Design Practice 2: Screenprinting

Fabric:

I wanted to screen print my merchandise T-shirts and token bags to get the true representation of the print quality rather than transfer. It would also give the neon pink I wanted in the branding.

I did a test run on a tote bag I had to see how the image would print. I wanted it to line up with the handles to that would look like the user was holding the strap of the camera. The test run went ok but more pressure had to be applied to get an even thickness throughout so I proceeded.

When I printed the first t-shirt the design was really blotchy and didn't print well at all, as it was already messed up I tried again and it was still bad. I then realised that the ink had dried in the screen in the time I had gone from one to the other as I had to pin the tshirt after doing the test.

To fix this I had to wash the screen to get rid of the dried ink and dry it again before I reprinted.

Once the screen was prepared it printed perfectly on the tote bags.

It also did on the t-shirt however the design was a lot smaller than expected and due to the style of T-shirt it cropped part of the design off. However I was pleased with the quality of print. I feel that the camera is properly to a reasonable scale and the strap could of done with going down further so that the camera fell mid way on the T-shirt.

After rewashing the screen I applied the neon pink 'snap!' to the flash of the camera. This also came out well much to my relief. I tried the design on paper also to see how the screen would print and it did ok except the pink smudged considerably.

The final prints in full: 

Paper:

I used the transparent sheet to aid my registration in placing the pink in the correct place for each format.

The neon pink came out very luminous when printed on the white however not as much on the photography but I was still pleased with the results excluding a few minor mistakes which is expected with a second time screen printing. The few mistakes consisted of the screen exposing random dots which then printed out, forgetting to recover sections I had printed when starting a new section (see the polaroid ticket) and alignment due to the double side printing being off.

This is a close up of the photo holder which printed very crisp