Mike T is not just a great artist, he has done some of the most exemplary illustrations for t-shirts that I have ever seen. This print of Biggie is also one of our best screenprints, but it all started with great artwork.

The piece is so good that a marketing company put this in Digital Direct to Garment advertisements because they thought that was how it was done.

Why is this such a good illustration for printing a great shirt? Here are four big reasons:

• the right size of the detail, not too coarse and not so fine as to be unprintable on a shirt.
•  limited color palette, ideal for color separation by means of simulated process.
•  terrific use of the background shirt color, which in this case is black.
•  no wide areas of color, so no big plastic print using plastisol inks. You can’t feel it, but people touching this sample always ask how we got it so soft.
•  well-proportioned for the front of a shirt and in a size where you can do a good print.