I thought it was a good time to take another look at our printing techniques – with a little help from our test lab. So today we will tackle the age-old question asked by many of our first-time customers: What are the differences between the printing techniques? Which technique do I use to get the results I want?

As supporters of flex and flock, we certainly stand behind our plot printing because it offers the best durability in the battle of Shirt vs. Machine (not to mention that it looks bang-on). The downside of this technique is that not everything is always doable on a t-shirt with three colours. That’s where digital printing comes into play, and specifically our Digital Direct printing technique.

But, before we take a look at the test lab’s results, here is some information about our experiment:

• We chose flex to represent all plot printing techniques. Nothing against flock, writable flex or special flex, but plot printing’s durability is consistent across the board. We could definitely do a test of just plot printing techniques if you are interested.
• We take our science seriously and as in all controlled experiments one should keep the variables to a minimum. Therefore we used one design for all three printing techniques. Of course, this one-coloured design does not highlight the colourful advantages of digital printing, but here we really wanted to look closely at durability.
• We should also mention that Digital Transfer normally has a slim white border around the design. This border is not visible here as it was possible here to cut the foil close enough to the design, thus eliminating the border.

For an even more detailed overview of our printing techniques, check out this great FAQ article. What hopefully comes across here is the difference between plot, Digital Direct and Digital Transfer, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of each technique: continue reading ‘Printing Techniques Experiment - Test Lab #3′

While some of you might have started learning German to understand our original Design Service video, we went and got a voice over for it. Michael from Design Service and Klaus from our Test Lab give us a glimpse at things behind the scenes. We show what happens from the point when your design is submitted to its plotting and weeding.

Michael first introduces us to the two most common reasons for the rejection of a vector graphic and how he checks to see if your designs meet our requirements for vector graphics. Then we head down to the Test Lab in production where Klaus plot designs with lines that are too thin and curves which are not closed just to see what happens! The results are eye-opening and they certainly convinced me that the strict vector design requirements are there for a very good reason.

Demand for organic Shirts is on the rise. That’s what our numbers say. And we are glad they say so – organic cotton is a good thing! No pesticides are used, they are good for the soil. But the question is: can they compete with regular shirts? Or will they shrink beyond recognition? That’s what we asked our colleagues over at the test lab.

continue reading ‘Testlab#2 - Do organic shirts shrink more than regular shirts?’

8 Pounds. That´s the price difference between our least expensive t-shirt - the “B&C Comfort T” - and our premium shirt from American Apparel.

8 Pounds for what? For the US-based hipster brand putting half-nacked women´s backs and hairy men´s chests on the back of shiny magazines? Well, to a certain extent. For AA paying its production workers relatively high wages? Yep, that, too.

But at the end of the day it´s the difference in quality (fabric and cut) that causes the difference in the prices. At least that´s what we were told

In order to find out how good the AA shirts actually are, we went to our Spreadshirt Testlab for the very first time. Markus, a guy from production, took a bunch of black AA tees, washed time up to 20 times and checked how the lengths of the shirts, the lengths of the sleeves, the chest and the waist widths developed.

It´s a nice side-effect of the shrinking test, that one can also see how the color and the fabric change by time.

continue reading ‘Spreadshirt Testlab #01: The American Apparel shrinking test’