When designing tea towels there are a few things to keep in mind, as the printing is done using water-based dye and not a traditional ink there are a few limitations along with general printing/artwork prep considerations to keep in mind, such as vector/raster, resolution, print size etc.
Vector or Raster
The image above is actually Raster…. However it will give you an idea.
Vector images are generated in programs like Adobe Illustrator and generally live in .ai, .pdf or .eps filetypes.
Vector images can generally be easily altered and recoloured and a lossless when resized – They are made of a series of ‘vectors’.
Raster images are a little trickier to work with, and generally work best as single colour designs.
Some artwork, such as Scanned drawings will be Raster.
It is especially important if scanning or designing by hand or in a Raster based program, such as Photoshop, that you work in a high resolution at the desired print size. For example 400mm x 600mm @ 300ppi.
If you create a small or low res Raster file and attempt to enlarge it, the resultant image will be pixelated and suffer loss of detail.
Print Area: 400mm x 600mm
When setting up artwork set your art-board to 400mm x 600mm (approx A2).
The proportion of 4×6 is probably the most important consideration, as a square design can sometimes look out of place.
If designing in a raster program ensure you are working at 300ppi or higher.
Our tea towels are a little over 500mm x 700mm, however the max print area is 400mm x 600mm
Line art – thickness
As the print is done using water based dye there are some limits, particularly in lines that are reversed out of solid areas as dye does spread ever so slightly.
As a general rule when reversing out of a solid lines must be 2pt to hold, however when printing (as opposed to reversing) 1pt is a good minimum for a clean finish, however many drawings are often under this, as small as .5pt in some instances.
The image above is going to vary depending on your monitor. This is a very small segment of very complex and large design. However it illustrates line size really well.
The white line below the red on the roof is 2pt, the navy blue is 1pt.
Colours
Tea Towels are best suited to solid spot colours, they can look great even in single colour – they can be printed full colour using a digital process. Tea Towels are dye printed, this is different to plastisol or waterbased ink – It sits in the fabric, meaning they can be used for drying dishes and handling warm items.
We mix inks specifically per job. Using this process there will be variations to specified colours, even in between batches. We used Pantone Solid Coated or uncoated colours as a guide to match to, this is a universal matching system.
By using these colours it means we have a physical swatch to match to, which is consistent to the physical swatches designers and printers have worldwide.
Halftones and Gradients
Dye printing is best with solid colours – Percentages, gradients etc need to be printed using halftone dots to achieve tone. This can result in a good printed result, however the dots need to be quite large to ensure the print stays open. However halftones – especially a single tone across a large area are prone to a patchy or uneven result as some of the areas can bleed a small amount more.
