T-Shirt Design and print

JuniorDesigner

This thought has gone through my mind a lot recently and wondered what the thoughts were here.

I have been thinking about T-Shirt design printing and wondered if anyone does this or has done it? I have no real idea of where to start apart from designing some ideas and getting them printed etc....!

Would like to keep them quite simple, nothing major but unique!

steve1980

Can you beat the markets on price?

JuniorDesigner

Who knows!! I was just thinking whether it'd be a viable way of making a comfey income!!

Mayflower10cat

Husband draws cartoons as a hobby and over the years has had various Rugby Tournament/World Cup comic images made into silkscreen prints for teeshirts. This gives you a good quality print but it costs per screen, so the more colours/screens the dearer the image. A long print run is needed to offset the costs of making the actual screens initially. Google 'silk screen printers' for more info. Also, you need to source your teeshirts at a very competitive price, i.e; buying in hundreds at least. How many sizes do you really need, or will 'XL - one size fits all' be sufficient. Printing on white ground or coloured? Standard teeshirts or sweatshirts/poloshirts? Husband was selling his at cost plus a few ££s for the local Hospice and could just about get £10 per shirt, on a good quality cotton t-shirt using a two screen design. The biggest print run he ever did was 200. So there's not a lot of profit to be made unless you really get your prices down on the teeshirts, do a huge print run and use as few screens as possible. The cheaper alternative is transfer printing, but in all honesty if you're really careful, you can do this at home on your printer with T-shirt transfer paper.

steve1980

JuniorDesigner wrote: »

Who knows!! I was just thinking whether it'd be a viable way of making a comfey income!!

No such thing as a comfy income.

chalkie99

Like everything else in this small island it is a saturated market and "unique" is difficult to do unless you have your own special design skills or can find someone like Mayflower10cat's husband to come up with designs that no-one else is offering, though be sure they will quickly be copied and sold on EBay at cut-throat prices.

You can produce text and solid colour "line-art" type graphics with a cutter/plotter and heat press or digitally printed full colour images with the right sort of printer but it all depends on your budget.

I don't think you necessarily have to buy large quantities of shirts. We buy in small numbers as an ancillary to our business and if you find the right suppliers there are good prices to be had.

seismicryan

Mayflower10cat wrote: »

Husband draws cartoons as a hobby and over the years has had various Rugby Tournament/World Cup comic images made into silkscreen prints for teeshirts. This gives you a good quality print but it costs per screen, so the more colours/screens the dearer the image. A long print run is needed to offset the costs of making the actual screens initially. Google 'silk screen printers' for more info. Also, you need to source your teeshirts at a very competitive price, i.e; buying in hundreds at least. How many sizes do you really need, or will 'XL - one size fits all' be sufficient. Printing on white ground or coloured? Standard teeshirts or sweatshirts/poloshirts? Husband was selling his at cost plus a few ££s for the local Hospice and could just about get £10 per shirt, on a good quality cotton t-shirt using a two screen design. The biggest print run he ever did was 200. So there's not a lot of profit to be made unless you really get your prices down on the teeshirts, do a huge print run and use as few screens as possible. The cheaper alternative is transfer printing, but in all honesty if you're really careful, you can do this at home on your printer with T-shirt transfer paper.

These days, isnt it just easier to get your design made up in a factory in china for a few pounds if you buy enough?