Making products is the most exciting part of starting a brand; it’s when your vision finally meets reality, and you can create something you can touch, feel, and even wear.
With screen printing services for your brand, there are details you need to know about mistakes that entrepreneurs normally make when starting, launching, and printing a brand.
Start With Your Brand and Your Customer
Before you make anything, you have to put your best foot forward in preparation before reaching out to a shop.
Putting your best foot forward means understanding what your brand is about and who your customer is, and that gives you a better understanding of which designs you’re going to be creating and which type of blanks you might use.
Artwork For Screen Printing Services
The difference between choosing a blank is going to depend on who your customer is and what they’re willing to pay.
Prepare Your Design Files
Once you have an understanding of which blank you’re going to use and which garment you’re going to select, the next part in this process is having the right artwork.
File Types and Fonts
The bigger the better, you’re going to need eps, AI, PSD, anything that’s editable like the original file, not the Microsoft Word, not the JPEG that’s been flattened. The original file makes it easier to get through those layers, to change colors, and to size up and down. You can send the TTF font format so it can be downloaded and manipulated.
Embroidery and Digitizing
Vector is great, the only concern is with the very small letters. Dealing with embroidery, the yarn can only give you so much detail; it’s not the same as something being digital. After you adjust the art, it gets sent to a digitizer, and digitizing is a stitch-by-stitch method that tells the printers exactly what they need to do.
How Screen Printing Services Work?
The system takes your design from the computer and burns it onto a screen. Once that screen is created, it gets pressure-washed, which brings it to life. There are four for a design. This is because in screen printing, you have to lay down the ink for each part of the shirt, and there are water-based and plastisol inks. Once the screen is ready, it goes into the screen printer, each color is pressed in the sequence that is required, then the orders are put through the dryer, bagged, and shipped to your door.
Why Screen Printing Has Minimum Order Quantities?
Your one design with multiple colors takes over an entire factory floor that has overhead, facility, and much more, and there’s a lot of labor and love that goes into the making of these products.
This is the reason why screen printing has a high minimum order quantity; it’s why direct-to-garment printing only has one at a time; it’s just one machine printing all the colors. Screen printing involves everything from the ink to the design to the bagging to the heating to the drying.
Focus on Selling, Not Just the Shirt
Instead of treating it like putting out a t-shirt, treat it like building a business. Start thinking about your retail price when you’re making shirts. Don’t focus so much on the product that you don’t think about how to sell it.
It’s about selling; if not, it’s just an expensive hobby. Focus on building your brand, marketing it, and let the shop print the product, because those are two separate things.
A Staple Piece Builds Brand Recognition
A staple piece with your logo on it that lasts over time makes total sense. Brands like DC, Fox, and so on. How many t-shirts have you seen them make with just their logo slapped on it and nothing else? Hundreds, if not thousands, and they’re still cool. Recurring staples are great for brand recognition.
Work With a Quality Screen Printing Shop
There are things that you can do to prevent a lot of those issues from happening, and that’s by choosing quality screen printing services for your brand. They’ll service your designs right, make sure that you have your artwork correctly the first time, and that’s something that a lot of print shops don’t do.
Sometimes they’ll just take your order and slap your thing on there, and then you get the shirt, and it’s not what you thought it was.
Frequently Asked Questions
What file types do print shops need for artwork?
The bigger the better, so you’re gonna need, like, eps, AI, PSD, or anything that’s editable, like the original file, not the Microsoft Word, not the JPEG that’s been flattened
Why does screen printing have a minimum order quantity?
In screen printing, you have to lay down the ink for each of the part of the shirt, which is why there are minimum order quantities when it comes to printing like this
How do you choose the right blank t-shirt?
The difference between choosing a blank is going to depend on who your customer is and what they’re willing to pay
What makes a brand successful with screen printing services?
If you focus on getting your brand out there, it’s going to sell through, but if you focus so much on building a shirt and not selling it’s not going to sell. It’s that simple
Bringing Your Brand to Life
It really does take faith for you to stand out, to step out and pursue the thing that you want to pursue, because things aren’t going to come to you just because you have an idea; it’s not until you start taking action that you start to bring clarity to what that vision may be.
Focus on getting your brand out there, and let screen printing services build the product.