Print & Surface Design
All-Over Print vs. Placement Print: A Different Design Problem
An all-over print isn't a bigger placement print. It's a completely different design and production process.
"A placement print gets applied to a finished garment. An all-over print has to become the garment — and survive being cut apart to do it."
Two Fundamentally Different Sequences
A placement print — a chest logo, a back graphic — is applied after the garment is already cut and sewn, onto a flat, stable panel. An all-over print works in reverse: fabric is printed first, typically via sublimation, and only then cut into pattern pieces and sewn, which means the artist has to account for exactly where seams will fall across the finished graphic before a single piece of fabric is cut (Kornit, DTG Printing Trends: How T-Shirt Production Is Evolving).
Why Pattern Placement Becomes a Design Decision
Getting an all-over print wrong doesn't mean a smudged logo — it means a design element awkwardly bisected by a side seam or a sleeve, visible on every single unit produced. That's why all-over print development happens in close coordination with the pattern itself, not as a graphic dropped onto a finished tech pack afterward.
The Fabric Constraint That Comes With It
Because most all-over print runs through sublimation, the garment is generally locked into polyester or a poly-heavy blend, which folds material choice into the design decision from day one rather than leaving it for later.
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