|
| |
I know what design I want -
where do I begin?
(can you help?)
You might fall into one of these categories
-
You have artwork ready to go, in vector
format for us to use (what's a vector format?)
-
You have a design that's perfect from
another shirt or printed somewhere else
-
You've designed something yourself and
send us a sample
-
You have a concept in your mind that you
know will look great on shirts
Here's what you should know about these groups:
Group 1-
You've either had shirts done in the past, or
you've recently had them created. You know what vector means, and that
this is the preferred format for many screen printers, including us. If
you're not familiar with vector format - here's something you might be familiar
with... Have you ever downloaded a simple graphic, such as a .gif or .jpg that
was just too small to really see, and you tried to expand the image only to find
that it got really fuzzy or the edges became these nasty block type graphics
that just looked horrible? Vector graphics is a mathematical plotting of
points in a file, which represent distance.
For example - a red 3" straight line that was 1/4" wide-
raster graphics would put every dot
from end to end on that line. These dots are really small, so there would
be thousands and thousands of these dots or pixels. If you took that
image, and resized it to a 10" line, you'd see everything lose its clarity.
vector graphics would plot only
significant points in this drawing. In this case 4 points. It would
indicate that the pixel color was red. It would also indicate that the initial
starting size would be the 3" by 1/4" wide. When you resized the vector
drawing to 10", it would automatically recalculate that you now had a line, 10"
by 1/4", and would not have to redraw individual dots. Vector graphics are
mathematical representations of points and distances. If the distance
shrinks or grows, vector graphics can handle it!
Screen Printers depend on being able to resize their artwork. If you
supply us an image that's 3 inches square in a vector format, resizing it to fit
on the back of a garment is simple.
Group 2-
You're unhappy with something about your current
supplier, you're shopping for a better price or they simply aren't in business
anymore, or possible one of a hundred other reasons. Maybe a friends shirt
would be perfect for your club or organization! What we ask for in this
instance is one of two things - #1 send us the shirt, or #2 scan the shirt and
email us the scanned image. Its impossible for us to understand what
someone means when they tell us "its a picture of a 25 foot sail boat with all
these neat tropical island imagery around it". We need to see the design
in this case if you want us to reproduce it. We will ask you if the
original artwork is available. Since this was a printed shirt, someone
made the artwork!
What we do when we receive the shirt or file, is review and formulate the amount
of time it will take our artists to either redraw or to recreate the design.
Typically we'll reproduce a simple design for someone in 2-4 days at a low cost.
Group 3 -
This group can be a combination of group 1 and
group 2. If you use some of the popular graphics drawing programs such as Corel
Draw or Illustrator (or others), you have the ability to save your work in a
vector format for us. We can take your artwork and make minor changes to
fit on a t-shirt, and make suggestions. On the other hand, if you have
hand drawn artwork, or a .jpg or other graphics file, we usually must have the
artwork redrawn or recreated.
Group 4 -
We will take your concept and help you refine what
it is you're trying to achieve. Graphics Artists are a special group of
people that can take a simple thought or concept, and turn that into some
incredible t-shirt artwork! Our website has many examples of artwork that
started out only as a thought in someone's mind, and was built up from there.
Graphic Artists services aren't free however, and its our opinion that they
deserve even more at times than they charge. AC Apparel works with artists
in-house as well as some of the best artists in the country to help achieve some
great effects on our shirts.
|
