Step 1) Choose a T-Shirt Friendly Design

Your design, be it a photograph, a drawing and/or text, can be as complicated or as simple as you want, but please note that just as humans can only fly with the help of surfboards, hang gliders and airplanes, screenprinted t shirts are created with screen printers, ink, and by humans, not magic. Thus, if you want your design to look great it must be compatible with the technology and materials that PSI Screenprinting use as well as fundamental elements of design and color.

Some points to remember when choosing colors, fonts, and t-shirts:

-A dark t shirt printed with light ink can sometimes cause a screenprint to look translucent. This does not mean it shouldn’t be done, but choose your ink and colors wisely. When printing colours onto dark t-shirts a white base of ink is laid down first to print the colours on to. If this isn’t done your colours won’t show up on the dark t shirt. For example, with a water-based ink, yellow over black can look off-green. With Plastisol, ink it will be very washed out and not vibrant.

-Detailed t shirt designs screen printed on a low contrast background, such as maroon ink on black t-shirt, will not show up as well as, say, black ink on white t shirt…but any colour will go well on white…except white of course.

-PSI Screenprinting use Adobe Illustrator to turn your bitmap designs into vector graphics, which means they will have clean lines and can be resized without losing their resolution. Another thing to keep in mind when designing your tshirt is that the font you choose must be a font that we have installed on our computers. The best way to get around that is to convert your fonts to outlines or curves, depending on which software you are using, yourself before sending it to us. If you are not sure, contact us beforehand and we can easily step you through this.

Step 2) Choose Your T Shirt Sizes
There is nothing more frustrating than that t-shirt of your favorite band…that you can’t even squeeze over your head; or, all 16 members of the girls’ netball team wearing XL uniforms. Make sure you order a variety of sizes that correspond to the demographic who will be wearing them.

Step 3) Choose Your Quantity
How many t-shirts do you need? Be sure to order enough tshirts the first time around because it will be cheaper for you in the long run. If you are ordering for a big event, a team, or organization, keep in mind that a couple extra t-shirts is better than being one short on game day!

We can help you with all of these. Just get in contact us via phone, email or our contact forms and we will step you through it.

Water Based Inks:
The Water based formula uses water as a solvent solution to hold and transfer dye and pigments to the t shirts. This lends many properties to the ink; most notable is its ability to fully permeate the t-shirt, leaving little or no surface residue. Particularly useful for printing onto t shirts which require ink to soak into it, water based inks will cure right into the fabric. This makes them ideal for cloths or bed sheets and especially useful for jobs like T shirt printing.

That is not to say screen printing t-shirts or other garments must be accomplished with only water based inks. Indeed, fashion trends and production processes change, and so the use of non water based inks is becoming more popular in the screen printing of clothing. This is primarily due to the invention of new co-solvents which enhance water based printing solutions with unique properties which make them more suitable for screen printing custom designs to clothing.

Plastisol:
You can usually recognize plastisol by its slightly raised appearance and feel on fabric. You might have an old T-shirt with a strangely rubbery textured logo or image printed onto it; if you do then the main disadvantages of plastisol will be apparent in its possible cracking and elevated profile above the fabric. Plastisol also carries a heavier environmental weight than water based inks –the main ingredient of plastisol is PVC.

On the bright side, plastisol usage and disposal has become much more efficient over the years, and it is significantly less energy hungry than Water based inks which demand lengthy drying time in high temperatures. It is also still unbeaten when it comes to printing bright, clean and complex designs, which make it ideal for high quality t-shirt printing.

Color:
The first thing you need to consider when planning your t shirt screen printing design is the number of colors you want to use. The screen printing process is monochromatic by nature, but it can be repeated multiple times to add additional colors to your image. The tone and opacity of colors will also impact your choice of ink but be aware that you’ll never get an exact color match as you might in conventional printing.

The T-shirt as a Canvas:
Your t-shirt color, fabric and size will influence the final look and feel of any inks and design applied to it. If you are just starting out with screen printing then it’s best to stick with a medium sized, white cotton t-shirt, as this will present the least challenging surface to screen print onto both in terms of design and physical properties.
While background color is a more conventional design challenge, bear in mind that stronger t-shirt colors will show through water based inks, so design appropriately or use thick mixed plastisols which can cover even the darkest base colors.

You should also carefully consider size and placement of your design. A conventional centre front print will avoid most problems, but be wary how you stretch the t shirt fabric when screen printing. More unusual placement might require screen printing before the t-shirt is stitched together!

With the inception of heat transfers and direct to garment digital printing, and the consistantly improved ability to digitally print on to dark t-shirts, it would be easy to assume that the manual screen printing process will die out. While the digital methods are a fantastic and cost effective solution for short runs of t-shirts with a high colour content it is still far more cost effective to screen print on larger runs of t-shirts.

