In the modern-day, people are more inclined towards customised products – and what we wear is no exception. This unravels the reason behind the steady upward growth trajectory in Singapore’s t-shirt printing market. However, contrary to popular belief, preparing an artwork for custom t-shirt printing takes more than just ‘smacking on’ your favourite illustration, and all are good to go. You’ll be surprised to find that there are plenty of planning, touch-ups and consideration involved throughout the process.
As a professional t-shirt printing company in Singapore, we often encounter artwork that requires a bit of spruce up before it is ready to be sent for print.
The technical jargons that encircle the design industry can be tad complex, especially for beginners. Hence, we’ve put together this article to guide beginners toward creating a dream tee with vividness. If you’re prepared to bring your design ideas to life, be sure that your artwork ticks all the boxes below. Read on.
File size
If we were to identify one of the most common issues when it comes to t-shirt printing, it would be that folks in Singapore tend to send through files that are either too large or too small. Your file size can vary – depending on where you source or export your files from. Here at Printee, we’d highly recommend keeping your file size within 10 MB.
Resolution
You may have heard of the term ‘dpi’, but what exactly does it mean? Dpi stands for ‘dots per inch’. In layman terms, it refers to the amount of detail encapsulated in an image.
As we’ve mentioned in our previous article, unless you want your final artwork to turn out pixelated, your file resolution has to be at least 300 dpi.
File types
Image files can be categorised into two main types: vectors and bitmaps (also known as raster). The former is advisable because of its infinitely scalable traits, allowing us to work with and scale your artwork (whenever needed) – without compromising the quality. However, if photographic images are what you’re going for, perhaps bitmap/raster files would work better. To produce the best quality with bitmap/raster files, again, one has to ensure that their bitmap/raster files are at least 300 dpi.
Below is an overview of the file types and their respective formats:
| Vector | Bitmap/Raster |
| PDF (.pdf) | PSD (.psd) |
| EPS (.eps) | TIFF (.tif) |
| AI (.ai) | PNG (.png) |
| SVG (.svg) | JEPG (.jpg) |
| CDR (c.dr) |
Colour choices
Typically, an artwork should contain between 1 to 5 colours. If you’re more on the budget-conscious end of the spectrum, keep your design to a maximum of 2 colours.
As with file resolution, ensuring your artwork’s colour is optimum for printing is important. Most of the t-shirt printers in Singapore are CMYK-based. Hence, working with a CMYK file will ensure the most accurate outcome of your ideal design. If you were to create your file in RGB, your artwork would have to be converted to CMYK at one point or another. So why not save the hassle?
Avoid using copyrighted images
We all have the urge to print a t-shirt with our all-time favourite childhood cartoon character, don’t we? It’s easy to just right click and rip an image off the search engine. However, printing copyrighted material without an official license is a no-no. The last thing you want is to fall into any sort of copyright quick mud. If graphic design is not your profession, perhaps you’d want to utilise our free-to-use t-shirt design software, where an innumerable number of graphics await.
