can someone explain what spot printing is?
 

Have people that wanna participate in the tshirt contest, but im having a hard time explaining to them what a design suitable for spot printing is...

thanks in advance

nevermind, found a post by Zebra:

Jayman asked me to help clarify a few things since I print t-shirts on a regular basis.

When designing for spot color you can touch the edges of the colors together, but you don't want to overlap them. With most graphics programs this isn't a problem. When you overlap colors you create gradients that need to be color seperated. This adds a whole new dimension to the process and makes the design much more involved. Most logos are done in spot color because it makes it easier to reproduce them in different mediums and sizes.

Here is a sample of a spot color image
http://www.zebrawashere.com/zebratees/spot.gif

Notice that none of the colors overlap. When the printer creates screens for this image they would only need to create one screen per color (4 screens in total counting the black - unless the black is the color of the shirt then it is just a blank area)

You don't have to create blank areas between the colors, but on some designs you may want to have a black border in between colors like you would have on a coloring book. Doing so can help make the image stand out better.

Hope this helped some.

Here is a page that breaks spot color down further as well as other color processes.
http://www.images-magazine.com/scottart16.htm