When the design team at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles contacted us about printing their 2018 Nature Fest t-shirts, they wanted to create the illusion of depth in their design.
Every year we are very fortunate and honored to print apparel for the amazing John and Shelley Loter ahead of their visit to Comic-Con San Diego. Each shirt features a different member of their quirky cartoon family, from zombies and devils to superhero cats and space exploring gorillas. Above you can see us printing the yellow layer of their banana rocket design.
Screen printing is a printing technique that pushes ink through a porous mesh screen stretched across a frame. The image that is printed is created by a stencil image that is fixed on the screen. The stencil image is created by applying a photo sensitive emulsion to a screen, placing a film positive on the emulsion, and exposing the emulsion to bright light. The screen is then pressure washed and the unexposed emulsion falls away, creating a negative image on the screen. The screen is then dried and carefully registered on a printing press. Heavy duty rubber squeegees are used to push ink through the negative areas of the screen onto a substrate (that might be a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, or a tote) to create the final imprint image. The item being printed then passes on a conveyor belt through an oven that cures the imprint ink.
Watch our great video on screen printing step by step.