The Differences in Shirt Printing
Wait Did I forget to order shirts?
There are always challenges that occur when preparing for a funeral. Choosing a cremation or casket burial, flowers, obituaries, the clothing they will be wearing, going through photos, your loved ones materials, planning the reception, and food are just a start, so it's no wonder why shirts usually become a last minute decision for the family to make. Not only can this be disappointing for the client because of quality of product or not getting their shirts on time but it also gives a bad reputation for the shirt printer, well in reality all that was needed was the necessary time to print a high quality product.
Steps for a designer to create a great shirt
From creating a graphic design to the clients liking, to preparing for the printing job, (which is different depending on how the print is done. For direct to garment printing, it is necessary to pre treat the shirt before printing.) next printing the selected quantity acquired by client, well making it come out as perfect as humanly possible, including any errors that the printer or software can cause. Many times customers don't recognize how much effort and time goes into printing let alone the back costs that occur during the printing job process. See how direct to garment works.
My experience in graphic design and my connection to memorial shirts
My name is Chris Lucero and I am the owner of Trendie Days LLC. I have a Degree in Media Arts with a focus on Graphic Design. I have over 20 years experience in Audio Production and Recording, which required a lot of graphic design for promotion, and I am a proud parent of four kids and a loving husband to a beautiful wife. I have taught how to use the Adobe Suite software and graphic design well tutoring at the Santa Fe Community College, also I was a Graphic Designer for the The Santa Fe WaterShed Association, and Santa Clara Casino and I have experience as the Graphic Designer for the Rio Grande Sun News Paper where I did advertisement ads for whoever the newspaper was showcasing that week. My main duty for the newspaper was creating obituaries.
The experience that I gained throughout the years has helped me run Trendie Days LLC and has gave me the insight on what customers are looking for, which is quality in a timely manner. My Solution for t shirts, which will always be evolving, is Direct to Garment printing. With the capabilities of being able to print photorealism with its CMYK color system. It can print realistic photos!
Why we choose direct to garment over other printing systems and our uses for Vinyl, Transfer prints and silk screen?
To start off our most obvious reason we choose direct to garment is its high resolution, full color, photorealism prints. With vinyl it is pretty much impossible to print realistic photos for the fact that it works with solids or pre printed color schemes that get cut through a vinyl cutter and heat transferred to the shirt or garment. Where a printer can print a full color image vinyl cannot accomplish photorealism. Vinyl is great for silhouettes and lettering. It is what you see on most kid sports jerseys for school sports. The waste is high but can Mostly be recycled to use again in future jobs. We also use vinyl to silkscreen where instead of using emulsion and the light, red room system that normal silk screeners use, we cut out the graphic design through vinyl, tape it on a silk screen, and run the ink through the silk screen vinyl combination, directly to the shirt. This makes for an easier clean up and easy reuse of the silkscreen in use.
Silk screening gets a lot closer to what direct to garment can do, it can print black, white, or colored silhouettes, fonts and in some cases black and white photos, but still has issues with full color gradients and creating shadows although not impossible. Another problem is silk screen fees, which can be very costly especially for small jobs, as well as waste can be high and harder to get rid of safely.
Silk screening is great for doing high numbers of shirts in a shorter amount of time than direct to garment and vinyl printing, which direct to garment relies on the speed of the printer and time for the pre-treating process, and vinyl relies on weeding the vinyl to transfer to shirt, which can become tedious when doing high numbers.
Another reason for choosing direct to garment is the capability to print on demand. Clients who have clothing business can do print on demand, which allows their customers to order from their shop, Trendie days gets sent the order to print, we then print the product and send it back to clients shops where the customer can receive it, which allows for the shop owner to not have to buy inventory, as well as make the sale when the sale occurs.
With graphic design "art ready to print" we pretreat the shirt, load art to computer software and print, which depending on art takes 2-15 minutes. To finish we heat press the shirt for 2 and a half minutes and fold. High quality in a short time for a great price is what we offer.
Stay focused on your loved one and let us take care of the shirts
The main reason why people come to us for Custom Photo Realistic Memorial Shirts is because we are one of the only systems that print excellent full color photos. There are other shirt printing systems that can print full color, such as sublimation printing which covers the whole shirt. Beautiful prints are made with these sublimation printers but tend to be much more expensive. This is a great way to print shirts and I recommend this method if you can afford it. Smaller sublimation printers are available and more affordable to use then the one in the video below.
Transfer paper prints are another way of getting Full color realism, but the quality isn't nearly as good as many of the ways described above. Transfer paper prints come out bright and clear but they tend to crack when stretched and do not hold well in the washer or dryer, (although they are making better transfer paper material every year, hopefully it will catch up). Direct to Garment ink combines to the fabric and leaves a vibrant looking print with a soft feel that can be stretched with little to no damage as well as washer friendly. Drying shirts through a dryer can damage prints. See our recommendations for Cleaning shirts Washing Instructions.
During a stressful time like a death, us here at Trendie Days understand that this should be the less of your worries. Let Trendie Days honor your loved one with top of the line printing. Time can be an issue, like any business which we understand, Please try to give us a proper amount of time to get your order ready. Know with the right time given we can get you the perfect product.