Custom Screen Printing - What You Need to Know

One of the best ways to promote your business, club, organization or cause is to wear it. Custom screen printing is a great, and often cost effective, way of advertising while doing what you normally do - visiting the park, seeing a baseball game, shopping for groceries. And besides the advertising benefits that you get from custom screen printed garments, it is also a great way to distinguish your employees from everyone else in the room.

But how do you go about getting custom screen printed garments for your business, club, organization or cause? There are several steps to take to make this happen, starting with the decision making step.

What do you want? Before you set out to find your screen printer, there are a few things you need to decide on (there will be more information regarding each of these questions later in the article). What do you want to have printed? What do you want printed on it? Where do you want it printed? How many are you going to need?

What do you want to have printed?
As a general rule, screen printing works best on a smooth, yet semi-porous, surface. Items such as nylon or leather computer cases, pique polo shirts (the bumpy kind commonly thought of when one thinks of a "polo" shirt), and knitted items - sweaters, ski caps, beanies - do not work well for screen printing.

Consider painting. Paint adheres best to a smooth surface that is not overly slick, or glossy, in finish. The same holds true with screen printing inks. Bumpy or rough fabrics will make the ink rough and in some cases the low points of the texture may not receive any ink at all, leaving blank spaces in your design. Slick surfaces, such as vinyl or leather can be printed but will often require special processing of the ink or catalysts to be added, which will raise the overall cost of your screen printing job.

Your best bet when selecting a garment for screen printing is one made of jersey fabric; tee-shirts, sweatshirts or pants, jersey-knit polos.

Other factors to consider when deciding what you want to have printed is color, price, who will be wearing it and where they will be wearing it. For example, if your employees will be wearing their tee-shirt outdoors in the summer, a light or bright color such as white, yellow, turquoise, would keep them cooler by reflecting the sun's rays than a black, navy blue or forest green which will absorb the light and thus the heat. If they will be working near red clay dirt, a brown, red, orange or maroon shirt will hide the signs of the dirt whereas a bright or lighter color will contrast it and show it off. If you are giving the shirts away in mass quantities and not requiring anyone to pay for them, a 50/50 polyester/cotton blend is going to be a better choice than a cotton/spandex blend with contrasting colored sleeves and collar.

What do you want to have printed on it?
Once you have selected your garment, or at least narrowed your choice down to a few possibilities, choose a design. Simple is often best when it comes to screen printing, as fine details present more opportunity for smeared or muddled images and colors. Also, the more colors in your design, the more you will pay for the print itself. Some similar colors (red, yellow and orange, black and grey) can be manipulated to use fewer colors in the design so if you have flames in your design, take it to the screen printer and see what they think can be done with it. A flame, for example, that has red, yellow and orange on a sheet of paper or a business card, can be cut down to red and yellow for screen printing purposes, combining the red and yellow ink to make orange through gradation processes. The best plan of attack is to come up with a general design, keeping in mind that fewer colors will result in a lesser cost, overall, then take that to the screen printer when you go in search of quotes (which you will want to do).

Where do you want it printed?
The trend today is to print a large design on the front center of the garment and nothing on the back, or a small design on the left side of the front and a large design on the back. However, this is only a trend and not by any means a rule. My personal taste, for example, is towards a blank front and large design on the back, which is fairly uncommon but definitely do-able. In most cases, with most companies, it won't matter, in terms of cost, where you want to put your design, front or back, or what size you want it to be. What will affect your overall cost is how many places you want to put a print. Another trend over the past decade has been for a print down the sleeves of long sleeved tee-shirts. This looks swell, as is the trend, but it will cost you more, generally $.50 through $2 per shirt, per sleeve, per color of ink you use.

How many are you going to need?
Look into the future for this question. You have thirty people in your organization right now, but next month you are planning a huge recruitment drive, the likes of which generally bring in ten or fifteen solid new members. Plan for them. Most companies will give you price breaks on your printing charges based on dozens (simply because it's the easiest method of calculating) so if you are at thirty members now but can possibly break the next dozen (36) or even more (48?) with your membership drive, go for it and save yourself some cash. You can always keep them on hand for later, or sell them to members who want an extra.

Knowing how many you will need before embarking on your quote quest will help you get more accurate pricing, as some companies may even offer a price break on the cost of the shirt itself at fifty or sixty, somewhere in that range. This is because it is not only more economical for you to order more, it is more economical for the company to print more at a time so they encourage you to place larger orders by offering breaks in the pricing. But, keep in mind that you will most likely be dealing with a small business and don't make the situation awkward by asking for "a break if I buy twenty?" They cannot afford to offer everyone who prints twenty tee-shirts a deal so offering one to you wouldn't be fair.

Now that you have a goal, check the yellow pages. Write down the name of every business that offers custom screen printing services and head out. Take your design, your quantities and your business partner and get quotes. Tell the person who greets you, up front, that you are looking for a quote and make sure you cover all the bases, from the printing costs to the garment costs to any additional fees and charges that may apply.

Take the quotes back to the office and look over them. Comparison shop. When you have made a final decision on which company will provide you with the best value and service, take your artwork and order back to them and get the ball rolling.

What do you need to make their job easier?
A color separated computer image of your design. For many businesses, this will mean a call to the printing company who designed their business cards. Most similar minded companies (paper goods printers, sign makers, screen printers) are happy to share artwork with other companies who are not direct competition (for example, a business card printer will gladly give your artwork to a sign company but maybe not so gladly give it to a letterhead printer). If you don't have business cards, stationary, storefront signage, you may have to pay an artwork fee for the screen printer's graphic artist to recreate your design to be ready for screen printing.

How do I know if my image is color separated?
A common mistake is to assume that because you have the image saved on your computer it is ready for screen printing. JPEG, bitmap (BMP) or GIF files are solid, un-editable images and are not ready for printing. The test is to click on a color with your pointer tool (the black arrow pointing up and to the left) and see what happens. If the image is ready for screen printing, that color and that color only should highlight when you click on it and you should be able to move it away from the rest of the design. If you can do this, it is ready to be printed.

With this information, you should be ready to strike out on your own and find the perfect custom screen printer to suit your needs.