(no subject)

[arethinn]

If I just want to make a one-off T-shirt for myself and not sell more afterwards, what site or place of business would people recommend?

Related, is there anywhere I can get Helvetica font, or possibly some kind of lookalike, without having to pay an amount of license money that makes no sense for the project in mind? (I thought of trying to do the design on a Mac, which may be possible, but I'm not sure.)

Comments

[andros_b]

How about this Helvetica replacement?

[arethinn]

oo, not bad. Thanks!

[drwho]

I print my one-off shirts at zazzle.com, from a private (unpublished) storefront on their site.

[brewingtrouble.livejournal.com]

http://www.1001fonts.com/helvetica-fonts.html?

not sure if that's what you want.....

Also if it's just for a one-off shirt... lately we just use a cutting "printer" to cut vinyl sticky stencils, and paint it ourselves with soft fabric paint (or freehand it after pencilling the basic pattern).

Or (if it's not meant to be washed regularly, like for a cosplay) there are special transfer papers for printers.....

[arethinn]

Helvetica is a specific font family: https://www.linotype.com/1308886/helvetica-family.html

Handcutting a stencil of a lot of text doesn't sound like a thing I can do, never mind want to do.

I've tried the inkjet transfer paper and it basically cracked immediately and disintegrated after the first wash. I mean, in a sense I only need to wear this shirt once, but I'd really like to be able to reuse it in the normal way, so what I want is silkscreen or equivalent.

[brewingtrouble.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I can't really help you then. There are lots of free font sites around that might have something you like, but since as you say Helvetica is a family of fonts and you didn't really indicate exactly which single font in that family you're interested in using (unless you actually need the entire family of fonts to use one of each font on, for one shirt?), I can't really help you search. Free font sites have individual fonts, not families. But they are free.

That being said, once a font is converted to become part of an image file, it's not really a font any more and I'm not sure you'd get in trouble for using it on one personal-use shirt. If you were selling them, maybe.... but it's entirely your decision.

There are also sites around that theoretically can do just one shirt. I've never used one though so I can't vouch for how good any of them are.

http://www.just1shirt.com/blank/T-Shirts?c=3480602
Here's one that was one of the first that came up. They've been around since at least 2004, so it's not just a fly by night operation....

[arethinn]

Helvetica Bold is probably what I want, but I meant that Helvetica is a specific thing and other fonts that might turn up in searches for "Helvetica" are probably just using the name as a descriptor and aren't the genuine article. The exact look of the font is important for this particular design.

That being said, once a font is converted to become part of an image file, it's not really a font any more and I'm not sure you'd get in trouble for using it on one personal-use shirt. If you were selling them, maybe.... but it's entirely your decision.

It's not that that's the concern - it's that to just get the font in the first place you have to pay significant money.

There are also sites around that theoretically can do just one shirt. I've never used one though so I can't vouch for how good any of them are.

Right, yeah, I wondered if anyone had a specific rec or horror story.