Behind the Print: How Our Designers Turn Your Idea Into Clothing You'll Love Wearing

Here's something most people never think about. Two shirts can be printed on the same machine, with the same ink, on the same day, and one can look and feel noticeably better than the other. The difference happened before anything was printed: at the design stage.

A logo that looks pin-sharp on your website might only be a few hundred pixels wide. A design with a black background will, printed as it is, put a heavy black rectangle on your black hoodie. A soft drop shadow that looks classy on screen can become a muddy grey smudge on fabric. None of that is your fault; screens and shirts simply work differently.

That's why every Print Press order passes through our in-house, degree-qualified designers, trained on Adobe software, before it goes anywhere near a printer. Here's the journey your order takes, four tricks our designers use to make prints look sharper and feel softer, and how to send artwork that gets the best possible result.

In short: good design preparation is the difference between a print that looks home-made and one that looks like it came off a high-street rail. Send us what you have, however rough, and we'll do the rest.

Your order's journey, step by step

Every order follows the same six steps, and nothing is printed until you've seen and approved how it will look.

1. Share your idea. A logo file, a hand-drawn sketch, a photo, or just a description. Tell us the garment, the colour, the sizes and where the print should go.
2. We design it. Our designers rebuild or tidy your artwork in Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, size it for each garment and prepare it for the fabric. This is where most of the magic happens (more below).
3. You approve a proof. You'll see a mock-up of the design on your chosen garment and colour, at the size it will be printed. Now's the moment to check spelling, colours, position and sizes.
4. We print it. Your design is printed onto special film with Epson ink technology, backed with white, coated with a powdered glue and melted.
5. We press it. The print is heat-pressed onto your garment at the right temperature and pressure for that fabric, peeled, then pressed a second time to seal it.
6. On its way. Your order is packed and sent to your door.

Four tricks our designers use, which you'll never notice but will feel

1. Letting the shirt do the work

Imagine a design with a black background going onto a black T-shirt. Printed as supplied, the black gets printed too, on top of a white base layer. You end up with a heavy rectangle of printed black that never quite matches the shirt's own black, and feels like a patch stuck on.

So our designers knock out the black: they remove it from the artwork and let the garment itself become the blac

It's one of the simplest changes with the biggest pay-off. The design blends into the garment rather than sitting on it; the print is lighter and softer because there's less ink; and the open areas let the fabric breathe. One transfer specialist reckons the trick can cut ink use by up to 40%. It works on any colour too: on a red shirt, the red parts of a design can be knocked out in the same way.

2. Turning shadows into dots

Shadows, glows and colour fades are lovely on screen but hard to print, because a printer can't lay down "half" an ink. So our designers convert them into fine patterns of dots, called halftones, that get smaller and further apart as the shadow fades. The shadow then dissolves smoothly into the shirt rather than stopping at a hard edge. The dots are kept at least half a millimetre across, because smaller ones don't carry enough glue to survive the wash.

3. Cleaning up the invisible edges

Many images have edge pixels that are partly see-through: think of the soft fuzz around a cut-out photo or a feathered glow. You can't see them on screen, but the printer can. It puts a layer of white under anything that isn't completely clear, which can leave a faint chalky halo around your design. Our designers make every pixel either 100% solid or 100% clear, so the edges come out crisp.

4. Sizing the print to the garment

One print size doesn't suit every shirt. A design that looks perfect on a large tee can swamp a small one, and look like a postage stamp on an XXL. Designers often scale the print to the garment size, for example around 8 inches wide on a small, 10 on a medium and 12 on a large, so everyone's shirt looks right. It's a small detail, but it's the kind of thing that makes a team or staff order look professional.

Sending us artwork: what helps most

You don't need to be a designer to get a great print. But knowing one thing about files will save time and give a sharper result: there are two kinds of image, and they behave very differently when they're blown up to fit across a chest.

Vector files (AI, EPS, SVG and most PDFs from design software) describe shapes with maths, so they stay razor sharp at any size. Pixel images (PNG, JPG, screenshots, photos) are made of tiny squares. Enlarge a small one and the squares start to show

Here's how common file types stack up:

And six quick checks before you hit send:

How big is big enough? Printers work to 300 dots per inch at the final print size. So a 4-inch (10 cm) chest logo needs an image about 1,200 pixels wide, and a 25 cm front print needs about 3,000. You can check an image's size on most phones by opening its details or info panel.

Text and fine lines. Lettering smaller than about 8–10 point, and lines thinner than half a millimetre, can break up or fail to stick. If your design has very fine detail, our designers will thicken it just enough to print cleanly.

If all you have is a small logo from your website or a photo of a sign, send it anyway. Redrawing artwork so it prints beautifully is exactly what our design team does every day.

Before you approve: get the size right

There's one thing even the best designer can't fix for you, and that's the size you order. Because every garment is printed specially for you, custom clothing can't be returned once it's made. A wrong size can't simply be swapped, so it's worth two minutes with a tape measure before you approve your proof.

A few tips that prevent most sizing headaches:

• Measure the garment, not the person. Laying a well-fitting T-shirt flat gives a more reliable comparison than a body measurement.
• Check the chart for the exact style. Fits vary between brands and cuts, so a medium in one T-shirt isn't always a medium in another. Fitted, women's and unisex styles differ too.
• Ordering for a group? Collect everyone's size in writing, ideally in a simple spreadsheet with their name, and ask them to check it against the chart rather than guessing.
• Read the proof slowly. Spellings, names, numbers and the size breakdown: once it's printed, it's printed.

Let's make something you'll love wearing

From your first sketch to the parcel on your doorstep, your order is in the hands of highly trained printers and in-house, degree-qualified designers, using up-to-date print technology and Epson ink. That combination is what turns "a logo on a shirt" into clothing people actually want to wear.

Start your order at printpress.clothing. Send us your idea, however rough, and our designers will take it from there.