All Over Screen Printing Templates

Designing artwork for all over printing takes a little more preparation than standard size screen printing and as such, we have laid out our all over print art requirements to best prepare you for all over printing success.  A successful all over t-shirt printing project will require some planning in advance.  If you follow our All Over T-Printing Guidelines and use our All Over Screen Printing Templates, you will ensure a successful project.

Most importantly, the artwork should be designed to fit and appear correct and natural on each size shirt despite the artwork being printed at one size.  This is done so that your design can achieve all over coverage on each shirt regardless of size.  Of course, preparing the artwork to fit a wide range of sizes will require pre-planning as available printing area differs greatly between smalls and the extra large sizes.

Our recommendation is to make sure that the most important elements of the design fit properly, in size and placement, on the smallest shirt in your order.  The remainder of the design should be capable of covering the largest shirt in your order with an additional 2 inches of overprint wherever the artwork is to bleed off the shirts.

So, clearly, you will need to properly plan your artwork according to the size range of your order, but to do so means you must know the dimensions of each size garment.  With our all over T shirt templates, covering sizes Small to XXL, you can have a true-to-size reference when designing your artwork.  Our templates represent garments from several of the leading brands so you can get as an accurate reference as possible.  Additionally, the templates are formatted to show exactly how the shirts are printed on the press to assist you in your design layout.

We have several templates to approximate the dimensions of different garment styles and they are all available in Illustrator format.  Our templates show cuts and fits for several types of garments including:

• Standard T shirts
• Fashion tees
• Various women’s style tees

As a reminder, not every cut and style of T shirt will be a perfect match for our templates, but we find that our templates are sufficient for most tees in today’s wholesale market.  If you are unable to find a template for your garment’s specific brand or cut, feel free to contact us for assistance.  We can advise you on which All Over Screen Printing Templates you can use to best accommodate your shirt style.

Maximum Printing Dimensions for All Over Printing

Our maximum print size for All Over Printing is 34” wide by 46” tall and our maximum shirt size goes all the way up to 3XL.

Remember the Overprint for areas that will bleed off the shirt!

When developing your artwork for all over printing, be sure to include overprint that extends past the edges of largest shirt in your order for any areas of the graphic that bleed off the garment.  Because manufacturers allow for a small degree of variation in the dimensions of their garments before being rejected, we ask that you plan for this inconsistency by including overprint in your artwork.  This way you can guarantee full coverage to the edge on your largest shirts despite any deviations in measurements.

Can Women’s garments using the same setup?

It is possible, but it is challenging and will require a fair bit of preparation.  The best way to approach this is by laying a women’s style template over a men’s style template and follow the artwork requirements for all over printing above.  The difficulty arises in trying to make sure that all of the elements of your design that are important look and fit properly on both the smallest and the largest garments in your project.  Depending on the gap in sizes in your order, it may not be possible to do and you may need to create two separate sizes for your artwork.

Can the Illustrator templates be used in Photoshop?

Yes, but take note that Photoshop is a raster based program.  This means you must ensure that your artwork resolution and the template resolution are matching.

How to use Illustrator templates in Photoshop:

1. Open up your artwork and select the option ‘Image > Image Size’ from the top menu. Note the image resolution (DPI) because it is needed when opening the template.
2. Right-click on the template file (.ai) to bring up the ‘Open with…’ option and select Photoshop.
3. When you attempt open the template in Photoshop, it will try to convert your vector file into a raster file.  A box will appear that contains the image resolution settings and this is where you will input the DPI setting that you recorded from your artwork earlier.
4. The All Over Screen Printing Templates will be flattened on their own layer. You can now create a new layer where you can paste your artwork.
5. Now you will be able to alter the different components of your design to make sure that the overprint will cover the largest shirts in your order while all of the most important elements still fit properly on the smallest shirts.

How to use templates in Illustrator:

1. Open the All Over Screen Printing Templates in Illustrator first
2. Lock all of the layers of the template and create a new layer on top of the locked layers
3. Paste your artwork into the new layer you just made.  Be sure not to paste your artwork into the template layers; your artwork should always be in its own layer.

Remember: Our templates display the shirt in the position in which it gets printed.

Instead of sleeves at your sides, our templates have the sleeves in a T shape, parallel to the bottom hem of the shirt.  The reason for this is because this shows the actual position of the shirts when they go to print.  Be sure to keep that in mind when designing elements of your artwork that are meant for the sleeves.  If part of your design is meant to run down the sleeve, you must orient that element perpendicular to the ground so that it will appear correctly when worn.

Other Pertinent Information Regarding All Over Printing

• If you are attempting to change large areas of your shirts to a different color, you may experience areas that appear misprinted due to minor creasing or folding of the fabric.  Although we make every effort to flatten your garments to the best of our ability, sometimes little folds are unavoidable.  To best deal with this, it is advisable to apply distressing to the graphic in those large areas of color to minimize the appearance of small imperfections.

• While ‘Wrap’ prints can go “all over” a shirt, they are not considered equal.  Wrap prints require extra care and are rather complex to produce.  Generally, wrap prints are printed onto the fabric prior to the garment’s assembly. We are capable of doing wrap prints, however it is best to speak with us ahead of time so we can discuss what to expect and what to avoid when planning your artwork.

Templates for All Over Screen Printing

Below you will find a list of the templates that we offer and the comparable styles in several popular brands.  If you have never used these templates before, you can follow our Artwork Requirements for All Over Screen Printing guide above to learn how to use them.

In order to use our templates you will need to UNZIP them from their .ZIP archive.  If you don’t have compression and/or un-compression software on your computer, we recommend the following:

For Windows Users
For Mac Users

Standard Cut Template: Measured from Gildan (2000) shirts.  Can also be used for most Hanes and other standard cut or promotional tees.

All Over Fashion Template: Measured from American Apparel (2001) shirts. Works well for most fashion brands including, JS Apparel (Basic Tee), ePacific Sportswear (1310), Tultex (0202), Next Level Apparel (3600), Alternative and most other fashion garment cuts.

Cygnus Template: Measured from Cygnus Sportswear (1000) shirts. Also works well for Cygnus Sportswear (7000). This shirt has a slightly longer body than the standard cut template above and should be used if Cygnus is your shirt brand of choice.

Alstyle 1301 Template: Measured from Altstyle (1301) shirts. This template should be used if you are choosing the Alstyle (1301) shirt as it has a unique cut at the shoulders and is different from most other brands.

Gildan 64000 Men’s Fashion Template: Measured directly from Adult Gildan (64000) shirts.

Gildan 64000L Women’s Fashion Template: Measured directly from the Women’s Gildan (64000L) shirts.

Tultex 0213 Juniors Template: Measured from Tultex (0213) shirts.  This template also works well for the LAT Juniors cut shirt (3616).

Tultex 0214 Junior V Neck Template: Measured from Tultex (0214) V Neck shirts.  This template also works well for the LAT Juniors V-Neck (3607).

Still have more questions?

As you can see, planning for all over printing can be a little tricky and this guide is not meant to address every issue that may arise.  This guide was developed to best assist you in planning your artwork for all over printing success.  Should you have a question or concern that isn’t addressed here, please feel free to reach out to us.  You can reach us by email or by giving us a call at (908) 806-8337.

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