Although the guidelines are pretty much standard to printing certain styles of shirts (I’m talking about temperature, pressure, peel etc), there is no 100% right or wrong way to print a football shirt. For this post, I’m going to talk about how we print a Premier League shirt and in particular a Blackburn Rovers 2007/08 home shirt we’re working on.
The current Premier League style was introduced in the 2007/08 season. When it was, guidelines for placement of letters and numbers were issued. When you look at match shirts though, these vary from team to team. The curve of the name is always the same template pretty much, but there are some exceptions during some seasons. For instance, Stoke home for 2008/09 season and Portsmouth away and 3rd kits for 2008/09 seasons don’t follow the curve template for the name but more so follow a shape on the shirt. You need to see them to see what I mean.
The official guides state letters should be as tight together as possible. Sporting iD make Lextra pre-made nameblocks where the letters are spaced very close together. Like most clubs and club shops, we stock loose letters mainly so we can offer any name combination you need. What this does mean though is some clubs such as Man Utd have very close letters and others such as Liverpool have bigger gaps on some match shirts. Even more frustrating is that this changes from match to match sometimes. When we print shirts we try and get the letter placement same as match shirts so have to go as close as possible. Only way is to study a few images from games where you can see the name and number and go from there.
Anyway, onto our Blackburn shirt for this guide.
Shirts like this are a favourite of ours as the centre point of the shirt back is obviously there for you and you need this for correct position.
Firstly heat your press to the correct temperature (160 degrees for PL print) and slide the shirt over the heat platen. Most shirts will be creased so you need to flatten or stabilise the fabric. Basically, press it for a couple of seconds with no print on there. Your shirt is now flat and crease free.
Get your template for letters and line up in the right place. For most Blackburn games last season there was roughly a 20mm gap from the bottom point of the top of the back and the top of the letters. The official templates we’re using here have a centre line so as it’s a Blackburn shirt, we just line it up where the white and blue halves of the shirt meet. If you’re using a letter nameblock we have arranged onto a template you just need to put the nameblock in place an measure to ensure the same amount of name is either side of you centre point.
The numbers on most shirts are positioned to fit with the name on a standard size heat press. Unfortunately some numbers are higher and closer to the name than others. Again, for complete authenticity, check match images first.
Once you’ve got your letters and numbers in place, you can press the print for the required time (20 seconds in this case).
Lift press and allow to cool and until mostly cold.
You can now peel slowly starting from the corners.
Your shirt is now done.
