Use Your Customer’s Clip Art in Our T-Shirt Designer
Sep/110
Below is a recent testimonial from a customer that knows the value of our Custom Clip Art program at Transfer Express.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU
I am not sure that I can express my appreciation to you and the delight that I felt when I went to your website today and saw that I could not only SEE my CCA but that I could put them into Easy Print layouts to view. You guys are AMAZING! This will help my sales tremendously and make my life so much easier. Again, THANK YOU!
Ingrid
From Indiana
What is the Custom Clip Art program?
If your customer has a logo or clip art that they would like to reuse in our customizeable layouts, we can archive it for you. Imagine your customer’s logo or clip art in place of all our eagle clip art or others shown in the Easy Prints® layouts. This gives you the power to offer your customer lots of options. Your archived Custom Clip Arts are viewable online and can be used in our online T-Shirt designer to create a truly custom T-shirt design in seconds.
How to order a Custom Clip Art?
Place an Easy Prints Plus order that includes the artwork you would like to archive. Request what speicific art that you need to be archived. For a flat one time fee of $15, we will assign that logo or clip art a unique number just for you. Once the plus order is complete your Custom Clip Art will appear online and be ready to use!
Got custom art that you need custom transfers for?
Click here to send us the art to get your quote or order started.
Put your custom logo in our layouts
Tips for Screen Printing Custom Artwork: Tip 5 – Color Placement
Aug/110
When creating custom artwork for screen printed transfers, color placement is important. The screen printing process uses spot colors. You can use spot colors when creating art, but it is not required. However, you should use consistent colors in your file.
Here are some guidelines for color placement in your custom art:
- It doesn’t matter if you use a spot color, a CMYK value, or an RGB value as long as it is the same throughout. So if you use CMYK values, use CMYK throughout your whole file.
- Use the same color to represent each color in your design. For example, if you have a blue area, use the same blue for all those blue areas.
- If it helps to add a background color to match the apparel color, go ahead and try that. This helps if you are using a white ink as one of your colors and want to distinguish the ink from the background or show-thru areas.
All CMYK colors were used in this artwork with a gold background used for apparel representation only.
Colors appear differently on different computer monitors. If you would like a more accurate idea of how your colors will look when printed, use one of our Color Selectors that are part of our marketing kit or available separately.
A good spot color palette to use in Adobe Illustrator® and CorelDraw® is the “Pantone® solid coated” palette that comes with the software.
Tips for Screen Printing Custom Artwork: Tip 4 – Detail Guidelines
Aug/110
Many questions arise when it comes to custom artwork for screen printed transfers and the amount of detail that is able to be printed. The guidelines are different than that of other printed materials such as our digital Cad-Printz™ transfers or other process printed jobs like brochures, business cards or flyers. The biggest difference for screen printed transfers is line thickness and show-thru thickness.
Line Thickness
Line thickness varies depending on which type of ink you would like your transfers printed with:
- Our recommended line thickness for Hot Split, Goof Proof®, Polytrans and Elasti Prints® is .012″ thick for printed areas.
- Our recommended line thickness for Reflective and Glitter is .025″ thick for printed areas.
- Our recommended line thickness for non-Puff colors is .012″ thick for printed areas (This may need increased if printed next to a Puff color. Be aware that Puff ink will increase the printed line thickness. A line that is .023″ will puff up to become .05″ in the applied transfer.)
To test the line thickness in your artwork files, try doing the following:
1. Create a line in your file and make it a different color than your artwork.
2. Set the thickness of the line to .012″.
3. Now move the line around, setting it over top of any artwork that may have thin areas of color. All of your artwork should be at least as thick as that line whether it be text, outlines or objects.
4. Delete the line when you have finished checking your file.
Any portion of artwork that is less than the recommended thickness is not guaranteed to be printed.
Make sure your line thickness meets the minimum requirements for the ink formula you choose.
Show-thru Thickness
Show-thru areas are any area in your design that has no ink but is surrounded by ink. These areas need to be as thick as the following guidelines:
- Our recommended show-thru thickness for all screen printed ink formulas is .04″ thick for show-thru areas except for Puff.
- Puff show-thru thickness should be .1″ thick.
To test the show-thru thickness in your artwork files, try doing the following:
1. Create a line in your file and make it a different color than your artwork.
2. Set the thickness of the line to .045″.
3. Now move the line around, setting it over top of any small non-printing areas. All non-printing reas need to be open at least as wide as that line.
4. Delete the line when you have finished checking your file.
Show-thru thickness is important so the artwork will not close up once it is printed and applied to the garment. This applies to any non-printing area including the open spaces within text.
Make sure your show-thru thickness meets the minimum requirements for the ink formula you choose.
Following these guidelines will help you with the amount of detail you can have in your screen printed designs.
