DTG vs Screen Printing
Here is how you should use each:
DTG (Direct to Garment) is a printing process that sort of looks like an inkjet printer, that spits out the design on a t-shirt instead of a peace of paper. It is good for many things. One thing that is great is you don’t need to print a huge batch of shirts to make it cost effective. Since the machine is connected to a computer, you just press print and it slaps the design on the shirt. There is no big set up cost like in screen printing. Another thing that is great, and depends on the specific machine, is that you do not always need to vectorize your design for printing. When screen printing, most of the time you need to convert your artwork to vector format and separate the colors in order to get a good looking print (you may also separate the colors in a photoshop file, if it is large enough you will not lose edge quality). See this post on Illustrator VS Photoshop — You need to use them both, but differently for more info on design stuff.
DTG has some downsides as well. It is very tough to print light colors on dark fabrics. In order to get light colored ink to show up vibrant on dark fabrics it need to go on relatively thick. DTG struggles with this, so it is mostly only used for dark ink on light fabrics. Another downside is that many times you do not get a price break for a higher quantity of shirts. The process is great for small batches since it avoids screen printing setup costs, but you get no upside in printing more. Each shirts still has to run through the printer one at a time.
SCREEN PRINTING is the ultimate way to decorate a t-shirt when longevity is the goal. A screen printed t shirt will outlast a DTG shirt by years. Expect your DTG design to fade. The time it takes can vary, but under regular wear I wouldn’t expect ti to look too hot after 10+ washes. Of course this depends on the DTG machine and other factors, but in general.
**WHAT YOU CAN DO**
Since DTG is such a simple process, I would bet your shop would print you a sample, on a junk shirt they have laying around, for free or for very cheap. You can take this shirt and wash it a couple times to test it out. Another interesting tactic to get your quantity up if you want to go the screen printing route is to offer your shirts on a pre-sale. If you hit a certain number that is cost effective, you can do the screen printing route instead. Also, if you plan on running this design again, you can ask the ship to hold onto your screens and your setup cost should be less the next time around. Definitely look into sourcing you own blank apparel.
Hope some of this helps! Let me know!
Illustrator lessons for creating vector designs here ->
Ben
