Progress

Well it's been awhile since i've posted last, but thats good news since i've been so busy designing shirts and talking to a local screen printer.  I've spent the last two weeks designing shirts in Adobe Illustrator and converting old shirt designs into vector, since that's what the screen printer requires.  

We've also managed to find some very pretty girls to model our shirts, so in the next two weeks we'll be printing some shirts out for them and schedule a photo shoot.  These pictures we'll be used for advertisements and front page pictures.

Next weekend I'm going to travel to San Antonio to talk to a web designer/graphic designer to start designing the website.  Not only will he be making the website but he's been an animator for ten years and is going to help with designing shirts.  Which will take some pressure off of me and will allow me to allocate more time to other aspects of getting the site up and running.

Whats the best software to design t shirts?

I'm currently a student at Texas A&M so i have access to Adobe Photoshop CS3 as well as Adobe Illustrator CS3.  These are my tools of the trade, and honestly you cant go wrong with them.  They are pretty pricey but don't forget if your a student... get the student discount.  If you can't even afford it well that's ok too.  Go to Adobe's website and download the 30 day trials.  

Another program i've heard nothing but good things about is CorelDraw.  I can't speak much on it since i've never used it, but its supposedly one of the best pieces of software for designing shirts.  Hopefully we can get some comments from people who do use it.  

Any program you choose, you want it to produce vector images.  In this case CorelDraw or Adobe Illustrator.  If you don't know, vector images allow you to resize images or text to any size without losing resolution.  

RECAP

1 Find a way a to a good program and learn it, there are thousands of tutorials online 

What's better heat press or silk screening

Using a Heat Press and using a Silk Screen are the two main ways to get a design on a shirt.  

If you are thoroughly interested in it, i'm going to give a link to a forum thats beaten this subject to death. Just go here and try to wrap your mind around all of this
HERE

At Obstructees were doing screen printing. For one simple reason... Its what professionals do. The bottom line is that you get a better t shirt and it lasts longer.

Screen Printing Pros
1 better quality
2 lasts longer
3 looks better

4 cheaper when buying in bulk

Heat Press Pros
1 You only make as many shirts as you need
2 You can print more than just a couple of colors
3 Its something you can do out of the basement of your house

4 With increased technology using a heat press is not as looked down upon as it used to be

RECAP
1 Pick heat press or screen printing depending on the types of shirts you plan on making
2 Having your shirts screen printed doesnt mean you have to buy a screen printing machine,
we're set up to have our shirts printed locally and just pick up an order every week

Week 1

Well I guess this is where I explain where i'm at in my current business

http://www.obstructees.com/ (not currently active)

First things first, I'm currently enrolled full time at Texas A&M. I'm a senior about to get my bachelors in Visual Science. In other words, i have almost no time to get the obstructees site up and running. What i have been doing in the meantime, besides reading almost every post at http://www.t-shirtforums.com/, is designing t-shirts because lets get real if you dont have good t shirts... your not going to make any money. Well i guess thats not true if your doing an affiliate program, but thats another day... maybe even another blog.

This next semester i will be opening up Obstructees.com for everyone's viewing pleasure.  

RECAP
1 Join T-Shirtforum.com!

2 If your interested in starting an online t shirt company... SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG

Getting Started - How to launch a T-shirt website

So this blog will serve as an outlet for me, Matt Nolan the creator of Obstructees, and hopefully one day as a guide to any T-shirt entrepreneur.

 The goal of the blog  is to write about where i'm at in my business and where i plan to go. I encourage anyone and everyone who has walked down this path before to comment with tips and tricks that you've learned about opening up a t shirt company. I'll be writing hopefully at least one post a week, and dispersing any knowledge that i know.

I'm starting and building from the ground up.  So while this blog may not be the most glamorous, it will definitely be one of the most informative.