What does DTG stand for in t-shirt printing?
DTG is a very common acronym in the t-shirt printing industry referring to Direct To Garment printing. Direct To Garment is the same printing method as digital printing and is most commonly used for orders of less than six pieces. The significance of the phrase being "direct to garment" is because it is an emerging technology that eventually wants to be direct competition to screen printing. That is why it markets itself as "direct to garment" because screen printing has quite a few stages in between artwork to print.
Direct To Garment printing does not require the artwork to be printed to film and then burn to a screen to be put on a printing press. You can actually print the designs straight from a computer to a t-shirt with a direct to garment printer. The digital printing method is very quick, easy and clean. However, it does have its downside.
Currently at this stage of direct to garment printing, the ink is not near as strong as it should be. This means that after a couple of washes the colors will start to lose their vibrancy and fade a little. This is a problem that all direct to garment printers face. That is why we encourage those who are utilizing digital printing to use the shirts as a novelty or for a few uses because its durability is weaker than screen printing.
Direct To Garment printing is a great option for needing less than six pieces printed especially when there are a lot of colors involved in the design. It is much better economically and in a lot of cases makes the print possible because screen printing would be much, much more expensive if even possible at all.
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