Creating and adapting designs for print. Pt 1

So you have an awesome design that you know would look sick on a shirt? There is a lot more preparation work than you may think. We receive everything from pencil sketches to full 300dpi print-ready files. Most of our clients do not have access to editing programs, so we need to be able to adapt their vision into a printable design. In this article you will find some of the tips and tricks we use, as well as a tutorial to create a print-ready design.

If you are creating a design from scratch using a program such as Photoshop, there are a few things to keep in mind in order for them to be print-ready:

Start by creating a print-ready document.

• (File > New…) There are a few things to check in the pop-up box to make sure the document you create will be printable.
• Find out the size of the screen you will be using to print with, and set the width and height in inches. This way you know the design wont fall off the edge. Our printing screens are 12×13 inches.
• Set the resolution to 300dpi (dots per inch). The higher the resolution, the crisper the image. (Web resolution is generally 72dpi.)
• Set the Color Mode to CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). This is the color-mode for printing, while RGB is for web.

A few things to keep in mind before you start designing.

• Less color = cheaper print. Each color needs a new screen and set-up, so the fewer colors you use, the less expensive it will be. (Also keep in mind that you can use the color of the shirt in your design, so you will technically always have two colors to work with.)
• Positioning. Think about where the design is going to be positioned on the shirt. Wrap-around designs are complicated to set-up and can be expensive, as are most non-traditional printing areas. Generally, things are printed centered over the chest, but it is also fairly simple to print in the bottom left or right corner.
• Transparency can also be difficult to accomplish, and must be achieved by creating separate screens. I would avoid this when possible.

Time to start the design!

For this tutorial I am using a design I created for an organization called Oceanborne. The organization is all about ocean awareness and “looking deeper”. (Make sure you always do some research on the client so you create a design that fits their needs!) I chose to use a nautilus shell as the main focus because it can stand for many different aspects of the organization. The nautilus itself (research/ocean life/deep-sea), the shell pattern (waves/ocean tides), and the shape (O for Oceanborne), etc.

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First, I use the Fill Tool (paint bucket) to make the background the color of the shirt you are printing on. This way you have a better idea of what colors you can use (and which might not show up). We will be printing on white for this tutorial.

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Next I try to find the imagery that I wish to use, or create something myself in Adobe Illustrator. Because the pattern on the nautilus shell is so precise, I want to make sure I get it accurate. I find a good picture of the shell, and even better, it is already in black and white with good contrast. (image credit: fineartradiography.com)

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The image is the basic shape that I want, however, I want it to be in vector format so I can resize it, and I will also be making some adjustments. The process I am going to use in Adobe Illustrator is called Live Trace. Just to make sure it works properly, I bring the original picture into Adobe Photoshop and adjust the levels and contrast so the black is blacker and the white is whiter. (Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast or Levels). Live trace works best on simple, black and white images.

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Save the modified image as a JPG, and open in Illustrator by right-clicking, open with, Adobe Illustrator. (Open image into the program instead of pasting onto a new document. This preserves the original quality.)

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Select the image in Illustrator and click (Object > Live Trace > Make). It sould convert the image to a solid black shape. In order to get adjustable points, make sure the object is still selected and click (Object > Expand…). A box will pop up, make sure Object and Fill are checked, and hit OK.

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Now I want to make a few adjustments to the shell, so I hold [ALT] and click and drag a copy over to the right. I usually drag a copy over in case I mess something up.

Notice that if you select it and try to change the color, the entire block changes to that color. This is because the live trace also included the white in the picture. I used the keyboard shortcut [A] to get the Direct Selection Tool, and selected the white areas of the image (holding [SHIFT] to select more than one). Then just hit [Delete].

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I now have my basic shape, in a solid color, with editable points. Using the pen tool, I add a few shapes to it to get the effect I am looking for. I want the shell to have more of an O shape, but still appear organic.

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I chose a font that fit the same style, adjusted the colors, and brought it into Photoshop simply by selecting the entire object/s, copying, and pasting it onto my blank 12×13 document. A box will pop up asking how you want to paste the image. Make sure you select Smart Object. This keeps the vector-asepct of the image so you can resize it larger without it getting blurry.

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Check out Brush King for some cool brushes to use in your design. Part 2 of the tutorial will finish the design and prepare it for burning onto the screens. :]

Note: Make sure every image you use is high-resolution or vector. You should not be resizing images larger than they originally are. This causes them to become pixelated and will show in the print.

Part 2 will explain how to finish up the design and color-separate it in Photoshop so that it can be burned onto screens.

Rachel Michalkiewicz
Damascus || Graphic Designer