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Surrounded by hundreds of t-shirts' logos, images and designs daily, you probably feel overwhelmed with all the information their owners decide to put on public display. But it is certain that you also have at least one branded, colored or personally designed t-shirt in your closet's space, which was made by your college friends as a graduation present, given to you as a welcome-home gift, or distributed by your hiking club as a symbol of encouragement to continue climbing higher each time. Don't you think is about time you create a family T-shirt to offer it as a present to everyone in your family next time you see them? Even if you have trouble coming up with a theme, looking into family albums or thinking of shared experiences might do the trick.

From the famous Andy Warhol images to personal slogans, our favorite t-shirt has gone through many different design and style variations. Throughout this transition from one style to the next, the concept of the T-shirt and the T-shirt printing process has remained the same. As technology brought buyers and suppliers closer together, T-shirt printing is now available on the Internet by companies which design, produce and sell their customized T-shirt layout patterns in a preset or negotiable price range. In fact, companies that offer promotional items include in their catalogues samples of screen printing projects, embroidery design, airbrush, appliqu*, and ironing, while most of them provide free quotes depending on the quantities needed and the complex of the design selected to be printed. However, for the mass production of personalized T-shirts the process of silk screening is mostly used.

The two main methods of printing colors on a T-shirt surface are spot colors and four-color process. Spot colors are individual colors that are printed separately. With hundreds of pre-mixed colors and an infinite number of colors that can be mixed together according to the specifications given by the graphic designing program, the customer receives the original design without visible variations. Four-color process physically blends the main four colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) on the textile to create a large variety of colors. Simply referred to as CMYK it is used to simulate photographic work and sophisticated graphics with shading and textural effects. Thus, depending on the complexity of the design selected to be imprinted on the T-shirt, the graphic designer will create transparent acetate films of each color and will print them in black. Each color is then exposed onto a fine mesh screen that has been coated with photosensitive emulsion -these screens were originally made from silk, thus the term silkscreen- and through the high-intensity lightbox the image is copied onto the T-shirt.

Although this probably sounds too technical, this is not a time to get discouraged. Step-by-step online guides, apart from the experts at your local T-shirt printing facility, can guide you through the process of selecting and designing from scratch your family's T-shirt image, slogan or even logo. It is evident that through the different procedures of T-shirt printing ordering your personalized T-shirt can be an easy process as 1-2-3.