When it comes to custom apparel, clothes printing is one of the most versatile and effective options for creating t-shirts that stand out. It’s a popular choice for corporate logos, sports teams, and any other kind of design that would look good on the front of a shirt. And it’s also the most economical option for printing large runs of shirts with the same design.
Clothes printing refers to a process of applying a design, either directly or via printed pastes, to textile fabrics. In direct printing, coloured pastes are applied to the cloth and fixed by steaming or heating. Discharge printing is a variation of this, where a white pattern is printed on a coloured background using a discharging agent (usually zinc formaldehyde sulfoxylate or Rongalite).
In screen printing, ink is pushed through a woven screen, called a mesh stencil, onto fabric. The ink doesn’t soak into the fabric itself, but it is trapped by the screen and the resulting image will last longer than other printing methods. Screen printing is a great option for high-volume orders of a single type of garment, and it is compatible with almost any fabric.
Another popular printing technique is dye sublimation, which uses a special printer to apply a thin layer of ink to the fabric of the garment. This allows for a wide range of colors, including those that wouldn’t be possible with other techniques, and can create very detailed designs that pop. However, this method can be difficult to manage in larger production runs, and the results can suffer from creases and wrinkles as the shirt is processed.