Well, the year is roaring to an end, and we’re faced with what gifts to buy for cousins, kids, uncles, friends, etc. What better gift for a hot Aussie  Christmas than a high quality cotton tee, printed with a fun message, or family photograph?  Here are a few fun design ideas we found:

Our job here at Customyourshirt is to transform your artwork from a pixel-based photograph or drawing into a high quality graphic printed onto your choice of t-shirt, polo shirt, singlet, hoodie etc. We have many different types of  quality shirts available in our online store, with a wide range of colours and sizes.

If the original artwork you send in is nice and clear, your shirt print is going to look fantastic.  If it’s pixelated or fuzzy, often we can re-create your picture or logo and give it new life. This week a customer wanted a full print size drawing of a Transformer on his t-shirt, in white, on a black shirt, with the black background of the picture deleted. Underneath we have a close-up snapshot of a piece of the artwork, showing the fuzziness and unclear lines of the drawing:

As you can see, a blurred picture is an artist’s nightmare! But with great persistence, and a thick pair of glasses, the final drawing was made in Adobe Illustrator, and saved as a vector file, enabling the artwork to be printed at any size on just about anything. Unfortunately, for a T-shirt print, we are restricted to 28cm wide, by 36cm high. Here we have a copy of the finished drawing, and then a picture of what our “Transformed” t-shirt looked like:

Here’s the sample t-shirt:

Most of the artwork we receive for printing on t-shirts are in the format of a  JPG. JPG’s are fine if they’re high quality, and print well. However, often customers send artwork with text already on their picture. The more times a JPG is opened, the more it breaks down, pixel-wise, and text becomes very blurry.  If possible it’s best to just send your artwork without the text, and let our graphic art department know what text you’d like to have printed on your shirt. That way, the text will come up crisp and clear. Here’s a sample of  what lines look like when they become pixelated . Pixels are small square blocks of colour, and as the picture breaks down, the square blocks become more visible, and the text or artwork, hard to view:

See what we mean?  In this case, it’s probably better for you to arrange for our art department to re-draw your graphics for a small extra fee, and in case of text, to re-type it.  You will also notice that as well as the image being pixelated, the white background has become mottled and discoloured.  Normally with a high resolution graphic, we remove the background, letting just the t-shirt background show through. But on a low resolution picture like this, the background can not be removed, and makes for a very scruffy design.

Many customers order t-shirts for special purposes, such as office parties, bucks nights, hens parties, seminars etc. for a group of friends or employees. Some of the designs and ideas for these shirts are very innovative, and provide a way to keep a group together at a club or venue. One of our customers sent us some small samples of artwork, with instructions for the finished designs. One of these designs was a picture of a robot with one arm slightly raised. The customer wished us to find a high quality picture of a jacket, and with the aid of Photoshop, place the jacket in the hand of the robot, with a message underneath.  Another of the designs was to be a clock, with all the numbers to be “9″, instead of a normal cloock face.  Here are the artwork and t-shirt samples which resulted in some innovative designs for the group’s special night out:

Here is the t-shirt proof which we sent our customer:

And here’s our artwork for the clock t-shirt design:

Here’s what the design looked like on our t-shirt sample:

And so, your designs are only limited by your imagination!  These designs all had to be re-designed by our art department, to produce clean, crisp artwork for our customer’s t-shirts. Why not let us design a shirt for you?  Just provide some artwork and your ideas, and we’ll do the rest, providing you with updates and proofs for your confirmation before printing.