anyone know anything about t-shirt designing?

[jog on]

I've recently found a small niche for making t-shirts and believe with the right marketing, it could be a nice little earner. Well, potentially anyway.

It is making t-shirts. Does anyone know what is involved in making t-shirts. I would like to make them myself but at the end of the day it is about price and quality. However, I would like the flexibility of making my own.

I hear you need a graphic designer... I am poor with graphics and I want quite high quality designs.

Also, where would you get blank t-shirts of a reasonable fabric which I could print onto myself or get printed onto by others.

I would like to make the t-shirts for no more than £5 per unit - about $10. However, I would prefer to deal with a UK company due to shipping costs.

Does anyone have any advice or any experience in making t-shirts? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

[tekmoney]

Advice: If you're looking to save on cost, design your shirts with less colors. When you screen print, each additional color requires a screen set up and will increase the price of each shirt.

I am not familiar with home-made printing, but I can only assume its not even close to the quality or durability of getting it done a professional shop.

Go to any print shop and they will ususally have a selection of distributors for a variety of blank shirts to start with. Shop around, but usually there is a minimum order for each kind of print that you do.

[4-Knots]

Yeah the thing to remember is that your best of ordering a limited number of designs in large quantities. Also I find t-shirts with funny slogans always do well.

[jog on]

cool. so would you say going to a print screen shop is best? what is that likely to cost?

[tekmoney]

I think its the best option. The cost depends on the shop's rules.

Usually there is like a 20 shirt mimimum order. Depending on your number of colors and quality of your shirt, they can run anywhere from $5 per shirt to $10 per shirt.

[jog on]

cool. thats pretty cheap.

and what program is best for designing graphics? or is there people who can do that?

[goodwood]

cool. so would you say going to a print screen shop is best? what is that likely to cost?

It all depends like 'tecmoney' said. I have paid $3.50+printing and then I have paid $15.50+printing. It depends on what quality you want and to be honest I have had about 40% of the people say they like the fell of the 3.50 ones better.

goodwood.

[bjgomer13]

It depends on the number of designs and colors you want to sell. For instance, I live in Dallas, tx and during the NBA playoffs (where the Dallas Mavericks made it to the championship) I had some t-shirts made up with one design and color (it was a design that didn't infringe on any sort of licensing) and I made them myselves with a screen press that I bought off ebay for $125, some paint (about $12), and an actual screen with my design ($20). Since I only did one design and color, I didn't need muliple screens and my cost per shirt was only $1.75...I charged $15 for each one and made a killing. It would have been a lot harder to do myself though if there were more colors or designs.

[jog on]

goodwood - is it possible that you could tell me where you got the 3.50 ones from?

bjgomer - do you think i would be able to have a short chat with you on msn perhaps about how you done them? i am making something very similar.