If you’ve tried to buy a decorated shirt, you may have had someone suggest using vinyl or heat transfer vinyl (HTV) as a way to decorate. HTV is opaque, solid, and usually comes in a roll or sometimes a sheet. The vinyl is on top, with adhesive on the back, with a carrier sheet underneath. Your design is then cut using a vinyl cutter hooked up to your computer like a printer. The cutter has a small blade that penetrates the vinyl, but not the carrier sheet. Once cut, you peel away, or weed, the unneeded vinyl, leaving only the design to heat press to the shirt.
Advantages
No minimums – since you are running your design through the cutter, you can cut out just one design. Therefore you don’t have to worry about minimums. Many times you see names and numbers on athletic jerseys cut out of vinyl for this exact reason.
Durability – the adhesive on vinyl is strong stuff. Plus the vinyl material itself is usually very sturdy. There are many different types of vinyl, but most can stand the heavy duty washing and drying. Again, this is another reason you see a lot of vinyl in athletic jersey applications.
Options – HTV comes in a large variety of colors. But there are also a lot more than just plain, opaque colors. There is glitter vinyl, reflective safety vinyl, glow in the dark, stretchy, holographic, metallic, flock and even printable vinyl that you can use with a solvent printer like sign shops usually have.
The above reasons make it great for personalizing things, shirts, bags, hats and more.
Grey area
Accessible – this is a decorating technique that almost anyone can do. There are several home quality vinyl cutters on the market. Lots of individuals who do crafting have one of these. Just be careful as they are not commercial grade machines and may not be able to handle the volume, size or material you need. Vinyl really needs to be paired with a proper heat press as well.
Layerable – Since vinyl is generally a one-color application, if you want more than one color in your design, you have to layer it. So it is an advantage that it can be done. But the disadvantage is that it can get costly as well as sit very thick on the shirt.
Disadvantages
Price – the actual vinyl itself isn’t overly expensive as a roll, but you end of throwing a lot of it away based on the design in the weeding process. Then when you add in the labor of printing/cutting, weeding and pressing the vinyl to the shirt, the price creeps up.
No economies of scale – you have to cut and weed each design. So even if you print 10 at one time, you have to week, trim and prep them to be pressed. There isn’t a lot of economies of scale in the process.
Heavy hand – the term “hand” refers to how the material feels in your hand when you touch it. Most people want a nice “soft hand” or “light hand” in their decorated shirts. Vinyl is thicker and heavier than most screen printing. It is way heavier than DTG or dye sublimation since they have nothing on top of the shirt.
Won’t work for intricate detail – since the vinyl is cut and weeded, you do need a modicum of thickness in the design so it stays attached to the carrier and doesn’t rip. Super thin lines are not advisable. And since you are dealing with one color vinyl usually, you can’t do things like photos, gradients, shadows, etc.
HTV is useful for a number of things. However, it can’t be the only tool in your tool belt. A good partner will walk you through when vinyl makes sense, versus using another decorating technique.