A logo gets signed off in a review, everyone agrees it looks sharp, and the files go into the brand folder. Six months later, the client sends a photo of a navy polo. The tagline that sat so neatly under the wordmark has closed up into a solid bar of stitching, and nobody can read a word of it. Production did nothing wrong. The artwork was never built to be stitched.
Garment decoration is a design constraint, not a step that happens after the design work is finished. Screen printing, DTG, DTF, heat transfer vinyl, dye sublimation, and embroidery each interpret artwork in their own way, and the same mark can honestly need three separate versions depending on whether it is being screened, stitched, or cut in vinyl. What follows covers two things: how each method treats a logo, and what changes once the garment stops being a cotton tee and becomes workwear.
Six processes account for almost all garment decoration a designer is likely to meet. Anyone quoting for custom t-shirt printing will be weighing them up on cost and quantity, but the design question is a different one. What does each process do to the artwork?
Table of Contents
1. Screen Printing
AdobeStock/Odua Images
Screen printing works in spot colours, with one screen burned for every colour in the design. On a cotton tee it still produces the best solid colour of any method, and the opacity on dark garments is hard to beat. The trade-off is that each additional colour means another screen, another pass and another chance for something to shift.
That shift is registration. Every colour has to land in exactly the right place relative to the last one, and a screen that moves by a fraction of a millimetre leaves a visible white gap along an edge. Printers manage this with trapping, which means deliberately overlapping adjacent colours slightly so a small movement disappears into the overlap rather than opening a hole. Trapping works well on chunky shapes. It works badly on hairline outlines and small reversed-out type, which is exactly where most logos put their finest detail.
Gradients are handled with halftones, a pattern of dots that coarsens as the ink deposit gets heavier. Anything subtle in a gradient tends not to survive.
There is also an ink decision worth understanding. Plastisol sits on top of the fibres and cures with heat, giving strong opacity and a slightly raised feel. Water-based ink soaks into the fibres and feels softer, though it is less opaque on dark garments. According to plastisol troubleshooting guidance published by Lawson Screen and Digital Products, standard plastisol cures at around 320°F, which matters a great deal later on when the garment is polyester.
Design constraint: cut the mark down to the fewest spot colours it can survive on, and set a minimum stroke weight for any knocked-out type. This is one of the arguments for designing in black and white first, since a mark that already works in one colour has most of the screen printing problem solved before anyone quotes for it.
2. Direct to Garment (DTG)
AdobeStock/Viktor
DTG is inkjet printing straight onto fabric with water-based inks. Because there is no per-colour setup, photographic artwork and complex multi-colour marks cost no more to print than a single-colour one, which makes it a sensible choice for short runs and detailed logos.
On dark garments, the process needs a white underbase laid down first, and this is where brand colours start to drift. The mismatch is not caused by the underbase alone. It comes from the combination of the inkjet gamut, the underbase beneath the colour and the way the fabric absorbs ink. Some Pantone references sit comfortably inside what the printer can reproduce, and some do not, and no amount of profiling will fix a colour the machine cannot physically mix.
Fine light detail on a dark garment also blooms. A thin white line printed over a white underbase spreads very slightly at the edges, so 0.5pt rules and small serifs come out softer and fatter than the file suggests. The effect is subtle on a proof and obvious on a full run.
Fabric matters too. Smooth ring-spun cotton holds detail well, while a textured or heavily brushed surface breaks it up.
Design Constraint: check how the brand colour behaves over an underbase on the actual garment before signing off, and assume fine light-on-dark detail will gain weight.
3. Direct to Film (DTF)
AdobeStock/Athena
DTF prints the design onto a film, dusts it with adhesive powder, cures it and heat presses it onto the garment. Because the adhesive does the bonding rather than the fabric, it works on cotton, polyester and blends with equally sharp results. That flexibility is why it has taken so much of the small-run workwear market, where one order might cover tees, polos and softshells in a single delivery.
The thing to understand as a designer is that the print is a film sitting on the surface of the cloth rather than ink in it. On small marks this is barely noticeable. On a large solid back print it reads as a patch, with a visible edge and a different sheen from the fabric around it.
Isolated small elements are the other weak point. Anything that stands alone with no surrounding film to anchor it has more exposed edge, and exposed edges are where lifting starts after repeated washing. A logo with a scatter of tiny separate dots or dashes will usually last longer if those elements are consolidated or thickened slightly.
Design Constraint: avoid a design made of many isolated fragments, and consider how a large solid area will read as a physical patch.
