<p dir="ltr">Local places almost always beat out online printers, esp on-demand services, in terms of both price and quality, even for relatively large orders.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It's a really good idea to ask a couple of qualifying questions when evaluating a screen print shop. </p>
<p dir="ltr">1. Process</p>
<p dir="ltr">If they print a base white layer regardless of whether your design contains white, using excuses like "because it's a dark shirt" run the other way, because they're obviously cutting corners. Those images will crack and fade like crap in no time flat, and the colors will look washed out, even when new. On top of that, they will probably also want to charge you extra setup fees for the "necessary" white screen mask.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Many online shops have digital print processes that automatically and unavoidably print white first, resulting in the same crap quality with absolutely no room for technical negotiation.</p>
<p dir="ltr">A quality screen printing shop knows they can save screens (saving you money, and saving them screen-making overhead) by using more paint instead of more screens. They will print the colors in your design multiple times over to achieve appropriate vibrancy, rather than screw up the quality with a superfluous white layer. This results in a design that ages considerably more slowly and gracefully than the alternative.</p>
<p dir="ltr">2. Graphic design assistance</p>
<p dir="ltr">Of course your rasterized jpeg design is perfect... Except that it isn't. </p>
<p dir="ltr">A crappy shop (or an online shop) will encourage you to send the jpeg, then feed your naive input straight into their crappy process, described above. You will be nonplussed by the result, fast as it may be.</p>
<p dir="ltr">A quality shop knows they have to manually color separate, color *match*, font match/replace and scale your design appropriately for the garments they're printing, and will send you proofs to choose from until you are satisfied. They're going to be entirely reworking that unscalable raster image into several two-tone vector images representing the separate screens. They may or may not charge a fee for this, so if you can do any of that to spec yourself, you might save some $$$. Most of the time, however, it's a good idea to let the professionals at the shop do some work on it, since they know best what their process requires, even if your design has already previously been professionally worked up for screen printing.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Anticipate and allow up to two weeks to complete the proofing process, and expect to be actively involved.</p>
<p dir="ltr">3. Community-focused service</p>
<p dir="ltr">Large/bulk/online/low-quality shops simply don't care about the particulars of your organization, just their bottom line.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Quality shops are populated by creative professionals who realize their customers are their community. They are far more likely to be interested in learning more about your organization than the big/crap shops, and will concern themselves with creative suggestions or changes that actually contextually suit your order.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The best experience I ever had with a screen printing shop was in ordering shirts for the local society of physics students chapter. The shop we got not only reworked and laboriously proofed the design for us even after we'd done lots of that by committee, but they triple printed the bright colors onto quality black shirts for us, and even took the creative initiative to surprise us with glow-in-the-dark and UV-reactive additive to our radiation-themed design!! So awesome! </p>
<p dir="ltr">I hope this info helps!! </p>
<p dir="ltr">-Jamie<br></p>
<p dir="ltr">On Oct 20, 2013 4:01 PM, "William Macfarlane" <<a href="mailto:wmacfarl@gmail.com">wmacfarl@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
> ++on local t-shirt printing -- it's something where, on small-scale, you really aren't going to get better pricing on the internet. The printers are getting better bulk discounts on the t-shirts then you are likely to get from an internet printing service since they're buying lots more.<br>
><br>
> Also the people who run little screen printing businesses tend to be pretty cool and fun to get to know.<br>
><br>
> We screen-print our own, though, mostly. It's easy, and fun, and when someone asks if they can get a t-shirt it's fun to have them print it themselves.<br>
><br>
><br>
> On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 10:35 AM, Joshua Pritt <<a href="mailto:ramgarden@gmail.com">ramgarden@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>><br>
>> We have an artist mall type place in an old mill. There's a t-shirt printing place in there. We were able to save a lot by not paying for shipping since we just walked in and picked them up. <br>
>> It would be worth your time to find a local place.<br>
>><br>
>> On Oct 20, 2013 6:31 AM, "hadez" <<a href="mailto:hadez.hso@nrrd.de">hadez.hso@nrrd.de</a>> wrote:<br>
>>><br>
>>> On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 8:40 AM, john lunger <<a href="mailto:justj1915@yahoo.com">justj1915@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>>> > Anyone know of a cheap place to order t-shirts?<br>
>>><br>
>>> we found a local screen printing company that's actually a rehab<br>
>>> location for recovering drug addicts.<br>
>>> they have competitive prices, good service, high quality and the warm<br>
>>> and fuzzy feeling ;)<br>
>>><br>
>>> regarding the shirts itself we found that going really "cheap" will<br>
>>> leave you with crappy and thin wares that you wash once and throw<br>
>>> away.<br>
>>> but what worked for us is finding a company that just sells plain<br>
>>> clothing at a good price, buy those and have them printed.<br>
>>> you might have something similar where you live, so check it out.<br>
>>> the printing company might be able to recommend a clothing supplier, too.<br>
>>> --<br>
>>> hadez<br>
>>> _______________________________________________<br>
>>> Discuss mailing list<br>
>>> <a href="mailto:Discuss@lists.hackerspaces.org">Discuss@lists.hackerspaces.org</a><br>
>>> <a href="http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss">http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss</a><br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> _______________________________________________<br>
>> Discuss mailing list<br>
>> <a href="mailto:Discuss@lists.hackerspaces.org">Discuss@lists.hackerspaces.org</a><br>
>> <a href="http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss">http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss</a><br>
>><br>
><br>
><br>
><br>
> -- <br>
> -Will<br>
> <a href="http://www.partsandcrafts.org">www.partsandcrafts.org</a><br>
><br>
> _______________________________________________<br>
> Discuss mailing list<br>
> <a href="mailto:Discuss@lists.hackerspaces.org">Discuss@lists.hackerspaces.org</a><br>
> <a href="http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss">http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss</a><br>
><br>
</p>