I create designs of places I’ve traveled to using my photos. I print them for myself and share the designs with friends. I don’t expect a photograph on a T-shirt to look like a print, but I’ve ordered my designs before and I thought I had a good idea of what to expect.
I recently created some new designs. My wife ordered them, some for herself and some as presents. We were disappointed with the quality. A lot more of the background bled through, causing the colors to look faded.
Here is a T-shirt that’s over a year old and has been through the wash many times:
It looks pretty good. The whites are almost solid white. It’s printed on black fabric and relatively little of the black creeps through.
Here’s one of the new designs:
This has never been washed. It is also printed on black, and you can see how much more of the black has bled through.
We have enough older products that we can compare both corresponding products/colors of old and new. The old ones are good; the new ones are not.
I’ll upload one more sample, although I found it difficult to really capture the differences (which are clear in real life):
The top row are my three new designs. The bottom row (left two) are older prints. The strips alternate the original artwork with the photographed design. On the far right, bottom, row, I tried to magnify the different bleed-through in new vs. old—I don’t think I really captured this; it’s better to look at the two captures above.
We know she can get replacements (but what’s the point?) or store credit (same thing). The real problem is that, if this is the quality we can expect, I should probably shut down the store and invest my time elsewhere.
Is there any way to determine if this is “just the way it is” or if the presses were having a bad day or whatever? Could this be due to changes in manufacturing due to Covid?
