Art for screen printing

Does anyone have any experience doing art for screen printing t-shirts?

I need to do one... Already did the art in Illustrator... But I just wonder what else I need to do to it... I don't really know how to size it appropriately or anything in Illustrator... or if I need crop marks or anything.

why yes, yes I do... :D

First designate your size. You can do this by opening your .ai file in Photoshop, letting it raster to whatever you decide. (Keep in mind that there are little shirts and big shirts, and you'll want to center it up in a little one, so it doesn't look like one of those all-over print shirts from 1989)

Then, make a layer for each color you want. Make an outline layer your top layer, then leave a little overlap with your colors. i.e. make the color get overlapped by your outline layer. Think of it like this: the ink goes down on top of the shirt, etc, in the same order as your photoshop layers. follow? Keep in mind - Screen Printers charge a fee per screen -or- per color. Last time I checked it was 25 bucks per screen, give or take.

Then, print out a black and white .tiff of each individual layer with the white background behind each. (unless you have a printer that will print transparencies, do that if possible. Be sure they are all the same size, this is important for burning the negative onto a screen. Also, check on the alignment marks check box in your Print> Print Options. This will help out whomever is burning your emulsion-covered screens.

let me know if this is making any sense. I'll check back as soon as I can.

Well I only have one color. It's a very simple logo.

It's in the upper-left corner of this site: www.onceagainmusic.com

only there are no lighting effects. It's just an outline of that.

If I rasterize the file, doesn't that defeat the purpose of it being vector based?

I'm getting white ink printed on a black shirt.

That logo will be printed in the center of the chest, and then the domain name will be a in some font on the sleeve.

Here's the art... small version of course.

http://www.onceagainmusic.com/LOGO.gif

A lot of places suggest that you leave the trapping (a.k.a. "Overlap") to them.

Some useful links:

http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/silkscreenprinting/

if you know who will be printing the shirts, contact them, to see how they want the art. "camera-ready" is often very vague.

I didn't realize what you were dealing with. Mine were always in at least 2 color. - The vector part will be really important if you want to resize your logo, but for burning a screen I don't think it's as big of an issue... I'd supply them with a nice print out of your vector art of the logo, the text , email them the .ai and biggity bang call it a day.

Cool. thanks for the tips guys. And thanks for the link utopian... good info there.

This is basically what the shirt will look like. Neato.

www.onceagainmusic.com/t-shirtdesign.gif

looks good, deker. The last time I screen printed, I was in college, and I made 110 LPs into Johnny Rotten's face. Little different from t-shirts, but still generally the same procedures. I'd love to get back into it, Warhol-style, but I don't have a garage yet.