Tshirt design

Help!!!!

What would be a good program to use for designing t shirts?
Looking for something for beginners

Kenny Logins

I'd try Inkscape (free).

Help!!!!

Kenny Logins wrote: »

I'd try Inkscape (free).

Thanks......is it easy to use?

Kenny Logins

Depends on what you want to achieve I suppose. T-shirts is a bit vague, and could be anything from simple text right up to, well anything... Are you working from scanned sketches, photos, or just winging it ..?

Loads of Inkscape tutorials on YouTube and dedicated websites.

hankscorpio184

To the best of my knowledge I don't think Inkscape supports spot colours.

This is important for designing t-shirts, if the t-shirt is just one colour, two colour or three colours.

Most colours in programs like inkscape are made up of RGB or CMYK, where RGB are red green blue and CMYK is cyan magenta yellow and black - which professional printers use.

If you're going to design t-shirts it's important that the colour for any colour, say a blue for arguments sake, is NOT made up of a combination of RGB or CMYK.

This is where spot colours come in handy, they are a reference colour that the printer can print, it's basically referencing an ink and therefore there is no mix of CMYK, say for blue you could have 100% Cyan + 50% Magenta + 10% Yellow.

This would involve passing the same piece of art 3 times printed in cyan, magenta and yellow - which is a bit much for making a blue.

Where you could just use a spot colour of 7461c which would be almost identical.


It's very important to understand the differences between these colours.


The industry standard software is Abode Illustrator or Corel Draw (which is PC only I think?)


If you do design the t-shirt in Inkscape you may incur extra costs from the printers if the require to fix the actual artwork, as they wouldn't be using freeware like inkscape.



If your t-shirt is going to be a full blown photograph or intricate colours, then don't worry about spot colours, and you can go ahead and design in CMYK - which is what printers require.


Don't forget the more colours you use the more expensive the printing.


I'd use Adobe Illustrator:

Get a free 1 month trial

It's then €24.59/mo


Use your first month doing tutorials and learn the difference in setting up global spot colours and using CMYK for print.

You can get a 30 day free trial here to get some tutorials on using Illustrator do a google search for Lynda.com free trial


It's a learning curve.


For what it's worth, you're better off finding a t-shirt printing company and supply them with a hand drawn sketch of roughly what you would like to see printed.

Chances are that you won't be able to use the software efficiently to create accurate artwork for printing.

If you're looking for a professional t-shirt then you're better off hiring a professional, rather than spending 30 days learning how to do something that you'll never do again, then spending €30 to use the software even more, and then having to pay additional artwork charges to fix the errors you're likely to make.

Hope that helps.

Kenny Logins

Woah, calm down there. How do you know the tees aren't going to be DTG printed for a hen night? :pac:

hankscorpio184

It's a sea of calm here.

We don't know what the OP is proposing for his t-shirt design.

If the OP can clarify what they want to do then we'd be better placed to offer advice.

Help!!!!

Design to use for the likes of teezily

Kenny Logins

Help!!!! wrote: »

Design to use for the likes of teezily

They have a basic design tool online, but don't offer any specs for print or uploaded artwork, so you don't have anything to go on I'm afraid.

hankscorpio184

It says on uploading images that HD (high definition) or vector art can be uploaded.

What are you trying to design though - are you uploading photographs and basing text around them?

Or are you trying to go from a sketched art to screen to upload to the website?


That will determine what is best software for you to get to upload images.


For sketches use something like Inkscape, but Illustrator is but you pay for Illustrator.

These are vector based programs and are great for line work.


If it's photographs or something like that then best to use Photoshop, again you pay for it.

A free version similar to Photoshop would be called GIMP.


If you need any help with Inkscape or GIMP there are plenty of online resources.


Let us know if we can be of any further help.

hankscorpio184

When you upload an image to Teezily it will inform you if it's good quality or if it's not good quality.

Seems pretty cool.

A bit pricey per t-shirt though, if you only need a few you could get them done cheaper per t-shirt using a local t-shirt printing company.

Up to you.