Tips for Screen Printing Custom Artwork: Tip 3 – Converting Text to Curves
Aug/110
One of the questions we recommended in Tip 2 that you ask your customers when they provide artwork was to ask about the fonts and to make sure they were converted to curves/outlines. We will cover that in more detail this week since it is probably the most important aspect when sending in custom artwork for screen printing.
Text in artwork needs to be “converted to curves”. This means that once the text is converted, it is no longer text. It becomes a shape or in other words, a piece of art. The benefit of this is that no matter which computer the file is being viewed on, it will appear the same. It is no longer dependent on having the font installed on each computer. This ensures that your artwork looks the same on our computer as it did on yours and the computer your customer created it on.
To convert to curves in CorelDraw®:
- Select your text
- Click the ‘Arrange’ menu
- Choose ‘Convert to Curves’
The 'Convert to Curves' option is located under the 'Arrange' menu in CorelDraw
Make sure you do this for all text that is in the file.
To convert to curves (create outlines) in Adobe Illustrator®:
- Select your text
- Click the ‘Type’ menu
- Choose ‘Create Outlines’
The 'Create Outlines' option is located under the 'Type' menu in Illustrator
Again, make sure you do this for all text that is in the file.
Making sure that your text is converted to curves is extremely important. Watch our video tutorials on converting text to curves and then also reducing the node count afterwards.
Tips for Screen Printing Custom Artwork: Tip 2 – Top Questions to Ask Your Customers
Jul/110
A lot of times your own customers provide the art that they would like made into shirts or other apparel. When this occurs, here are some important questions to ask them about the artwork that will help speed up the process and also help to save you money.
Resolution
If the customer gives you a digital file with the artwork, ask them first where the artwork came from. In asking them this question, you will get a better idea of what other questions you may need to ask. If the answer is from the internet, that should give you a red flag right away. Internet graphics are low resolution made for monitor viewing. Printed materials need to be high resolution at full size.
File Type
If they said they created the art themselves, ask which application they used to create it. The best answer would be CorelDraw® or Adobe Illustrator®. This would let you know that the artwork is most likely vector. If they did create the artwork, ask for the native (original) file that they worked in if they did not provide you with it already. We frequently see rasterized images of artwork that were originally created as vector, but were supplied as a flattened bitmap. We then have to rework to get it back to vector. For reference only, ask for a low resolution .jpg to ensure that all fonts did not default – which brings us to the next question.
Fonts
If there is text in the design, ask your customer to supply you with the font names. In case the type does default, having the font names greatly speeds up the process to reset it. Better yet, ask them if the text is converted to curves or outlines. This ensures that the type will not default and the art will be usable.
By asking these few simple questions, you are saving yourself and our designers lots of time which will ensure to keep our processes as speedy as possible to keep orders on schedule.
Example of provided artwork by your customer turned into a screen printed transfer
Tips for Screen Printing Custom Artwork: Tip 1 – Software to Create Artwork
Jul/110
Transfer Express’ collection of clip art and layouts is very extensive and continues to grow each year. That being said, you don’t have to be an artist to order our designs. Simply customize and order our Easy Prints® layouts. However, we are seeing an increase in the amount of uploaded art to our web site for custom orders – Easy Prints® Plus. In this new series of blogs, we will give you the Top 5 Tips for Screen Printing Custom Artwork to help make your experience the best possible for submitting custom artwork to us.
The first tip this week starts at the beginning. It deals with software for creating and/or editing custom artwork. There are many programs you may use to do this, however, there are really two main programs we would suggest using – CorelDraw® or Adobe Illustrator®. These programs are great in the graphic arts industry including art for screen printing.
Create custom artwork for screen printing in CorelDraw (left) or Illustrator (right).
The Graphic Software
CorelDraw and Illustrator are programs that professionals use. However, you can learn them just as easily. Both of the creators of these programs allow you to download a free 30 day trial. This gives you a free opportunity to play with the programs and get your feet wet. Test out each program to see which one you may prefer. Spending a few minutes in the program everyday will allow you to get accustomed to it and by the end of the 30 day trial, you may have decided that yes, this is something you can do and would like to purchase.
Resources
While learning the programs, there are many resources online for free to help you if you get stuck on a particular problem. Search the internet or YouTube, and there are many videos and tutorials to view for almost any situation in either of these two programs.
Great info at:
AdvancedArtist.com
Sending Us Your Creations
Did you make something you need transfers of? Uploading artwork to our web site is very easy. On the upper navigation tabs, click on the “Send Us Your Artwork” tab. Upon signing in, click on the “Upload File” button. From there, simply fill out the information in the form and browse for your saved artwork file on your computer. And voila, it’s that easy! Once your art is reviewed we will call you to discuss your quote or order.
