different angles for the screens. This makes it very hard for screen printers to get consistent results, or to duplicate the same thing later on.

Process color is not recommended for the screen printer.

TERMINOLOGY

Primary Colors are CMYK or RGB. Secondary Colors are colors created from mixing two primary colors (CMYK or RGB) together.

Tertiary Colors are created from mixing the full saturation of one primary color with half saturation of another primary color and none of a third primary color from a given color space such as CMYK or RGB.

SIMULATED PROCESS COLOR This technique is designed to do exactly what it’s called: simulate process color. It gives the illusion of printing full photographic color while using spot colors, making it a good choice for screen printing. It uses plastisol ink that is more vibrant and long-lasting on a shirt than transparent ink. Additionally, the ink is very viscous; so, it can be printed using lower mesh counts, and this saves money. Colors chosen this way will make jobs easier to reproduce later.

RGB COLOR RBG Color (Red, Green, and Blue) are the primary colors of the additive color model.

This is also the type of color we see on our computer screens. It is created by displaying red, green and blue pixels at various strengths to create the secondary and tertiary colors. This is the color mode where we want to create and adjust our images. Since the RGB color spectrum is much larger than that of CMYK, colors are also brighter.

PANTONE COLOR The Pantone Matching System® also known as PMS color is the graphics industry standard color chart. You will find these charts in the swatches palettes of most graphics software.

Every art department should have a Pantone® Color Guide on hand.

The spot colors featured are identified by a unique number, and used universally worldwide.

The benefits of using Pantone® colors are great for reorders, switching vendors, and for seeing the true color on charts or swatches rather than on your computer screen.

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Chapter 3

File Formats and Types RASTER VS. VECTOR

RASTER VS VECTOR When getting started in the T-shirt business, the most common question people have is “What do I do about artwork?” For those just starting out, the first, and arguably the most important, principle to understand is the difference between raster images and vector images.

Vector graphics are typically used for vinyl cutting and embroidery, where raster art is more commonly used among direct to garment and digital printers. It’s important to know when to use each file type and to understand the differences between them.

What is vector artwork?

NOTE: Vector is not always black & white, or a single color, but it is usually less detailed than raster.

Vector artwork is created using a series of points, or nodes, and outlines, or paths, to create shapes which can then be filled or outlined with color. Each shape can be selected and modified individually. You can enlarge this type of artwork without effecting the sharpness of the image.

It is resolution-independent, so you can move, resize, or change the colors without losing the quality of the graphic. It is the best choice to use when dealing with text, especially small type and bold graphics that need to retain crisp lines when scaled to various sizes.

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Vector artwork is already created using outlines of color, so this saves embroiderers and sign cutters the time of having to trace and draw the outlines of the art.

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What is raster artwork?

Raster artwork on the other hand is tonal artwork created with a series of small dots or pixels. A pixel is assigned a specific location and color value. An image can end up looking jagged if it is printed at a low resolution because the size of each pixel will be increased. Photographs or digitally painted illustrations would be examples of this type of art. You can’t select individual shapes like you can with vector art.

This type of artwork is becoming more popular with the growth of digital printing. It’s not recommended to enlarge raster artwork. It can become blurry and pixelated if enlarged too much, losing its sharpness and clarity.

FILE TYPES There are far too many file formats to cover in this book. The ones we’re covering here are the ones you’ll need on a daily basis and are the ones most likely to be presented to you by a customer.

.AI This is the native file format used in Adobe Illustrator®. It is a vector file format which means it is small in size and can be scaled up or down without limit or loss of detail. This is a very versatile file format, which can be opened with Adobe Photoshop® and CorelDRAW®. It’s an industry recognized format that is used with vinyl cutters and embroidery digitizing software.

.PSD The native file format Adobe Photoshop®. It contains both layers (transparency) and alpha channels. With this format, multilayered files can be saved along with alpha channel information. Typically, you use this file format to create artwork, and keep the original in layers, then save the final production file in a different format (.JPG or .PNG) depending on its use.

.JPG or .JPEG JPEG, stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. This is arguably the most used file format in the world today, and the worst file format to use for creating T-shirt graphics. It is a favorite format for displaying photographic images on the internet. The issue with .jpg files is its "lossy" compression format. Meaning losses to the quality of the image occur.

