Marketing Advice
The AI artwork trap
Artificial Intelligence is taking over almost every aspect of our lives, and it’s easy to see why. Who would pay for a graphic designer when ChatGPT could create something for free and, in a lot of cases, quicker? However, these artworks come with different problems that decorators need to overcome. Colin Sinclair McDermott, aka The Online Print Coach, explains how you could overcome these newfound issues and use them to create extra business.
A
I-generated artwork is arriving in print shops at an increasing rate. Rather than treating it as another production headache, decorators can turn the problem into an opportunity to sell their expertise – and protect their margins. A customer walks into a garment decoration shop clutching a phone. They have just spent three hours using an AI image generator to create a hyper-realistic lion wearing a tracksuit and now want it printed on 50 hoodies by Friday. On their brightly lit phone screen, the artwork looks fantastic. There is only one problem: The file they supply is a low-resolution web image with no transparency, unsuitable dimensions and none of the preparation required for production.
To the customer, the design work is finished. To the printer, it has barely started.
Welcome to one of the newest challenges facing garment decorators.
| 16 | October 2026
AI artwork isn’t necessarily print-ready artwork Tools such as Midjourney, DALL-E and other generative AI platforms have made image creation accessible to almost anyone. Customers who previously might have arrived with a rough sketch can now produce something that looks remarkably polished.
However, looking good on screen and being ready for production are two very different things.
Depending on the intended decoration process, artwork may require resizing, cleaning, vectorising, colour adjustment, transparency work or other preparation before it can be printed successfully. That creates additional work for the decorator – and that work has value. The mistake is automatically absorbing it into the cost of the print job. Imagine spending 30 or 40 minutes in Illustrator cleaning up an AI-generated image simply to secure a relatively small garment order. Do that several times each week and the business is giving away hours of skilled artwork and prepress time.
www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk
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