Get screen printed plastisol and digital transfers made from you artwork
Now go get your free 30 day trial and experiment! Who knows, you may have some skills you never knew you had…
Important Links:
CorelDRAW X5 Information
Converting Text to Curves When Sending Your Own Artwork
Jun/110
When you create a design using text, the text is live. In other words, the appearance of your text can change depending on the computer it is being viewed on. This is because you have certain fonts installed on your computer while others may not have those particular fonts. For example, if you use the font Arial in your design and you send it to someone without Arial, it will default to another font and may look completely different than your original design.
The text in the design to the right defaulted to another font without the original font installed.
To prevent this from happening, when you are finished with your artwork, convert your text to curves. The text then becomes vector art. It is no longer text so you will not be able to edit it like you would text. Therefore, you may want to save your converted text as a new file such as “name_curves.cdr” so you can go back, if needed, to your original text and edit it.
Converting your text is very simple. Here is how:
- In CorelDraw, select your text, and in the “Arrange” menu, choose “Convert to Curves”.
- In Adobe Illustrator, select your text, and in the “Type” menu, choose “Create Outlines”.
- In Adobe Photoshop, select your text layer, and in the “Layer” menu, choose “Rasterize” and then “Type”.
Your text will no longer be editable as text. However, since it is no longer text, you don’t have to worry about the appearance changing from computer to computer. It is like any other piece of art.
In this example, the text is live and can be edited with the Type Tool.
In this example, the text is now converted to curves and is outlined by nodes (or points).
By doing this one easy step, you can save yourself time and know that your artwork will appear the same on our computers as it did on yours when it comes to text.
Vector vs Raster Art: Which is Best for Transfers?
Jun/110
Vector vs Raster Art:
There are basically two different types of art – vector and raster (bitmap/jpg). Both are useful depending on your end use.
Raster art is made up of tiny boxes known as pixels. An example of a raster image is a digital photograph. Typically, rasterized files end with file extensions such as .jpg, .tif, .bmp, .gif, and .png. One of the most common mistakes made with raster art has to do with scaling (sizing) a rasterized image larger. Since raster art is resolution dependent, you can scale smaller, but you shouldn’t scale larger. This is because there are only so many pixels in the image. Raster images are measured by their dpi (dots per [linear] inch). A crisp, high resolution image will be around 300 pixels per inch. When scaling larger, the same amount of pixels remain, but over a larger area. Therefore, if you scale a high resolution (300 dpi) photo twice the size, you now only have 150 pixels per inch, which is half the resolution previously. When scaling larger, the pixels per inch decreases, which in turn makes the resolution decrease. This creates the distorted and pixilated look.
When zoomed in on raster artwork, you can see the pixels that create the image.
Vector art, on the other hand, is not resolution dependent. You can scale it larger or smaller and it will still look the same. Vector art can be used on a golf ball or the same art can be used on a billboard and either one will look clear. This type of art uses mathematical formulas to create the artwork. There are no pixels involved. Instead, it uses points and curves to create shapes. This type of artwork is created in applications such as CorelDraw and Adobe Illustrator, which can have file extensions such as .cdr, .ai, and .eps.
When zoomed in on vector artwork, lines and curves are smooth.
How does this all fit in to our transfers?
Rasterized artwork is fine for our CAD-PRINTZ™ digital transfers as long as it is high resolution at full size (300 dpi or higher). Also for our digital transfers, vector artwork is perfectly acceptable as well.
If you are interested in our screen printed transfers, the printing process differs some. In this case, you can send us raster artwork, however, it will only be used as a guide from which the artwork will be recreated. Vector art is preferred for screen printing.
Artwork Upload Area – New & Improved!
Feb/100
Transfer Express has refreshed and improved our file upload area of our web site to make it easier for you to get real-time statuses and images of your uploaded artwork.
What’s New!
Benefits for our Dealers:
• Faster review of your artwork
• Real-time statuses and updates of your uploaded artwork
• Thumbnails of artwork that you upload
• Upload progress bar for large files
• “My Uploads” area added to TransferExpress.com
Changes to be aware of:
• Our file upload area now requires a login
Dealers – Just login with the Dealer ID and password that you already use on TransferExpress.com
Potential Dealers – You must register to use our new upload area
• When? This is scheduled to go live on Thursday Feb. 18th, 2010
How to Become a Dealer – All you need is a Heat Press!
CorelDraw® Artwork Tip – Powerclip
Apr/090
Have you ever wondered how artwork is created where shape or images are inside type? This is a feature in CorelDraw® called Powerclipping.
Here are the basic steps.
- Select the objects to insert into other text/object.
- Select the EFFECTS menu then choose POWERCLIP.
- You will then get an arrow – Point to the object the objects you want to insert them.
- To edit right click on the text and choose “edit contents”
Below is a video that shows how to put the shapes in and edit them. This type of art with shape inside text works great for screen printed transfers.