Each time the file is closed, it’s compressed and data is thrown away to make the file size smaller. This degrades the quality every time the file is open then closed. Once the loss occurs, there is no going back — the data cannot be recovered. We do not recommend using this file format for printing T-shirt graphics.

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If you receive this type of file from a client or customer and they don’t have another file type, simply re-save the file as a PSD or TIF file

.TIF (or .TIFF) This stands for Tagged Image File Format (.TIFF). This file format is a widely-recognized format and is loss-less; therefore, there is no worry about corrupting images. It also has compression that can be used while saving. This compression won’t degrade the image.

This format also allows you to save multiple layers but will require the file to be much larger than it would be otherwise.

DCS 2.0* Desktop Color Separation (DCS) is a file format important to screen printers. It retains the separations in the form of alpha channels inside it. The full color preview that it gives can be used to place the image into a drawing program and be worked with. (*Format is saved with .eps extension)

.PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), is platform independent which means it can be used

by Mac or PC. The document contains a page layout and other information, it’s designed to be brought or sent electronically to a printer. Where the printer opens the file and prints the intended design. All the document’s information is there, so it will look like it was intended when designed. It is possible to save a PDF file from almost any standard graphics or page layout application.

.CDR This stands for CorelDRAW® and is a commonly used file type in the industry. It only works with Corel products, most other applications do not recognize .CDR files. This file type is often used by the RIP software with vinyl cutters and print/cut systems.

Tip

If you are given a .cdr and don't have access to CorelDRAW, ask to have it resaved as an .ai or .eps file so you can use it in Illustrator.

WHAT FILE TYPES SHOULD I ACCEPT? If you are going to be in business for yourself as a printer, or even contract out these services, it is important to know what kinds of file types to use and what kinds of artwork to accept.

One way to do so is with an “Artwork Spec Sheet”. It should clearly state the following if you are using CorelDRAW® and PHOTO-PAINT: TABLE OF CONTENTS

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We can accept these file types:

REMEMBER! If your customer uses Adobe Illustrator® or CorelDRAW® and would like to give you a file, make sure they save it as an .eps or .cdr file format.

Accepting low resolution .jpg files could cost you time and money trying to make them work.

• CorelDRAW file (.cdr)

• PNG files

• Corel PHOTO-PAINT files (.cpt)

• JPG Files

• Adobe Illustrator files (.ai files)

• PDF files

• Adobe Photoshop Layered files (.psd files)

• EPS files

Whether you are a screen printer or digital printer, it is a good idea to request Corel PHOTO‑PAINT® and Adobe Photoshop® files be layered. You will need the artwork on a transparent layer, receiving them this way will help save time. Additionally, the file should be set up at the actual size it will be printed at — with the resolution set at least to 150 to 300 pixels per inch (PPI).

You do not actually need this much resolution to print, but depending on the size of the different elements of an image, the more resolution you have the better your control over the finished print.

FILE TYPE

NAME

VECTOR/RASTER

WHAT DECORATING METHOD

.AI

Adobe Illustrator®

Vector & Raster

Vinyl Cutting, Embroidery

.PSD

Adobe Photoshop® Raster None

.JPEG or .JPG Joint Photographic Experts Group

Raster

None

.PNG

Portable Network Graphics

Raster

None

.TIFF or .TIF

Tagged Image File Format

Raster

Vinyl Cutting

DCS 2.0

Desktop Color Separation

Raster

Screen Printing

.CDR CorelDRAW®

Vector & Raster

Vinyl Cutting, Embroidery

.PDF

Vector & Raster

Digital Printing, Print/Cut

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Portable Document Format

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Chapter 4

Using Artwork Legally There are many sites now offering free designs, fonts, and clip art. Using these elements downloaded for free can be risky for a few reasons. First, make sure the company/website is a reputable one so you don’t inadvertently download a virus or malware with your files.

Secondly, it is extremely important you have the copyright holder’s permission to use the font or art you’re downloading. If the site you’re looking at doesn’t clearly state it has the rights to the download, and you can’t track down the original copyright owner, do not use this artwork commercially.

REMEMBER! Always check to make sure the fonts and artwork you download allow for a commercial usage to avoid legal action against your business.

