An outsider's guide to tee culture - Printing

The other week a TI staff meeting took a turn toward Print Talk, and I haven't been so lost since last trying to dissect a Tyraism on "America's Next Top Model." And I stopped trying to do that a long time ago. It went a little like this:

Matt: Well, we can use the DTG for these projects blah blah ink blah blah
Jenelle: What are you doing with the YouDo?
Cody: The YouDo blah blah screen-printing...
Me: Stop, talk, talk, talking that blah blah blah
Matt: Press blah blah screen-printing screens blah multiple colors blah blah
Cody: Yeah, ’cause and we can just order blanks blah blah Ninja Turtles blah.

Okay, so Ke$ha said that, not me. Barf. But you get the point. My knowledge of T-shirt printing was limited to the iron-on decal and puffy paint projects my mom used to think was a great idea for my sister and me on the cusp of our awkward phases. Did I mention they were holiday themed? And matching?

But recently I sat down with Cody, Matt, and Jenelle, who proceeded to educate me as far as they knew of the art form of tee printing. And it IS an art form. While there is much about the numerous processes that I still don’t fully understand, that much I now know.

Here’s the breakdown, as simply as I can express it:

SCREEN-PRINTING
This is one of two main processes we use to print our tees...but thus far we’ve outsourced it to companies like Oaklandish that are better equipped to handle its complexity. The ink is generally thick and opaque, making for a high-quality print.

How it’s done: A very fine mesh screen is treated with photosensitive chemicals, which is then layered with a transparency of the desired design and exposed to light. The exposed areas of chemical goop dry. Then the design is inked and pressed onto the shirt. Once you create a screen, you can use it over and over for an unlimited number of shirts, but you can also wash it clean and expose a new design on it.

For each different color, a different screen must be treated and exposed with a specific version of the artwork, making for a layered effect. The order and design must be carefully chosen to achieve the desired look.

Because creating screens—and storing designs on screens—at a printing company can get expensive, a 3-color limit has become a commonplace industry rule for T-shirt designers. It’s a standard that’s pretty evident with a closer look at postings on sites like Threadless, where T-shirt artists posts their digital mock-ups and art work. Which is why it’s super rare that some of Thriving Ink’s first T-shirts by Ken Marshall had 10+ colors.

DTG (DIRECT-TO-GARMENT)
Thriving Ink owns an IDot Direct-to-Garment printer to use for special projects, a softer, more vintage-y feel, and limited edition runs like Cody’s latest release “Midnight Snack.” It’s essentially an EPSON desktop reworked to print on tees.

How it’s done: A software program is used to size and place a piece of artwork on a virtual T-shirt, which communicates with the DTG about where and what to print on the T-shirt blank. After the tee runs through the machine, a 2-part heat process dries the ink. The first has an iron hovering above the tee to set the top layer of ink and prevent smearing. The second magnetically presses ink directly into the fabric of the tee.

We love the freedom the DTG affords us in color use and speed. Its water-based inks are thinner than those used in screen-printing, making the shirts softer and more flexible.

FOIL
We’ve had this heat transfer process done for a couple of our logo tees.

How it’s done: This is basically a fancy iron-on that melts a foil into the fabric of the shirt.

4-COLOR PROCESS
When Cody brought this “end all of screen-printing” up, Matt’s first response was “this loses me in translation.” But from what I gathered in my Layman’s brain, it’s essentially a 4-screen, 4-ink color method of printing layers of teeny tiny dots that blend in the eye to create a cohesive image, comic book style. The mesh used has an extremely high thread count, so that the CMYK colors used (the same as your desktop printer) can practically sit on top of each other.

Check out this video to watch it done: