The Power of a One Color Design

Great looking designs for screen printed apparel don't need to be fancy. Sure, there is no denying that multiple colors are necessary in various ways, but keeping things simple doesn't mean that your screen printed apparel will look boring. Some of the best looking designs are one color (not including the underbase, if needed).

So, why go simple? Using a one color design has a few advantages:

It's fast, easy, and cheap. Artists and printers like easy jobs, and less resources are needed to print one color jobs versus multicolored. This saves you money. That's enough reasons right there!

It's BOLD. Multi-color designs are great, of course, but sometimes one color is all you need to catch a person's eye. Take the design below, for instance. Now that's a good looking T-shirt! (It looks even better in person, trust me)



Light Gray ink on a Purple garment.

Halftones can be used to work with the garment to create different shades of a color without actually using another color ink. Necessary if you want variation or depth in your image. Another possible money saver.

The garment itself can take the place of a color. Want black letters inside of a yellow rectangle, for example? No need for black ink, just use the yellow ink on a black garment.

There you go. Next time you think about design possibilities, keep the lone colors in mind. Not that we don't like multi-color jobs! Sometimes though, you just got to keep it simple!