Make Grandma Happy This Valentine’s Day

Screen printing is one of the most common ways to produce a wide range of products, including shirts and posters. As a customer who is seeking screen printing services, you might wonder what you can do to ensure a project's success. Here are three ways customers can contribute.

Design for Simplicity

Most of the greatest screen-printed designs of all time are notably simple. Andy Warhol's famous prints of soup cans, for example, are excellent examples of this principle in play. They employ a singular subject and limited colors. Likewise, the prints don't have noisy elements, such as clouds or swirls that can sometimes be hard to reproduce even in photographic-quality screen prints.

Your design doesn't have to be a masterpiece, but there is value in understanding why great artists like to keep their screen printing simple and clean. If you're looking at your design in a software suite, look for little elements that muck it up. Even erasing a few dots or jagged edges can tighten up a design.

Think About Separations 

Modern graphics applications make it easy to create what screen printing services providers call separations. These are the distinct color layers. When a printer makes a product, they will apply each separation with a single color. For example, to create a create pattern, a printer will put down a layer of yellow ink, let it dry, and then put down a layer of blue ink. Also, they will frequently use clusters of dots to produce an optical illusion that creates the sense of a green image.

When you create a design, it's a good idea to check the separations. If something looks messy or ugly in the separations, it may not look great as a finished product.

Use the Solid Background

Remember, the fabric that receives the ink is an element in the design, too. Leverage it as much as possible. If you're going to print on black T-shirts, for example, you can make a very compelling design using just one or two bright colors. Not only is this cost-effective, but it tends to look very commercially artistic.

Rock bands often make the best of this principle. They want to maximize profits by producing lots of designs that printers can generate quickly. One classic example is the Rolling Stones tongue-and-lips logo. It is usually red on a black or white background with a few white highlights to ensure the image reads well. Not only is it iconic, but it's easily repurposed for shirts, posters, album covers, tour buses, and even planes.