What size should I make the t-shirt design?
I’m designing a t-shirt for a theater festival my high school is attending, and I don’t know what size to make the Adobe InDesign document.
What is the standard design area? Any type is okay (picas, inches, etc)
Rule of thumb:
Design to the final size. You are working on a computer, what you see in front of you can be no bigger than the size of your monitor, so you may as well scale the document to whatever final size the image is going to be. You can always zoom in and zoom out. If your tee shirt design is going to be ten inches wide and eight inches tall, then that is the size you want it to be designed in. After that, your only concern is the resolution on your final print.
If it is a vector drawing, then resolution doesn’t even apply.
I have a question. Why are you doing this in InDesign? Is it that you only plan to use the vector drawing tools and text layout functions? If so, then you’ll be fine. Just open up a "New" document that is slightly larger than your final design, just as it will appear on the shirt. Then do your layout.
Or, if you plan to create an illustration in another application and PLACE it in InDesign, then the resolution issue will rear it’s ugly head, but not in InDesign, but in whatever app you use to create the illustration. If so, the create the image IN ITS FINAL SIZE. Pick a resolution of at least 150 pixels per inch. (much higher is kind of wasted on a tee shirt. Pixels that are smaller than that tend to get lost in the fabric’s woven texture) Do the design and convert it to CMYK mode. (just to be safe. I don’t know if it’s a multi colored shirt and if it needs to be screen printed. In any case, it couldn’t hurt) Then, it should be ready to place it into the InDesign Document.
Have fun.
October 26th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Rule of thumb:
Design to the final size. You are working on a computer, what you see in front of you can be no bigger than the size of your monitor, so you may as well scale the document to whatever final size the image is going to be. You can always zoom in and zoom out. If your tee shirt design is going to be ten inches wide and eight inches tall, then that is the size you want it to be designed in. After that, your only concern is the resolution on your final print.
If it is a vector drawing, then resolution doesn’t even apply.
I have a question. Why are you doing this in InDesign? Is it that you only plan to use the vector drawing tools and text layout functions? If so, then you’ll be fine. Just open up a "New" document that is slightly larger than your final design, just as it will appear on the shirt. Then do your layout.
Or, if you plan to create an illustration in another application and PLACE it in InDesign, then the resolution issue will rear it’s ugly head, but not in InDesign, but in whatever app you use to create the illustration. If so, the create the image IN ITS FINAL SIZE. Pick a resolution of at least 150 pixels per inch. (much higher is kind of wasted on a tee shirt. Pixels that are smaller than that tend to get lost in the fabric’s woven texture) Do the design and convert it to CMYK mode. (just to be safe. I don’t know if it’s a multi colored shirt and if it needs to be screen printed. In any case, it couldn’t hurt) Then, it should be ready to place it into the InDesign Document.
Have fun.
References :
Designer, Illustrator and Desktop Publisher for over 30 years