4. Heat Transfer Vinyl (HTV)
AdobeStock/Andrey Popov
HTV uses coloured vinyl that is cut to shape, weeded by hand and pressed onto the garment. Nothing else gives edges this clean on a solid single-colour shape, and for individual names and squad numbers it remains the practical choice.
Every part of the design has to be physically cut and then physically pulled away from the backing, which sets a hard floor on detail. Gradients are impossible. Photographic content is impossible. Hairlines below what the blade can hold reliably will tear during weeding, and small counters inside letters have to be picked out one by one.
This is where a delicate serif logo dies. Fine bracketed serifs, thin stroke contrast and small enclosed shapes are the first casualties, and the honest answer is not better weeding but a redrawn version with heavier strokes. It is the same discipline behind testing a logo at its minimum size during the design stage, applied to a blade rather than a screen.
Design Constraint: nothing thinner than the cutter can hold, and no tiny counters.
5. Dye Sublimation
AdobeStock/Itsanan
Sublimation turns solid dye into a gas that bonds into polyester fibres. There is no ink layer at all, so the print has zero hand-feel and cannot crack or peel, and there is no limit on colour count or gradient complexity.
The limitations are strict rather than subtle. It only works on polyester, and it only works on light garments, because the process adds colour and cannot lay down white. Anything white in the design is simply the shirt showing through.
Colour needs proofing on the actual fabric. The base tone and the weave of the polyester both shift the result, and a screen proof will not warn you. It is worth noting that Pantone’s textile systems are built around exactly this problem. The Fashion, Home + Interiors range separates cotton references, carrying the TCX suffix, from the paper-printed TPG references, because the same colour number genuinely looks different on cloth than it does on paper. There is a separate polyester swatch set for the same reason.
Design Constraint: proof brand colours on the garment fabric, and never rely on a paper or screen match.
6. Embroidery
Adobestock/Evgen
Embroidery is where designers get caught out most, so it earns the most space here. It is also the method clients ask for by name, since custom embroidery on uniforms and workwear still reads as the more considered option next to a printed tee.
Artwork cannot be sent to a machine as it stands. It has to be digitised, which means a technician rebuilds it as stitch paths, choosing stitch types, directions, densities and underlay. That is a re-interpretation of the logo rather than a reproduction of it, and two digitisers given the same file will produce two slightly different results.
Small text closes up. Thin lines cannot be stitched below a workable minimum width, and while finer 60-weight thread and a smaller needle push that floor down a little, they do not remove it. Gradients in the printed sense are not available, and blended effects have to be faked with stitch direction and interleaved colours. Stitch count drives the price, so a complex mark costs more on every single garment rather than once at setup.
Colour is an approximation too. Thread comes from manufacturer ranges, and those ranges are finite where Pantone is not. Madeira UK states plainly that while its core ranges are officially matched to Pantone references, other matches are a guide only and exact colour matches cannot be guaranteed, with samples recommended before a full order. There is a further wrinkle worth knowing. Thread-to-Pantone references are calibrated under cool white fluorescent light at around 4100K, so a match approved in one lighting condition can read differently under daylight or LED.
Design Constraint: build a simplified embroidery variant of the mark during the identity project, while there is time to make considered decisions, rather than in a rush six months later when the polos have already been ordered.
What Changes When the Garment is Workwear
Workwear adds a layer of constraints that a cotton tee does not have. Some of them are legal, some are practical, and all of them can force a logo to be smaller, simpler, or somewhere other than where the client imagined.
High-Visibility Garments
High-visibility garments are certified on the basis of how much conspicuous material they carry. Under EN ISO 20471, the class is set by minimum areas of fluorescent background fabric and retroreflective tape. Manufacturer and distributor guidance summarising the standard, including ProGARM’s breakdown of the classes, puts Class 1 at 0.14m² of background material and 0.10m² of retroreflective material, Class 2 at 0.50m² and 0.13m², and Class 3 at 0.80m² and 0.20m².
Two details make this a design problem rather than a purchasing one. First, those areas are measured on the smallest size in the range with all fasteners set to their smallest configuration, so a logo that is harmless on an XL can pull a small down a class. Second, retroreflective bands only count towards the certified area if they are at least 50mm wide, so anything printed across a band eats into the measured quantity.
The British Safety Industry Federation’s guidance for distributors and launderers makes the point directly, which is that logo size is critical on EN ISO 20471 garments precisely because the standard specifies minimum visible areas. In practice, this pushes logos onto the chest panel or into the gap between bands, and often smaller than a client expects. A simplified version that stays legible at reduced size is genuinely useful here.
Flame-Retardant and PPE-Rated Garments
Certified FR garments are tested as complete items, and adding decoration is an alteration to a tested product. Standard transfers and some inks can undermine the certification, so decoration generally has to use approved methods with approved thread or ink.
