The print softens
A water-based print softens with the cloth instead of cracking on top of it. After a year, it looks like part of the garment.
A water-based print softens with the cloth instead of cracking on top of it. After a year, it looks like it always belonged there.
You will have owned printed t-shirts that died from the print outwards. The garment underneath is fine — the print cracked, peeled, faded patchily, and eventually you stopped wearing it because it looked broken. That is plastisol. Plastic on top of cloth, behaving like plastic.
Water-based ink does not do that. The pigment binds into the cotton fibres. There is no plastic layer. The print softens through the wash cycle, in step with the cloth, and ends up looking like part of the garment instead of a sticker on it.
The trade is upfront cost and a slightly more muted colour range. We took both.
— the studio
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