The Evolution Of T Shirt Design And Printing

The humble t-shirt has been a fashion staple across the globe since the 1950s, with many different designs, colours, styles and motifs coming in and out of fashion as the decades have gone by. In this article, I look at the history of t-shirt design and printing, right from the mid 20^th century birth of the discipline, up to the present day and the current technology used.

T-shirts themselves had been around for many decades leading up to the 1950s, however, t-shirts being worn as an outerwear fashion statement, either plain or with a decorative design or logo on, was an entirely new proposition in the 1950s. The first company to start decorating and applying designs to t-shirts was a company started by Sam Kantor in Miami, Florida, called ‘Tropix Togs’. This was mainly due to a licence they had acquired to produce Disney designs, such as Mickey Mouse and Davey Crockett. The t-shirt itself as a fashion piece gained a great deal of popular exposure during this period also, with Marlon Brando wearing a classic one in the movie A Streetcar Named Desire and James Dean donning a plain white tee underneath his iconic leather jacket in the cult film Rebel Without A Cause.

It was during this period that the t-shirt started to become more and more widespread as an item of clothing suitable for every conceivable purpose. From companies wanting to get their sales and marketing message across, to music fans wanting to show support for their favourite band, to sports fans wanting a simple way to show their support for their beloved team without buying the expensive kits.

Traditionally, the most common method of putting these designs onto a t-shirt was the ‘screen printing’ method. This is where a screen printing machine puts the design that is required into an outline or stencil. Each ‘screen’ has its own colour and these colours are then pushed through the stencil (using a print press) onto the blank product. This method is still used today, although a number of more up to date methods have also come on stream in recent years, which will be discussed below.

There are also a variety of ‘speciality ink’ methods that have gone in and out of fashion over the years. Even metallic foil has been applied to screen printed t shirts, as this can be stamped onto the ‘plastisol’ based ink that is used in this method of printing. Also, there has been wide experimentation with various t-shirt dyes. Everyone remembers the t-shirts that used to change colour according to body heat that were so popular with young people in the 1980s. This effect was achieved with the aid of ‘thermo-chromatic’ dyes – popular at the time but rarely used (or seen) today. One big problem in regard to these specialist methods was, while they may have seemed great to look at on the rack, often the dyes and appliqués were easily damaged in the wash.

Throughout the 1970’s and more so in the 1980s, t-shirts were used as a way for the average person (and the odd celebrity) to express how they felt about a certain issue. These grew to include specific slogans (‘Frankie says relax’), to ironic or funny comments, to political positions, to a design showing everyone where you had been on your holidays. The latter led to the classic catchphrase ‘been there, done that, got the t shirt’ – which entered the common parlance to describe any experience of note.

This popularity of the t-shirt as a standalone garment led to expansion of t-shirts in the high-end designer fashion market, with Katherine Hamnett being a pioneer of this in the UK. These t-shirts, with their large designer logo prints grew in popularity and soon other big name designers from Europe and the US, such as Calvin Klein, The Gap and Yves Saint Laurent, got in on the act.

In recent years the t-shirt has moved with the trends towards a demand for more detailed and bespoke designs, and as a result a number of other printing methods have become popular. In particular Direct To Garment printing (or DTG for short). In this process, inks blend together to create subtle, high quality designs that would not be suited or would just not work in the screen-printing process. Imagine a larger, much more powerful version of the inkjet printer that sits on your desk at home or at work, and you will have some idea of the technology at work.

One of the most recent exponents of the DTG technique are a company called Got The T Shirt, an online t-shirt retailer based in the UK. This company sells t shirts online and to order, from the huge selection on their website. Particular favourites are the funny t shirts section and the slogan t shirts section.

These days, even the most intricate and detailed design is easily printed onto a t-shirt or other garment with DTG technology – a far cry from the transfers and screen prints of years gone by.

I hope you have enjoyed this short article. It was aimed to give you just a brief glimpse into how the ubiquitous t-shirt has evolved over the years and what processes have brought that about. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch.