Screen printing is a popular way for companies, organizations, and groups to get branded materials to promote their interest or business. Everything from shirts to backpacks and even lanyards can be screen printed with words, logos, and other images. If you're considering custom screen printing for the first time, there are some things you should know to help ensure a successful process.
Choose Your Placement Carefully
One of the things that many people don't realize about screen printing is that it's exceedingly difficult to do over a seam or a pocket. The screens have to lay flat for them to work properly, and a seam disrupts that flow. You'll want to make sure that, when you choose your layout and design, you place it somewhere that's free of seams and other obstructions on the material.
Consider Your Material When Choosing Ink
If you're creating a custom screen printing design, you need to talk with the screen printer about the type of material that you're going to have treated. Different types of materials react differently with certain types of ink. As a result, there are some inks that are better for cotton shirts or sweatshirts while other inks may be better for nylon windbreakers. Make sure that you select your material first so that you can be sure to choose an ink that works well with it.
Expect Some Variances
For those who are new to the screen printing process, it can be difficult to really know what to expect from the process. Since screen printing is such a time and resource-intensive process, most providers won't offer a one-off sample, either. That's why it's important for you to understand what to expect once you've sent the graphic to your screen printing service.
Understand that, when the image is rendered to the screens and the material in question has been stretched on the frame to be printed, you will have some minimal distortion of the geometric shapes in the image. This is to be expected, as you'll notice the same thing happen on different body shapes with the same image.
Additionally, since most screen printing machines are loaded by hand, you'll also notice some minimal variations in the way that the image is placed on each shirt. It may be slightly more to one side than the other on some shirts compared to others. That's the unavoidable margin of differences that you'll encounter with custom, hand-crafted screen printing.
For more information contact a company like Dakota Promotions & Printing.
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