How to do Screen Printing

An overview of how to do screen printing for clients who would like

to understand the process!

Screen printing has been around since the late 18th century and was given a major popularity spike in the 1960’s courtesy of Andy Warhol and has continued to be the industry standard for creating custom t-shirts and apparel.

The starter set-up for Screen Printing is:

Screen printing ink color
Mesh screens
Film Positives
Flash Cure Unit
Belt Dryer
And a multi-arm screen station that makes it easier to switch between screens. This is ideal in a production setting.

It’s starts with the artwork:

When you develop your artwork, each color you intend to use in your artwork will need a separate screen. This will incur an additional cost because additional screens will have to be printed separately. However, when you work with Seattle Screen Printing, we do a lot of the setup for you. We work with the production team to ensure all the colors will be matched properly to ensure a consistent print.

What to expect after you send your artwork:

Your T-shirt Guru will request your vector file which ensures a crisp print without pixilation. Next, if you have text in your file, you’ll want to expand those fonts or send a copy of the font file with the artwork. When expanding the font, this allows our computer to register the font as artwork, rather than a font. If the fonts are not expanded, then our computer will auto-replace the font if we do not have the correct one available. This is why expanding text or providing us a copy of the font is important.

If any of that seems complicated, not to worry! Your personal T-Shirt Guru will walk you through the process and we can work with our in-house design team to properly prepare files on your behalf should you need some design help!

Mesh Screens

The more colors you have in your artwork, the more separate screens will have to be printed which will increase your overall cost. Our T-shirt Guru’s can help minimize colors to lower the overall complexity and cost of your design.