Lastly, other sites offer designs, clip art, and fonts for sale. When purchasing these elements, make sure you carefully review the terms of the license before using anything in your commercially distributed designs. Some artwork licenses are for personal use only and others are available for commercial use, but often have conditions, like royalties, you must follow.

Violations of a copyright or terms leave your business open to expensive legal action. So it’s important to be proactive when adding to your artwork library.

GET THE MOST OUT OF STOCK ART Stock art enables any decorator to create great looking designs regardless of artistic ability.

Using stock art will increase profit because it saves the customer time and expenses for creating original artwork.

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A hurdle to overcome when using stock art is assuring the customer the product designs they get is unique. For example, if there are three regional high schools with a tiger as their mascot, it would be important for each design to be unique.

The goal would be to find ways to change an image to give customers a sense of a product that has been specially designed for them.

By changing certain design elements — such as color, size, proportion, texture, background fills, patterns, or even isolating a single element — you can give your image a unique look. A common approach by many decorators is to choose vector artwork and fill it with color.

Using many creative approaches to a single piece of artwork will maximize your investments and help you stand out amongst the competition!

FEATURED ARTWORK Below is the artwork featured in this eBook. Visit GreatDaneGraphics.com to purchase this art and more, for use in your own projects.

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Rack Of Ribs #A-0665

Football Bear #B-1294

Party Time Parrot #C-2889

Kayak Skull #F-5206

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Conclusion For your business to succeed it’s important to provide your customers the eye-catching designs they want. To do this you need to understand how to create and process good artwork for your chosen design method.

If you’re not ready to take on custom artwork by yourself, Great Dane Graphics can provide more support for your business.

The Great Dane Graphics artwork subscription supplies a huge library of artwork specifically designed for the custom apparel and promotional items business. It’s a great way to build your own library of art.

About the Author Connect with us!

In August 2005, Great Dane Graphics was turned upside down by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

Dane Clement, and his employees, had to go their separate ways.

But, Great Dane Graphics persevered by changing its product offering. Instead of designing custom art, the company began designing customizable production-ready stock art.

Though the Great Dane Graphics before Hurricane Katrina will never be forgotten, it has grown beyond its former self.

About Great Dane Graphics Great Dane Graphics creates unique full-color designs for custom apparel and product businesses both big and small. Great Dane Graphics provides an easy and affordable way for customers to create looks that sell.

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Color Theory Basics Primary Colors

Primary Colors are red, yellow, and blue.

COLOR TYPE

Secondary Colors

Secondary Colors are created from mixing two primary colors making green, orange, and purple.

DEFINED AS:

Tertiary Colors

Tertiary Colors: Created from mixing the full saturation of one primary color with half saturation of another primary color and none of a third primary color. (Ex: yellowgreen, or red-purple)

WHEN TO USE:

Spot Color Creates bright vibrant results with a smaller color range.

Screen printing, print/cut systems.

Easy color matching for team and corporate logos. Avoid for DTG.

Process Color

Uses four colors (CMYK) to create photorealistic results.

Best for DTG or other digital mediums.

Not good for screen printing.

Simulated Process Color

Gives the illusion of full photographic Good for screen printing. color while using just spot colors.

RGB Color

Color created by displaying red, green and blue pixels at various strengths to display secondary and tertiary colors.

PantoneÂŽ Color Also known as PMS (Pantone

Matching SystemÂŽ) color, is the graphics industry standard color chart.

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Use for creating and adjusting images.

Use as spot color for screen sprinting, or as process color for digital printing. Gives accurate and reproducible results. greatdanegraphics.com

Portable Network Graphics Tagged Image File Format Desktop Color Separation

.PNG

.TIFF or .TIF

DCS 2.0

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Vector & Raster

.PDF

Portable Document Format

Vector & Raster

Raster

Raster

Raster

.CDR CorelDRAW®

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Joint Photographic Experts Group

.JPEG or .JPG

Raster

Adobe Photoshop® Raster None

.PSD

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Digital Printing, Print/Cut

Vinyl Cutting, Embroidery

Screen Printing

Vinyl Cutting

None

None

Vinyl Cutting, Embroidery

Vector & Raster

Adobe Illustrator®

.AI

WHAT DECORATING METHOD

VECTOR/RASTER

NAME

FILE TYPE

File Format Cheat Sheet

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