One of the first challenges in creating designs for T-shirts is grokking the difference between the way stuff prints and the way it looks on screen. Monitors emit light, and things like t-shirts reflect light. Because of this difference the available colors are different. There is some over lap, but not even neon paint can quite "glow" the way something made of light can glow.

There are other two factors that make it harder for the designer to really "get" the difference. The first is the variability of the computer displays. Our brains are really good at adjusting to expected colors. We tend, for example, not to really notice the yellowish cast created by our incandescent light. I've had the opportunity to look at exactly the same image on multiple displays and can see that in one a color might be definetly blue, while in the other it might have an obvious violet hue.

It is very common for designers to complain that their colors weren't printed correctly. However unless they have actually calibrated their monitor for color there is a better than even chance that the designer wasn't seeing the color correctly on the display. So what got printed was actually the way it was designed, just not the way they were seeing it.

The second factor is the brain breaker if one thinks about it too much. You are looking at a light source to interpret a non-light source image. Generally this isn't a huge factor in the actual design process, it just makes it harder for people to grasp that color generated out of the display really is of a different quality than color appearing on a printed product. With all this in mind I created some color charts to help me keep an eye on my designing.



The coolest thing to arrive at CafePress is the much awaited BLACK T-shirt. Woo woo.So I ordered a couple and got a reminder of the difference light sources can make in the way things looked. In my dimly lit house I was a bit disappointed in one shirt. But when I took it outside to photograph it I discovered it was much better than I thought. Sure, I can, and I did, work on the color to improve the indoor appearance. But that misses the point which is that the light source can significantly influence the way light reflects and thus perceived color. And the new shirts introduced new design challenges. So back I went to my color charts. I wanted to create a test chart so that I could see the behavior of colors on the black t-shirts. But I didn't want to pay for a boring bunch of squares. So I created a more interesting test pattern. Now I can actually look forward to wearing my test subject. Fun and learning on the same slate - what a concept.