Rather than see the digital t-shirt printing advances as a threat, screen printers should see them as an added opportunity to offer services and capture customers that perhaps they couldn’t previously. When that kid comes in with a full colour photo of their favourite band and wants to print it on a shirt, in the past we would have had to turn them away. With the advent of the digital processes we are now able to offer them that service of a one off full colour t-shirt and with the right equipment, even on a black t-shirt!!

So rather than fear these digital advances I believe screen printing professionals should embrace the added revenue they can bring to their existing businesses and the plethora of new products they can now offer.

I think it will be a long time before a digital print on 1000 t-shirts will be a cheaper and longer lasting option than a screen printed image.

Here at PSI Screenprinting we can offer you both solutions. So digital prints are good for high colour short runs whereas screen printing is definitely the best option for low amount of colours or longer runs. Contact us now for a quote on your t-shirt printing needs.

Ok…so you have an idea for a cool t-shirt. So how does that idea get on to the front of your chest? Well it is a little less manual now than it used to be. Keep in mind that the processes described here aren’t a DIY guide but a description of how a professional screen printer would print your t-shirt.

Artwork – So…we have to get your idea on to the computer screen. To do that we use a vector based design program. A lot of screen printers use Corel Draw but personally we prefer Adobe Illustrator. So whats vector graphics you ask? Well rather than go into that here check this out here. For single colour applications you can get away with using bitmap images…but for best results it is good to utilise the crisp edges and scalability of vector graphics. Click on picture for a large view of how Illustrator looks with vector based art and our logo which we will be screenprinting on to the t-shirt

So once you have the artwork completedthe next step is, if you have more than 1 colour, to separate and isolate the colours. If there is only a single colour then we don’t need to do third step.

After that we then convert each colour to 100% black to output to film. You’ll see why when we go to put the image on to the screen.

Film – Ok…now we have to get the image off the computer on to a clear film that we will then use to get the image on to the screen. There are different ways we can do this. It can be outsourced to professional film output company that use an imagesetter, it can be printed out onto a special film with a laser printer or you can do the same with an inkjet printer with specialised film. We use the inkjet method as an imagesetter can be expensive and a laser printer uses a lot of heat to print the image which can result in the film warping out of shape which is a nightmare when lining up multiple colours.

This is the end of the artwork preparation and output stage. The next stage is prepping the screen and transferring the image on the film to the screen. We will look at this process in Part 3.

So how does screen printing work?

Well basically it is a process where an amount of ink is passed through an open area of a mesh and deposited onto a substrate which could be a t-shirt, paper, plastic, timber or basically any smooth surface.

Here are the details…

The major players as far as equipment you need are -

1) Screen
2) Ink
3) Squeegee
4) T-shirt

Screen – Traditionally the screen was made from silk stretched across a rectangular timber frame, hence the traditional name for the process, Silkscreening. These days we use a polyester mesh sometimes still stretched across timber, but mostly aluminium frames are used now. Timber tends to bow and twist witch cause the mesh to loose tension across the frame where as aluminium is very rigid while still being very light.

Ink – Inks can usually be separated into 3 different categories for t-shirt screen printing. Water Based, Plastisol and Specialty. Water based are exactly what they sound like and have a water base which make them easy to clean up and accessible to amateurs who want to try their hand at screenprinting. On lighter coloured tees they also soak right in to the pile of the t-shirt leaving a very soft feeling print that becomes part of the fabric. Plastisol inks are solvent based and require turps to clean up. They also need a higher temperature to set them. Plastisols leave a harder more rubbery feel print on the t-shirt but perform really well when printing on dark shirts. Specialty inks are your metallics, flocks, and puffs etc that give a special finish to the garment.

Squegee – Ever had your car window squeegee’d at the traffic lights? Well a screen printing squeegee acts in exactly the same manor just on a bigger and bulkier scale. It has a blade made from a plastic/rubber called Polyurethane and a timber or aluminium handle. Instead of removing water from a window it pulls the ink across the screen.

T-shirt – We all know what this is!! The final part to complete the puzzle (almost). Best to use cotton and if you are just starting out, light colour fabric.

Stay tuned for part 2 when we will look at the processes involved.

It feels great to have it finally done. Props to our design team Alined for doing such a great job. You can see what you get when you get us to look after your design work!!

Keep an eye on this page as we will be regularly updating it with little tid bits to tantalize your thirst for knowledge and power. If you want to be the first to know…come on I know you are part of the microwave generation…then sign up above and we will send you our newsletter packed with info and special offers.

Anyway thanks for coming along and we look forward to working with you!!

PSI Team