Have you ever wondered how we produce all of the orders that come through our site? In this post, we want to share the various types of decoration methods we offer and how they benefit you! Read below to find out more.
1. Printing: Printing ink with a direct-to-garment digital printer
This is the method we use for almost all of our apparel. It involves state-of-the-art digital printers printing high-quality ink directly onto your item. This process offers several advantages over screen printers, including:
- A full range of colors at no extra cost. Screen printers print only one color at a time, so each additional color is an extra cost for you.
- No minimums and no setup fees. Our printing process is the same whether we are printing 1 item or 1,000. Screen printers, however, have a lot of up-front costs in setting up the screens, so they charge for it and require minimums.
2. Film or Foil: Using an ultra-thin, precision-cut, heat-pressed “film” material
This is a great method to create a durable design on unique items. For example, it’s not possible to create custom, no-minimum designs using ink on items like duffel bags and mesh jerseys. We use film instead, and it works nicely.
Items decorated in film offer a wide range of specialty options including metallic, glitter, neon, and glow-in-the-dark.
Because we cut this material before heat pressing, we must avoid complex shapes. Items using this method cannot be distressed or use distressed fonts. Also, certain pieces of art from our library are too intricate for film. (These pieces of art are not selectable when designing a film-only item.)
Three or four layers of film overlapping each other can create quite an undesirable look and feel on your item. To avoid this, we limit the design center to one text style and one piece of art for film-only items.
Uploaded images are not available for film items.
3. Sublimation: Applying ink using sublimation
We use sublimation on our hard-good accessories such as custom mugs and shot glasses as well as some garments. It involves printing ink onto a very special transfer material and then applying that print to the item in a fancy heat press.
Sublimation results in very vibrant colors. You will usually notice that pinks and reds are brighter on mugs than other items.
White is not available with this process. If the item is white (like most of them are) that will be transparent and show up as the item’s color. However, if the item is metallic pink, the white will be transparent and show up the metallic pink of the item.
