ARTWORK
Artwork is a very important step. Without good, clean artwork your design will not look right. If it is sent in a low resolution it will look “saw-toothed” or edgy. All artwork should be sent at the correct size and at a resolution of no less than 200 dpi. We work with Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop and Corel Draw. Other art programs will work too but these are the most common. By sending art as an Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw file, you are guaranteed the finest details. We highly recommend either of these art programs. A common mistake made by our customers is sending artwork from a website. Generally, artwork from a website is very low resolution. When it is enlarged it looks terrible. We can change it to a higher resolution but it will just look like bad art at a higher resolution. If you don’t know what you’ve got and you’ve got more questions than answers, you may need some help. Here are some FAQ’s regarding artwork.

I don't know how to make my design 200 dpi and/or I don’t know how to size it.
You probably need a professional artist or at least someone who knows his way around a good art program. SG Shirts can provide art services for $25.00 per half hour. For most basic designs you will need no more than one hour of art ($50.00). SG Shirts has provided a site that consists of free artwork templates. We will be happy to substitute your name in any of the designs at no cost to you. Otherwise we recommend sending a paper copy of your art. If you choose to do this, it must be solid black and have clean lines. If it looks "sketchy" it will have to be cleaned up or completely re-drawn. We can scan images up to 8.5 x 11. Your image should be as large as possible. We can scan some business cards but prefer not to as they require large amounts of art time to clean them up. If you have a logo you wish to use contact your regular print jobber who did your business cards. He will have a copy of your logo on a disk or logo sheet.

I have a photograph I would like to use in my design. What can I expect?
We can add a photograph of a person, place or thing into your design. It can be in black and white, sepia tones or full color. It all depends on what you would like and what your budget is. Since this is a bit more complicated we require more from you in the way of artwork. Call us and we will go over your design. These designs tend to have their own unique needs we can't address every possible scenario but here are a few things to consider. When we do photographs you will incur film charges. These will be quoted according to the size of the film. Full color prints are called “four color process”. This is where your colored image is made up of four basic colors, cyan, magenta, yellow and black. If you use a magnifying glass and look at a full color picture in a magazine you will see small dots in these four colors. This is the same with t-shirts. You can get a great full color image in your design relatively cheap if you have an order of at least 25 dozen but it has some limitations:

Cost of film will run about $200.00 on the average.
You can only print on white or light colored shirts. The inks are transparent and printing on pastel shirts will add a "tint" to the image. For instance, a light yellow tee will add a yellow tint to the image. We can add a white under printer at an additional cost to help compensate for this but it may still have a tint to it.

You cannot match any specific color using this method. If you have a Pantone color to match it will have to be on a separate screen and film. These are called "spot colors".
Certain colors cannot be reproduced because they are "out of gamut". These are colors outside of the inks color range such as fluorescent inks. These will also have to be printed as a spot color.

Don't expect the print to look as crisp and colorful as a photo in a magazine. They are printing on paper and we are printing on a t-shirt. The t-shirt is a rough and fuzzy substrate when viewed through a magnifying glass. It has peaks and valleys that a tiny dot of ink can bridge or get lost in. We can get a very acceptable print but don't expect it to be like in a magazine.
If all this sounds complicated and expensive and you don't need 25 dozen shirts then you may want a simple black and white or sepia tone image. This can be done inexpensively on our minimum orde