What is screen printing?
Screen printing, also know as silkscreen printing or serigraphy, is an age old method of printing a design on a substrate. The process involves creating a stencil on a very fine mesh screen that is stretched tightly onto a frame. Ink is then pushed through the screen onto the substrate using a squeegee.
1
Artwork
First, a design is needed. Designs can include hand-drawn or painted artwork, photographs, or digitally created graphics.
2
The Screen
Creating a high quality stencil is an essential part of the process. Without a high quality stencil, you can't produce a high quality print. A stencil must hold fine detail and maintains durability throughout a print run.
To make a stencil, Screens are coated with a UV sensitive emulsion, and once it dries the artwork is burned into that layer of emulsion during an exposure process.
3
Printing
Screen printing equipment varies greatly from in-home DIY setups to industrial grade automatic presses that can turn out thousands of garments in a day with multi-colored designs. When screen printing, a multi-colored design requires an individual screen for each color in the design (ie. 4 color design has 4 screens). This adds levels of complexity when printing because each component of the design must be burned onto its own screen and then lined up perfectly with one another on the printing press to create a unified print.
4
Wear some art!
Being able to customize art and pick from an endless variety of garments and materials is what makes this process so awesome. Transform your creative vision into a tangible and wearable piece!
