BEAST Printing

There are several processes available for printing t-shirts. Here is a review of some of those processes. Keep the pro’s and con’s in mind when designing your t-shirt line so you aren’t shocked when you get it quoted for printing.
1. Screen Printing. The most durable of all the processes. Screen printing using spot colors (or single colors, not blended) will be charged by the number of locations for the prints and the number of colors in the image. For every color used in an image there is a setup fee to create the screen, the standard setup fees/screen are $20-$30.
So for example, a 4 color job would run you $80 for just the setup fees, then add in the cost of a basic shirt $4 and the printing fee 4x$1.25: $5. You can see how this would make for a very expensive shirt. Most places would require a minimum of 12 shirts, maybe more/design.

2. Screen Printing, process color printing (also very durable).This process is similar to above, however the image is separated into CMYK colors and then when they print they blend. Most places offer this only for white or light colored shirts, however, we do have a supplier that will do this process on black shirts, but they minimum is very high – 150 shirts I believe. Costs for this process are higher than spot color printing and a vector art work file that is color separated to CMYK must be provided so images won’t work for this.

3. Direct to Garment Printing. The image will start to fade after about 100 washes or so. A good option for multiple color jobs, but it can only be used on white or very light colored shirts due to how the ink blends with the shirt color. Setup fees for this process would be $30/image plus the cost of the shirt $4 plus the printing fee $7-9/shirt. Again, 12 is usually the minimum.

4. Heat Vinyl Transfer. The image will last about 40-50 washes. It’s a bit more durable then the other transfer process, but you are limited to a single color vinyl, possibly two at the most if they don’t overlap each other. Your image is cut using a vinyl cutter and then it’s applied to the shirt. Again, a good option for one-off’s or for low qty. The images can be larger than paper size for this too.

5. Heat Transfers. The image will last about 30-40 washes (least durable). You remember the old iron-on images that you could buy at a craft store and then use an iron to put it on? Well this is just like that, only the paper has improved. A lot of the places online that offer single shirts for sale use this process. The image is restricted to a paper size and we use a heavy duty heat press to apply (iron’s don’t cut it). There are special papers so it can be used on black/dark shirts as well as on white/light shirts. It is the least durable, but for a quick job it’s not a bad option. It’s also suitable for one-off or low qty shirts.