How to Prepare Artwork for Custom Apparel

The most common reason a custom print looks worse than the design did on screen is the file. Not the printer, not the fabric, not the method — the artwork. A logo pulled off a website, a design built at postage-stamp size, text in a font the printer does not have, a photograph with a white box around it: each of these produces a garment that is technically correct and visibly disappointing.

This covers what to send, why, and how to check a file before you hand it over. None of it requires design skills — most of it is knowing what to ask the person who made your logo for.

Vector or raster: the one distinction that matters most

Every image file is one of two kinds, and knowing which you have tells you most of what you need to know.

Vector artwork describes shapes mathematically — this curve, that fill colour, this thickness of line. Because it is instructions rather than pixels, it can be printed at any size, from a cap badge to a stadium banner, with perfectly clean edges. Vector files are AI, EPS, SVG, and PDFs that were saved with the artwork still editable.

Raster artwork is a grid of pixels — JPG, PNG, GIF, most TIFFs, and anything you screenshot. It has a fixed amount of detail. Enlarge it and there is no extra detail to show, so the software invents it, and the result is soft or blocky. A raster file can be excellent, but only at or below the size it was made for.

The practical rule: logos and type should always be vector. Photographs are necessarily raster and that is fine, as long as they are large enough.

If all you have is a raster logo

This is the usual situation, and it is fixable. The best version is to ask whoever designed the logo for the original vector file — they will have it, and it costs nothing. Failing that, a designer can redraw it as vector from a good raster copy, which is a small job for a simple logo.

What does not work is enlarging the raster file and hoping. A 500-pixel-wide logo stretched across a chest will be visibly soft, and no amount of sharpening recovers detail that was never captured. Sending it larger does not help either if it was simply scaled up — the file is bigger, the detail is not.

Resolution: what 300 dpi actually means

For raster artwork the number that matters is how many pixels you have at the size it will be printed. The conventional target is 300 dpi — three hundred pixels for every inch of printed width. A design printed twelve inches across therefore wants roughly 3,600 pixels of width.

This is why a web image disappoints. Images on websites are deliberately small so pages load quickly, often a few hundred pixels wide, which is plenty on a screen and a fraction of what a chest print needs. The file is not low quality; it is the right quality for a different job.

Two caveats. Vector artwork ignores all of this, which is why it is preferred. And for screen printing on a textured fabric slightly less resolution is tolerable than for DTG, because the fabric itself limits fine detail — but that is never a reason to send a small file deliberately.

Colour: what you see is not what prints

Screens emit light; fabric reflects it. No print will ever match a backlit screen exactly, and a design that looks vivid on a phone will look slightly more muted on cloth. That is physics, not a printing fault, and the way to manage it is to specify colours rather than describe them.

The reliable method is to give a Pantone reference for each brand colour. A Pantone number refers to a physical ink standard, so it means the same thing to everyone. “Our blue” does not, and neither does a hex code on its own, because a hex code describes light rather than ink. If your brand has a style guide, the Pantone numbers are in it; if it does not, this is a good reason to establish them.

Two further colour points specific to garments. On a dark garment, screen printing needs a white underbase for light colours to show, which very slightly changes how those colours read — worth knowing before you are surprised by it. And sublimation cannot print white or anything lighter than the fabric at all, which changes how artwork has to be built; that is covered in sublimation printing for sports jerseys.

Text and fonts

Text causes more reprints than any other single element, for a boring reason: fonts live on computers, not in files. If a file references a font the printer does not have installed, their software substitutes another one, and the job prints in the wrong typeface. On a twenty-shirt order that is twenty wrong shirts.

The fix takes one click: convert text to outlines, paths or curves before sending. The text becomes shapes, there is no font to substitute, and it will print exactly as you see it. The trade-off is that it can no longer be edited as text, so keep an editable copy for yourself.

Size is the other text issue. Thin letterforms and small type survive on a smooth cotton tee and disappear on brushed fleece or into embroidery stitches. If the design has small text and it needs to be readable, say so, and we will tell you the smallest size that will actually work on your chosen garment.

Backgrounds and transparency

This one catches almost everyone. A JPG cannot store transparency, so a logo saved as a JPG always has a background — usually white. Printed on a black hoodie, that white background prints too, and the logo arrives sitting in a white rectangle.

What you need is a file with a genuinely transparent background: a PNG saved with transparency, or any vector format. The way to check is to open the file and look at the area around the logo. If it is white, it is white. If it shows a grey chequerboard pattern in your image viewer, that is transparency and you are fine.

A checklist before you send

• Is the logo vector? If not, ask whoever made it for the original file.
• Is raster artwork large enough for the printed size, at its native resolution rather than scaled up?
• Is the background transparent if the garment is not white?
• Is the text converted to outlines?
• Are brand colours specified as Pantone references rather than described?
• Have you stated the printed size you want, in inches or centimetres?
• Have you stated the placement — left chest, centre chest, full back?
• Is the garment colour decided? It changes how the artwork has to be prepared.
• For a team order, is every name spelled exactly as it should print?

That list prevents nearly every artwork problem we see. The last point belongs to the ordering process rather than the design, and it is covered in how a custom team kit is made.

What different methods want from a file

Embroidery is the one that needs an extra step. Vector artwork has to be digitised — converted into a stitch path that tells the machine where to put every stitch. This is a skilled job and not automatic, which is why a complex design costs more to embroider and why very fine detail cannot be reproduced at all. The method comparison is in garment printing methods compared.

Frequently asked questions

What is the single best file to send?

A vector file — AI, EPS, SVG or an editable PDF — with the text converted to outlines and the brand colours noted as Pantone references. That one file works for every method at every size, and it removes most of the ways a job can go wrong.

Can you just enlarge my small logo?

We can enlarge it, but we cannot add detail that was never in the file, so the result will be soft. If the logo is simple we can redraw it as vector, which solves the problem permanently and is worth doing once rather than working around it on every order.

Why does my design look different on the garment than on my screen?

A screen emits light and fabric reflects it, so colours are always slightly more muted on cloth. Dark garments shift it further, because light inks are printed over a white underbase. Specifying Pantone references keeps it predictable; expecting a backlit match does not.

Do I need to remove the background myself?

It helps, but tell us rather than guessing. If you send a JPG with a white background we will ask, because on a white garment it makes no difference and on a black one it is the difference between a logo and a logo in a white box. If you are not sure how to remove it, send what you have and say so.

How small can text be?

It depends on the method and the fabric, which is why there is no single answer. Screen print on smooth cotton holds the finest text, DTG is close behind, brushed fleece loses detail, and embroidery has the highest floor because every letter has to be built from stitches. Send the design at the size you want and we will tell you honestly what will be readable.

Can I send a design made in Canva or on my phone?

Yes, and plenty of good designs are made that way. Export at the largest size the tool offers, as a PNG with a transparent background or a PDF, rather than taking a screenshot. The main limitation is that such exports are usually raster, so decide the printed size before exporting rather than after.

What if I do not have a design at all?

Then tell us what you want rather than sending nothing and waiting. The garment, the colour, the mood, any text, and whether you have a logo are enough to start from. You can also build the garment and fabric in the Custom Lab and work out the design separately.

Will you tell me if my file is not good enough?

Yes, before anything is printed. If a file will produce a soft or disappointing result we would rather say so and ask for a better one than print it and let you discover it when the box arrives. That is a short conversation at the start and an expensive one at the end.

Related: garment printing methods compared and how a custom team kit is made.