Once upon a time, I worked at a print shop that mostly specialized in T-shirts, sweatshirts, etc. I specifically worked on larger orders. If you needed T-shirts printed for your softball team, church group, school function, fundraiser, or whatever, I was happy to help make your vision a reality.
Bear in mind that I have only minimal design expertise. Prospective customers would send me an image of what they’d like on their shirts, and I had enough ability to create a reasonable mock-up of what you’d get based on your specification, but the actual design team would spiff up the files so they would meet the requirements of the printers. Each customer got one free hour of design assistance, and if they wanted more, they could pay for it. It was not expensive, and many customers took advantage of this service so they could get their logos and mascots looking perfect before printing.
However. About once a month, I would get a customer who believed I could divine images out of their brain and put them on a shirt. This interaction was particularly difficult.
Stage #1: The Emails. This email chain more or less took up an entire eight-hour day. To summarize:
Client: “So, we need 150 shirts. They need to be pink for breast cancer and have an owl on them. Can they be done in three weeks?”
Me: “That turnaround time is reasonable, but there are a few things we need first. What color pink do you want? I’ve attached a few examples of our popular pink T-shirts. [Local Women’s Charity] used the first example for their recent breast cancer fundraiser. Also, I will need an image file of the owl you would like to use. We recommend [file type, file size].”
Client: “I have a pink T-shirt at home that we want to match.”
Me: “If you can tell me the brand, I can contact our supplier to order the same T-shirts, if they are available. Unfortunately, we don’t keep a sample of every option in our small warehouse, but I’d be happy to create a custom order for you.”
Client: “I cut the tag out.”
Me: “I’m afraid if we don’t know the brand, you’ll need to choose from the brands offered by our supplier. Which of the samples would work best for you?”
Client: “I need pink.”
Me: “I understand. Please take a look at the attachments I sent you and let me know which pink shirt sample best meets your vision.”
Client: “What about the owl?”
Me: “As soon as I receive your artwork and know which pink shirt you’d like to use, I can create a mock-up of your final design.”
After a day of silence, imagine my surprise when a person walked into our office carrying a faded, stained pink T-shirt and a shower curtain.
The faded, stained pink T-shirt was somewhat understandable, but why the shower curtain? The owl they wanted on the shirt was part of the pattern. They wanted me to photocopy the owl from the shower curtain onto 150 pink shirts, right then, while they waited.
It took two designers, a manager, and the owner of the company to explain that we couldn’t do that. We walked her through the production floor to show her the machines that printed and how a file needed to be uploaded, but she wouldn’t have it. She didn’t understand why we couldn’t just run her shower curtain through the printer and transfer the owl — which was about two inches square — into a full-size chest print, about eight inches square, with a bunch of logos under it.
Now, I don’t expect everyone to appreciate the ins and outs of digital imaging, because I didn’t fully grasp it myself. But this particular person was a manager of a digital radiology clinic, and they were attempting to shove a shower curtain into a DTG printer to transfer the image to a shirt.
Yes, they got their shirts. One of the designers happened to know this person’s partner and reduced their design fees just for them. They hand-drew a replica of the owl, changed it enough to avoid copyright issues, created a lovely PNG file of it, and had it ready to go.
Also, they went with white shirts, after all.
Related:
Not So Pretty In Pink, Part 6
Not So Pretty In Pink, Part 5
Not So Pretty In Pink, Part 4
Not So Pretty In Pink, Part 3
Not So Pretty In Pink, Part 2