FAQs

Screen printing, in a nutshell, is when a stencil/screen is placed on top of a product and a thick layer of ink is squeegeed through the stencil/screen and onto the product. If the design is screen printed on a dark colored product, then a base coat of the design in all white ink is screen printed on the product first. Once the white ink dries, the colors for the design are printed on top of the white ink. Putting down a layer of white ink first, ensures that the colors going on top of the white truly pop and makes your design bright and colorful! We recommend choosing screen printing if your design has less than four colors, if you have a fairly simple design, if you have a large amount of products to print and if you are printing in multiple locations.

DTG AKA Direct To Garment printing, is basically a computer printer for apparel. But instead of your home printer printing ink on paper, we use special apparel ink that is printed on apparel and accessories. The same way you put paper through your printer at home and it comes out the other side with the design printed on the paper, we put your products through our DTG printers and they come out the other side with your customer design, logos and images printed directly onto them! DTG printing is nice because the ink is absorbed directly into the apparel so it doesn’t crack or peel over time. DTG is great because along with the super soft no feel ink, there is also no minimum order! One area where DTG is similar to screen print is darker colors. DTG printing on darker colors does first require a pretreat followed by a base coat of the design in white ink to be printed first. Once the white ink dries, then the product is ready to go into the DTG printer and have the design printed on top of the white ink. Printing the design on top of the white ink base allows the colors to be vibrant, bold and really stand out nicely! We usually recommend DTG printing on white or light colored shirts whenever possible as the extra coat of white ink required for printing on darker colors takes longer and can increase the price quite a bit. We recommend DTG printing if your design has more than four colors, If your design is very complex and/or has lots of small details, if you only have a few products to print or if you are only printing in one or two locations.

Embroidery is when we take vibrant colored threads and stitch them into a garment, accessory or product. Traditional embroidery offers a slightly more professional look than screen printing or DTG, especially when printed on jackets, hats or polo shirts.

Vinyl heat transfers are custom designs that are printed on a Plotter machine that cuts the designs into vinyl. The cut designs are then carefully peeled from the vinyl. Think about how you used to peel the little designs and shapes out of your fruit roll ups roll back in the 90’s and that’s basically what peeling vinyl is. Yep, we have people on our team that literally get paid to peel giant inedible fruit roll ups all day! Once the design is peeled and separated, it is transferred onto a product using heat. Because of the detailed plotting and peeling process, vinyl designs tend to be simple and not so complex designs. A few examples of vinyl designs you may have seen are last names on the back of sports jerseys, numbers on the back of sports jerseys and cute little trendy sayings on shirts sold in your favorite etsy shop. Vinyl designs are great because they do not have a minimum order.

Screen printing pricing is determined by:

1. Type of shirt/product chosen. (Example: Bella Canvas 3001CVC or Gildan UC2000, canvas bag, shorts, etc)
2. Quantity of shirts (Example: 12 shirts, 45 shirts or 5,000 shirts)
3. Color of the shirt. (Example: white t-shirt or black t-shirt)
4. Number of ink colors in the design (Example: 1 ink color or 3 ink colors)
5. Number of print locations (Example: 1 print location, 2 print locations, 5 print locations)

DTG printing pricing is determined by:

1. What shirt style, accessory or product you choose (Bella Canvas 3001CVC or Gildan UC2000, canvas bag, sweatpants, etc).
2. What color shirt you choose (Example: White shirt or black shirt)
3. How many print locations you have. (Example 1 print location, 2 print locations, 5 print locations, etc)

Embroidery pricing is determined by:

1. Type of shirt style, accessory or product you choose (Gildan 8800 or Adidas A130, beanie or flat bill snapback, etc)
2. Quantity of shirts, accessories or products you choose. (Example: 32 pieces, 200 pieces, etc)
3. Color of shirt, accessory or product (Example: White or dark color product)
4. Stitch count and/or logo size (Example: A small logo on the left chest will be more moderately priced than a large design that covers almost the entire back)