Hello folks! I’m very new to graphic design, but I’ve volunteered to help a local school with ideas for booster club merchandise. I’m very interested in using the standard “high schoolish” letting shown here. In your opinion(s) what is the most user friendly program/platform to type in a word or phrase, and have it mass produced? I’ve went on a few print on demand sites, but I haven’t been able to find this particular font, used a lot for high school and college teams. I’ve played around with Photoshop, but I think it’s too complex for what I’m trying to do. Any ideas? Thanks to anyone who reads this, and responds too help me out!!
Anyone? Really need some guidance or tips on this. Happy Thanksgiving btw!
Needs to be done in vector software like illustrator.
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Font looks like Collegeblock
https://fontmeme.com/fonts/college-block-2-0-font/
This is very basic design/lettering.
Use illustarator/inkscape or other vector software.
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Not bad looking, but not earth-shattering either.
“BRUINS” could use a little more space from the line below.
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For Bruins, search for “collegiate” fonts.
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Thanks Smurf! Just downloaded Inkscape. Going through some tutorials now. Have never tried using Vector but hopefully I can catch on quickly.
The type of imagery on your example shirt uses two ink colors: light blue and white. Each color must be laid down separately via screen printing or a similar process to obtain acceptable results. This would require building the artwork in a vector application capable of working in spot colors (probably Pantone spot colors).
Inkscape only works in the RGB color space. The last I checked, it does not support spot colors. If you sent an RGB file to a printer that works with t-shirts or sweatshirts, they would need to rebuild your file to conform to their printing process requirements, which would cost money, assuming they would even be willing to do it.
If RGB is your only alternative, some companies print on clothing using an inkjet process that converts the RGB to a CMYK+ color space, enabling them to spray dyes or paint onto the fabric. Unfortunately, the results will be less durable, and printing on dark-colored fabric will present problems since dyes are transparent.
Honestly, I think you’re in just a bit over your head. There’s more to this than simply coming up with an image you like. Instead, the artwork must be prepared in ways that conform to the printing process used and the substrate on which the art will print.
If this were my project, I would first select a printer/vendor to find out exactly how they wanted the artwork prepared to achieve the best results using their printing processes. You might want to do some online research on this whole subject to get a better handle on what you’ll need to do and how to do it.
Rather than Inkscape, you really need to use a vector application that supports spot color. I would probably use Adobe Illustrator, but Affinity Designer might work better for you (and is less expensive and just as capable).
I don’t think you need “spot color” per se…
Just name the two colors in the Swatch palette (if Inkscape has a swatch palette)
or put them on two separate layers.
Any competent silk screener can figure that out.
Your problem is going to be finding a silk screener that takes files in Inkscape. Good luck. If Inkscape makes PDFs you might be able to hand off. Just tell em where it came from.
Yes, Inkscape has swatches, but RGB swatches will produce screened CMYK separations instead of solid shapes. A good printer will catch the problem and make adjustments — possibly in Illustrator, but they’ll need to guess on matching the color since there will be no Pantone formula to match the ink.
However, I assume (perhaps incorrectly) that the OP will use an online printer that prints on fabric. The ones I’ve used recently have set prices for properly prepared artwork and a rising scale of additional fees for prepress fixes.
The OP mentioned “mass-produced,” so I’m also assuming screen printing will be the best printing technique to ensure image durability and an acceptable cost per unit.
As for printers accepting Inkscape files, the output is SVG — not something proprietary to Inkscape.
I worked as a screen printer in the late 1990s and we always had to adjust any artwork sent to us as nobody really knows how to setup artwork for screen printing. Let alone different print shops have different techinques/equipment.
I know these days print shops and their prepress just wash their hands of fixing artwork (well a lot do). While it’s actually their job to make it work, a lot have been made into ‘Mac Monkeys’ with no clue.
So, you might get lucky, and find someone that likes their job. Or you might find someone that operates as GIGO printshop (garbage in garbage out) with no respect for customers or their reputation.
In saying all that, talk to a print shop that is going to produce this. Or if it’s an online print on demand you’re probably going to be shit out of luck cos it’s likely going to be a nightmare.
Then again you might get lucky.
Illustrator is cheap for a months ‘rental’ it has a learning curve (just like inkscape).
Affinity is a one off purchase roughly same price as a months rental of Illustrator.
I just looked up Spot Colours in Inkscape and came across this thread
https://alpha.inkscape.org/vectors/www.inkscapeforum.com/viewtopic6c8b.html?t=34855
For the record - spot colours are not CMYK.
SVG only supports RGB (not spot colours)
And so many people in that thread haven’t a blues clues what they’re talking about.
Honestly, this job is a couple of hours work for a competent designer, if that.
If you’re really stuck it would be far better to just pay someone to create it properly.
Or you can hope for the best and see what comes out the back of arse of a print production and hope it’s ok.
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I guess I been doing this too long. We don’t do standard, push the button seps on silkscreen work.
If you put the colors in swatches, once it’s in Illustrator, it’s a simple matter of telling them to be Spot.
Like Smurf mentioned, we have to often do a lot of fixing, but we usually only do max 4 colors on one board (wellll, we do more, cha ching.) It’s no big deal to do this. And we don’t do T-shirts. LOL! Usually custom one-offs, believe it or not.
Other things that need fixing are creating outlined text, expanding effects, changing strokes to outline path (and checking fills if the art is sent with the paths already outlined,) and checking art overlaps (like the dreaded white boxes covering crap the designer doesn’t want to print.) Trapping can be a thing too, but we rarely need to do it.
Just all part of the job.
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If I lived in your part of the country, your shop would be at the top of my list.
During the summer between my junior and senior years of college, I worked at a shop specializing in fabricating museum and tradeshow exhibits. My job was as an assistant screen printer, which boiled down to burning and washing the screens but only rarely pulling the squeegees.
Around ten years ago, I was hired to design some of Utah’s specialty automobile license plates, which featured illustrations of fish and elk. The company that won the state contract to screen print the plate artwork didn’t seem to know what they were doing. They didn’t know how to knock out overlapping shapes or what traps and chokes were. I ended up supplying them with separate EPS files (they insisted on EPS and didn’t want to deal with layers in single files) with the knockouts, chokes, traps, and overprints already built in.
More recently, more of my freelance clients have wanted to handle making the printing arrangements themselves (to save a little money, supposedly) — usually through online gang printers or print-on-demand companies. I found that I need to assume the printers in these situations will just load the job into the hopper and hit the print button, so I make sure the artwork is as idiot-proof as possible.
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I’ve used a few print on demand shops.
Most of the stuff is direct printed.
The gymnastics start when there is a white base ink on a dark shirt.
White ink is whole different animal. We usually ask for it as an applied Spot color not used elsewhere in the doc, something horrific like hot pink , on a layer labeled “Hot Pink=White.” We’ll deal with the traps.
Not many designers can wrap their heads around the white ink thing. We do a lot of it on weird things like wooden wall panels, and always have to triple check that the correct things are underspotted. Often sections get missed, or worse, a silhouetted photo has to get a shape created but it got left as the designer didn’t know, or know how, to deal with it.
Eh, that’s the part of the job I like. 
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