While searching into t-shirt briefs I downloaded a project pack for the 'threadless t-shirt' competition and they had a lot of interesting and useful information included in it, which I thought would be good to save.

Guide to specialty inks, heat

applications, gradients/simulated

process, embroidery & belt printing

Specialty Inks

Super Glow

Super glow is what it sounds like… glow-in-the-dark

ink, on steroids. It is very transparent and looks

"water-color-ish". Super glow is really cool on light

color shirts because it has a tonal clear effect that

glows. It's great if you want to play around with the

idea of hidden messages or design elements. Keep in

mind that it's not 100% transparent, so elements in

super glow will show up slightly even when not

glowing.

Puff

Puff is a rounded, raised ink that's best when used

with organic shapes and lines. Hard edges and angles

are often softened or lost when printed with puff. It

can hold some detail, however the finer the detail or

smaller the line, the less it "puffs". Puff isn't effective

for large fill areas due to its heaviness, and the area

won't appear as puffed.

High Density

High density ink raised, square stack ink. It's much

better than puff for elements that have hard edges or

angles. Similar to puff, areas of fine detail or with

elements that come to a point don't translate well. It's

also not recommended for fill areas, as the center of

the fill tends to "sink". Essentially, high density ink

would be used if you don't want the "rounded, raised"

look of puff, but wanted a "squared, raised" look. High

density ink also can be printed in "clear", which

produces a darkened, tonal effect on a tee. Pretty

neat stuff!

Suede

Suede ink isn't actually suede, but a raised ink with a

fuzzy nap reminiscent of suede leather. It's pretty

fun to play with texture and raised design elements

as it softens geometric shapes. There needs to be a

certain thickness (1/8" - 1/4" at least) to any line work

so the nap is visible - otherwise it looks like puff. Not

good with really large fills or super fine detail.

UV Color Change

To begin with, UV Color Change ink doesn't work on

dark tees at all. If you're still interested in using it…

read on! With this ink, colors disappear indoors but

appear when exposed to any ultraviolet light. The

colors achieved are bright but tend to lack vividness

of regular inks due to their translucent nature. Color

remains true on light colored tees such as white,

cream or silver. The ink will appear on other light

shirt colors, but is unpredictable. In other words, the

shirt color affects the color of the ink.

Shimmer

Shimmer is basically sparkly, metallic ink. It's

available in silver, bronze, black and gold. We've

previously experimented with special formulas for a

pinkish-red shimmer and a bluish-aqua shimmer, but

the results ended up looking like grayed-out,

non-sparkly versions of the color. It does not hold

super-fine detail well and starts to look flat grey in

areas of finer detail.

Metallic Clear

This ink is really cool when printed on top of any ink

color. It can be printed on its own also and produces a

darkened tonal effect with sparkles on some shirt

colors.

Glitter

Glitter ink has a fairly dense concentration of tiny

glitter flakes. It's available in a range of basic "crayon

colors". We don't recommend it for tiny details. When

it's printed over another ink, or directly onto a tee,

the underlying color can slightly show through the

glitter.

Blister

Think puff with dimples. This is super cool, especially

when it's "stacked up" for some great sculptured

texture. You want to have a decent fill area or line

thickness to allow ink to texture up. Keep in mind

that it does tend to get heavy on a shirt, so large fill

areas could end up being uncomfortable to wear..

Heat Applications

We can now use heat applications with a variety of

inks which means a lot more flexibility with

mixed-media. For example, we can print orange and

pink; then print metallic clear over the pink, and foil

anywhere you want! In the past, we couldn't really

use foil comprehensively in a design that

incorporated something like metallic clear. Who says

dreams don't come true?

Flock

Flock is a fuzzy, slightly "felty" looking material. It

isn't terribly flexible, so if there's a ton on the tee, it

could be a little uncomfortable until it's worn in a bit.

Flock is really cool when used to give a little added

texture to your design.

Vinyl

Vinyl is exactly what you think… shiny and plastic,

like the numbers on the back of a team jersey. Vinyl

comes in a good range of "crayon colors".

Foils

Foil is shiny and soft and has a slightly mirror-ish

appearance. It's available in silver, gold, bronze, red,

blue, green, black, purple, iridescent clear, iridescent

silver, luminescent silver, metallic rainbow (bands are

fixed width), patterned silver and patterned gold. The

metallic foil "pattern" appears like a super zoomed-in

shot of a reflector.

Gradients and

Simulated Process

Gradients and gradient blends tend to print with a

banding effect similar to how it appears in an

Illustrator file. Even if you transfer the file to

Photoshop, gradients create a troublesome issue to

overcome, so it's best to create nice smooth gradients

in Photoshop. Gradients can be achieved by using

half-tones as well. The lightest halftone that can be

printed is about 10%. Sometimes we can accept less

than a 10% half-tone, but it really depends on the

individual artwork. If need be, we can simulate

"process" (CMYK) to achieve very fine gradients or

images with high tonal quality such as stylized

photography or photo-realistic elements.

Belt Printing

Belt printing was really popular back in the 70's and

has been making a comeback lately. A belt printer

uses huge screens that cover the entire front and

back of the garment. It's great for all-over pattern

printing, but can be used in many other creative ways.

Belt printing works best on designs with a limited

color palette that don't require tight registration. One

thing to keep in mind when designing for a belt

printed tee is that the colors used in your design

should never touch each other because registration is

never exact. For this reason, one-color designs are

recommended. Also, the same design will vary

slightly from shirt to shirt when belt printing is used,

due to the shirt size and how it's placed on the printer.

These characteristics give each individual belt

printed shirt a unique look.