If you are looking at one of our shirts in Pepper or True Navy and wondering why the cat sits inside a pale square, this is the page that answers it. Nothing has gone wrong with your order. It is how these files print, and we would rather you know before you buy than after.
What is actually happening
A direct-to-garment printer lays ink where the file says there is ink. Our design files are built on a solid white background rather than a transparent one, so the printer treats that background as part of the artwork and lays white ink across the whole rectangle.
On a White shirt, white ink on white cotton is invisible. On the other fourteen colors, that rectangle sits on top of the dye and you can see its edges.
Look at it directly
Same design, same printer, two colors. The Cats Make Me Happy tee shows it most clearly, because that design leaves a lot of empty space inside the rectangle. A busier design hides the edge better.
Which colors show it most
The darker the dye, the harder the edge reads. In rough order, from most visible to least:
- Loud: Pepper, True Navy, Black, Berry, Blue Spruce
- Noticeable: Grey, Blue Jean, Bay, Seafoam, Violet
- Quiet: Ivory, Chambray, Blossom, Orchid
- Invisible: White
The swatches above are cropped from our own photographs of these shirts. The paler the ground, the less contrast there is for the white block to work against.
How the busier designs behave
Artwork that fills its rectangle edge to edge hides the block, because there is very little bare white left showing. The Keep Calm and Love Cats tee has a doodle border running around all four sides, so on Pepper the edge is far less obvious than it is on a design with a lot of open space.
Artwork with air around it does the opposite. The sleeping calico and the stacked kittens both leave open space inside the rectangle, so the block reads clearly on a dark shirt.
What we did about it
Three things, none of them clever.
- We photographed every color. Fifteen photos per design, one per color, none retouched. Switch the color swatch on any product page and you see that exact shirt.
- We added a comparison image. Every product page carries a White-versus-Pepper crop like the one at the top of this page.
- We say it in the description. Every product description names the colors where the block is loudest.
What we did not do
We did not edit the block out of the photos. It would take five minutes and it would mean the shirt you unwrap does not match the picture you bought from. That is the whole reason this page exists.
If you want the print with no block
Order White. On White the artwork sits flat on the cotton and there is no visible edge at all. If you want a color, pick from the quiet group above, and expect to see the rectangle in bright light.
Still unsure? Email support@chronoxi.us and ask about a specific color. We will tell you straight.