Question about 50 logos on the back of a shirt

[Pat Whatley]

I'm doing artwork for sponsor t-shirts, the kind of shirt with the event logo on the front and 50 different sponsor logos on the back. I was provided logos in everything from web capture jpg files to vector art.

I was setting the logos up for the website so I did them all in photoshop at 8" x 8" at 300 dpi.

When I got asked to do the t-shirt artwork for the back of the shirt I placed those logos into a 24" wide x 36" tall file at 300dpi. The edges on the logos is great, no pixelization and no half-tones (the dang file is massive) Sent it all to the t-shirt printer assuming they were just going to scale the file down and output a film positive.

Well now they're insisting on vector art for everything. I've never dealt with putting all these logos on a shirt.....I don't do shirts. I'm just not understanding what the need is for vector art. Is that standard for something like this? Is screenprinting still that dated?

They have a pretty large shirt printer who is going to print the shirts, market the shirts, and sell the shirts for the festival people. The festival people will make $5 per shirt with no risk of being stuck with unsold t-shirts and no effort so they are insisting on using this printer.

 

[J Hill Designs]

shirt company should be able to make separations from a .ps file...

 

[mopar691]

any basic rip should print their positives of of a ps file, even a jpg for that matter. I have never had a problem with file type.

But one never knows the other shops workflow.

 

[Just Another Sign Guy]

Pat I have been in textile screenprinting shops that have state of the art priring equipment but then they are weeding ruby like 20+ years ago.

& then there are shops that have the equipment to produce their own film in house but simply don't have the ability... No insilt intended but there are many screenprinters out there who are capable of burning screens & pulling ink & not much more...i sold supplies & equipment to them for many years.

I would ask them for a copy of their artwork requirements (if they can't furnish you with one that's your 1st big red flaf) after you receive it,feel free to forward it to me along with your artwork for this project & I will gladly set it up for you . Just let me know if I can help.

 

[trik]

Hey Pat, is the back multi-color or just one color? If multi-color, it all depends on their capability of printing separations. A lot of companies who print out their own separations may prefer spot colors, to say a 4 color process, etc.

But if it one color and you can make it black and white, then they should be able to print it.

good luck!

 

[vid]

If they don't ask for vector art, they won't get it, right?

The only thing that I can almost reasonably argue is that they want to drop the logos over another color or background. They would want the logos in vector art to knock that out and "see through" the logo.

or

They want to be able to change the color of the logos to a spot color for various flavors of colored shirts.

I'm assuming the logos will print one color.​

Of course there's work arounds --- a 600 dpi .bmp of each logo w/a 1 bit pixel depth should accomplish that in a pinch.

But the level of difficulty for a production artist to create that type of file is daunting:

• Walk around shop complaining that he/she doesn't have vector art.
• Wait 24 hours for salesman to get vector art.
• Post a rant to a t-shirt forum about not getting vector art.
• Search the internet for vector art.
• Post a query on a t-shirt forum looking for said vector art.
• Open raster image in photoshop to trace image for vector art.
• Read a late response on the t-shirt forum that they don't really need vector art.
• Make .bmp file of raster art.
• Place .bmp art in vector art software.
• Change to appropriate spot color.
• Proof layout... again requesting vector art.
• Print separations with .bmp art placed in vector file.
• and whew... there's more, but that's a sampling of the immenseness of the task.

 

[Pat Whatley]

Pat I have been in textile screenprinting shops that have state of the art priring equipment but then they are weeding ruby like 20+ years ago.

]

That's what I'm afraid of.

They sent me an email and asked for the layered photoshop file. They're going to see how many of the logos they already have vectorized and have their graphics guy vector the rest.

 

[Graphics2u]

Can you post a pic of the art layout? 50 logos seems like a lot.

 

[Pat Whatley]

The festival is free so they couldn't offer free passes as an incentive to sponsors. Part of the deal with the sponsors was that everybody got their logo on the shirt, anybody over $250 got that and their logo on banners.

I guessed at 50...there are only 46. This is the working file of the shirt, not the b/w, it's what I've got at the shop.

 

[Graphics2u]

That doesn't look as jam packed as I thought. nice job laying it out. Are they one color? A grayscale image would be nice, then it could be halftoned and still give some different looks to the logos.

 

[Pro Image]

Its the fades.....They need to be set as a PMS color for the post script printers that print velum to turn them into half tone dot.....at least thats how mine work.......

 

[Farmboy]

All depends on the software they have. Most shops don't update software unless they really, really need to. The rip software I use for printing positives will only run on windows XP. The rip computer is getting tired and in need of being replaced, so I'll prob buy a new one and have XP installed instead of purchasing new rip software. I'm comfortable with the software and the printers I have for it. I'm sure that's how it is for this shop, it's what works for them.

 

[visual800]

i usually save a pdf for our shirt guys and they have no probs with it vector is all they deal with

 

[Twisted Images]

A good quality jpeg should be good if its single color and already scaled to size. the gray will have to be halftoned out.
Customers come in all the time with crappy jpegs that they want me to use and i make it work with certain plugins in photochop. Thats a simple print if you print straight from photoshop without rip software.

 

[RBDesign]

Yeah do a halftone

We do shirts here too. we run into this all the time. I would just create a Bitmap halftone in Photoshop. looks like you have the resolution good enough to create a good halftone. just use like a 45 dpi, with a 22.5 angle, and use the elliptical dots. Do it all at 100% scale. you will end up with small enough file that you can email to them with no problems.

Eliminating halftones where possible will help too. Like small text, try and keep them at 100% black, etc.

This will not compare to a vector file imprint but with high enough res. and some of them logos being so small the deference will not be that noticeable.

the t-shirt Screen printer should be able to do this as well.

hope this helps, if not, shoot it over to me and ill take care of it.

​