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Hi, I'm Ray Dombroski, founder of TheVectorLab. In this video I will show you how to set up
a tee shirt design to be sent out to a Screen Printer.
Here I've got what's called a Cad, Matrix, or Spec Sheet. This is a template that that
shows the ink colors, tee shirt fabric colors, and graphic sizing and placement. At the end
of this video, I'll tell you how to download this Spec Sheet for free.
If you use a template like this, it will increase the likelihood that your design will come
back from the screen printer without any mistakes.
First, open the template in Adobe Illustrator. Copy and paste in your design and place it
proportionately on the t-shirt drawing on the left. It can be vector art or a pixel-based
Photoshop graphic.
Change the t-shirt to the color you want.
The column to the right is where you call out the ink colors. I'm designing a black,
white, and light blue shirt in this example. So under the window tab I open up the Pantone
Solid Coated palette to pick my colors. Using a Pantone number is much more accurate than
calling out a color by name, such as turquoise or bright yellow.
This graphic uses 3 ink colors, so make sure you call out the colors in the same sequence
for all color ways so the screen printer will know what colors to use for each screen.
Last but not least, off to the left is a full-size drawing of a size large t-shirt, front and
back. Size and place your art here to show the screen printer the exact placement of
your art.
Once you have determined the size of your art, print it out at 100% scale. Place it
on a real t-shirt to make sure that you like the sizing. Often, a graphic will look correctly
sized on your screen, but once you print it out on paper you will want to adjust it.
I have a spec sheet with a vector line t-shirt cad available as a free download for my email
newsletter subscribers if you follow the link below. The spec sheet also includes more detailed
instructions if you missed anything in the video
I also have a premium t-shirt spec sheet with a photo-real t-shirt cad that comes as a free
bonus if you order T-SHIRT TEMPLATES OR T-SHIRT TEMPLATES MASTER COLLECTION. These are T-Shirt
Mockup Templates that you can use to make your t-shirt designs look real. Click on the
links below this video to find out more.