How to get your t-shirt designs printed
We recently received this email:
I see some dope custom design shirts on your site but now I want to know where do they make those? Because I have some custom design myself and trying to find a site but everytime the company say no we can’t do that so I hope you can give me a link to the site that make’s/prints those shirts u advertising for ?
Since Teenormous is just a search engine, printing t-shirts is not really our specialty. However, here is a brief summary of your options:
1) Print them yourself. Most of the merchants we feature that design their own tees print the tees themselves. However, if you have no background here that could be a tough learning curve and involve startup costs.
2) Find a (local) screen printer to do the work. This is a good option if you can make the price work. Screen printers are typically more expensive than do it yourself or PODs below but the quality is usually great.
3) Use a Print On Demand (POD) site. Many upcoming artists start out with POD sites such as: http://redbubble.com, http://zazzle.com or http://cafepress.com. They are very fast to setup and great if you are just starting out. However, most experienced designers graduate to another method of printing to control the quality and costs a bit more.
4) Create an online storefront. Sites like http://www.storenvy.com/ or http://bigcartel.com/ can give you an easy way to sell your tees. StoreEnvy also does screen printing but you need to have them printed already with Big Cartel (they just supply the site/store).
5) Enter a design competition. If all else fails you can try submitting your design to one of the popular tee design contest sites like:
Good luck! Once you get your dope t-shirts printed, let us know so we can list them on Teenormous and send you some buyers!
Gareth on July 8th, 2010
If the original emailer is in the UK, we always get our tees printed with Tshirtonline.com. They’ve always been really good, nice prices too. If they’re in the US – well, I can’t help!