Specialist FR threads exist for exactly this. Madeira’s Polyneon FR is documented as compliant with EN ISO 11611, EN ISO 14116 and EN ISO 11612 D and E, which covers molten aluminium and molten iron splash. The design consequence is straightforward. Working within a restricted set of approved materials usually means the client’s logo needs to exist as a clean single-colour version, which is easier to supply if monochrome variants were part of the original identity work rather than something drawn up under time pressure.
Polyester and Poly-Cotton Dye Migration
Disperse dyes in polyester start to turn to gas at temperatures below the ones used to cure plastisol ink, and the released dye moves up into the printed layer. Lawson’s plastisol guidance describes the classic case, which is a white print on a red polyester shirt cured at 320°F, gradually turning pink. The awkward part is the timing. The same guidance notes that migration may not become visible for 24 to 48 hours, so the garments can look perfect when they leave the print shop.
Printers manage it with low-bleed inks, blocker underbases and lower cure temperatures. For the designer it is a colour decision, because it directly affects which brand colours are safe on which garment colours.
Industrial Laundering
Workwear is often laundered commercially rather than at home, and the gap is significant. Industrial washing is assessed to ISO 15797 at temperatures above 75°C, against ISO 6330 domestic washing at 40°C. Decoration that lasts years on a personal tee can degrade quickly under that regime.
Embroidery and sublimation hold up best, since one is mechanically fixed into the cloth and the other is chemically bonded into the fibre. That durability is a practical argument for keeping a simple stitchable variant in the brand toolkit rather than treating embroidery as an occasional exception. A set of logo and brand guidelines that names which version goes to which decorator saves a lot of back and forth once garments are being reordered by someone in procurement rather than by the designer.
Softshells, Fleeces and Waterproof Shells
Embroidery perforates fabric, which is a real consideration on a garment with a waterproof membrane, and technical shells often carry heat limits that restrict press temperatures. Between the two, logos on these garments tend to end up smaller and simpler than the same logo on a tee.
How to Choose the Best Printing Method for T-Shirts
Five inputs settle most of these decisions: quantity, garment fabric, colour count, level of detail and washing conditions.
- If the run is large and the artwork is a handful of flat spot colours on cotton, screen printing is usually the most economical and the most robust.
- If the artwork is photographic or carries fine gradients and the order is small, DTG handles the complexity without setup costs stacking up per colour.
- If a single order spans cotton, polyester and blends, DTF gives the most consistent result across all of them without switching process.
If the design is solid single-colour shapes, or the job is individual names and numbers, HTV is difficult to beat on edge quality and turnaround.
If the garment is light polyester sportswear, sublimation gives permanent full-colour reproduction with nothing sitting on the surface.
If the garments face frequent commercial laundering, embroidery is the safest bet on durability, provided a stitch-friendly version of the mark exists.
Where two answers seem equally valid, the wash cycle is usually the tie-breaker, because it is the constraint that shows up last and costs most to get wrong.
Conclusion
A logo looks its best in the file it was drawn in. The real test comes when a process has to interpret it, whether that means separating it into spot colours, cutting it out of vinyl or rebuilding it as stitch paths. The best printing method is the one that suits the garment, the quantity and the wash cycle, and the best logo is one built to survive all three.
That is an argument for treating garment reproduction as a versatility test during the identity project rather than a problem to solve after the fact. A mark that has already been proved at small size, in one colour and in stitch form gives everyone downstream something workable, and it means nobody has to redraw a tagline in a hurry the week the polos are due.
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Sources
- ProGARM, EN ISO 20471 standard explained (class minimum areas, measurement on smallest size) — https://progarm.com/en-standards/en-iso-20471/
- British Safety Industry Federation, Guidance for Distributors and Launderers — https://www.bsif.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Guidance-for-distributors-and-launderies.pdf
- ISO, ISO 20471 standard record — https://www.iso.org/standard/42816.html
- Pantone, Textile Colour Systems (TCX and TPG) — https://www.pantone.com/color-systems/for-textiles
- Madeira UK, Pantone Colour Conversion — https://www.madeira.co.uk/pantone-conversion/
- Madeira, Technical Speciality Threads (Polyneon FR) — https://www.madeira.com/embroidery-solutions/embroidery-supplies/industrial-embroidery-threads/technical-threads/technical-speciality-threads
- Lawson Screen and Digital Products, Plastisol Ink Troubleshooting Guide — https://lawsonsp.com/blogs/plastisol-ink-support-articles/plastisol-ink-troubleshooting-guide