12 Random tips for screen printing!

Make sure the ink on the transparencies is dark enough. If the transparencies are not dark enough the design won't show up when it's placed on the screen and is exposed to light.

Tape your design to the screen by taping all 4 sides.This will make sure the design doesn't move when you expose the screen to light. The more tape you use, the less the chances are your design will move when its place on the screen for exposure!

Go easy when you are putting emulsion on the tray! bubbles will start to form when the screen is drying if you end up applying to much emulsion on the screen, which will become an issue when its time to place the design on the screen. 

When it's time to put the emulsion on the screen, make sure you go nice and slow and cover all sides of the screen and not leave any spots uncovered.

Try not to touch the screen when it's drying, if  you want to check if the screen is dry, lightly touch the corners instead of the middle. Once the corners of the screen are dry, the whole screen should be dry because the corners take the longest to dry.

After you expose the screen to light, make sure you wash the screen right away! Washing the screen intermediately makes the design easy to wash out.

When you are washing out the design off of the screen, it helps to something to help you scrub the design out. Using anything with a hard surface will damage the design on the screen. Try to find something that has a soft surface that will help you wash the design off of the screen but is not hard enough that it will destroy the design. I find paper towels really useful for this.

Make sure you stir the ink before you place it on the screen! This will make the ink easy to apply. Stirring the ink constantly can also lead to better quality prints and it can also make it easier to wash them after you are done screen printing.

 If you find holes on your screen where there shouldn't be, don't be afraid to use tape! tape will hold off the ink so that it does not go through the screen and into your shirt (or whatever else you are trying to  screen print)

Hold the squeegee at an angle when you are screen printing. Holding the squeegee at an angle makes it easier for the ink to go through the screen. This is something that you need to practice in order to get better at it.

Go easy on the ink! The more ink you use, the more you will have to clean!

When you are screen printing, don't be afraid to press hard on the screen. The screen wont break, it is designed so that you can apply force on it. Remember that the harder you press on the screen the better results you will have. 

Practice, practice, practice! You can only get better at screen printing if you practice whenever you have the chance!

 What are some of your tips or tricks that you use when you are screen printing?

Tasty Snaks for Every Graphic Designer

This post will focus on graphic designers. Graphic designers understand that sometimes in order to get the job done on time, you might have to take the job home and stay up until the project gets done. This is true for any design job no matter if it’s a design going into a newspaper, magazine or even screen printing!

Here are tasty, yet healthy snacks that will keep the creative juices of a graphic designer flowing and help him/her stay awake when pulling an all-nighter. Did I also mention that these snacks are also keyboard friendly? meaning that they won’t cause too much of a mess while you eat them! 

Protein and fiber! While it is unlikely that you would crave a steak or a piece of grilled chicken in the middle of the night, other sources of protein such as nuts and seeds will provide you with sustained energy to stay awake. You may opt to avoid almonds, though, as they contain tryptophan and magnesium, which naturally reduce muscle function and steady the heart rate, causing some people to feel slightly sleepy. Here are some snack recipes to try!

Granola Bars Recipies

Nut Trail Mix Recipes

Bananas and apples! While whole fruits can provide some natural sugars to increase your energy levels, dried fruits, fruit snacks and fruit juices are not equal substitutes because of their excessively high levels of sugar. In other words, everything in moderation, but especially sugar. The dried fruits and fruit-flavored snacks and juices can induce a crash after the initial buzz that will easily have you dozing off in your chair. It may be wise to avoid cherries because they contain a hormone that regulates the sleep cycle. You can eat these whole or you can come up with creative ways of making these healthy fruits and converting them to snacks! Here are some of my favorite recipes:

Quick Chiquita Banana Social Recipie

Apple Recipies

Orange Honey Fruit Snacks

The everyday coffee drinker should opt for an espresso drink during an all-nighter, instead of plain coffee, for a stronger-lasting effect. Although caffeine seems like the obvious solution to making it through the night, there are some specific tips to keep in mind for getting the best effect from your caffeinated drink. If you are normally a heavy coffee drinker, try cutting back on coffee in preparation for an all-nighter, because the body tends to develop a tolerance to its effect.

If you normally don't drink coffee like me, you might opt for black tea during your all-nighter instead, since it has lower levels of caffeine than coffee, so you can avoid getting jittery.

If you want to make really good black tea here is a good recipe: 

How to brew black tea

Water! Interestingly, drinking two to three glasses of ice water each hour can be as effective for staying awake as a caffeinated beverage. The key is that dehydration causes grogginess that leaves you unable to focus and is also the source of most headaches; water is simply the best strategy to avoid these issues. The cold temperature of the water will also keep you alert if you take small sips throughout the night.

Peanut butter jelly sandwich! Grains are a good source of energy. When you eat carbohydrates, your body converts them into energy. Whole grains break down slowly, so they provide a steady source of energy. This is all about the taste. Having something sweet that has a lot of flavor, like jelly and peanut butter, which is still healthy can help you stay awake. Just make sure bread crumbs don’t fall on your keyboard as you work!

I have tried most of these and I can personally say that they have helped me stay awake at 1am in the morning working on school related projects. Give some of these a try and make sure you explore some new ones! You never know, making some of these snacks might also help you with your creative process while you are still working on that homework.

What are some of your favorite snacks? Comment bellow and let me know!

Making Your design ready for screen print

This post will teach you how to make your design ready to go on a screen by learning to separate the colors of your design and learn the reason behind doing the process of color separation.

A substrate is any surface that a design is going to be printed on, this can be a t-shirt, a bag etc. The more colors your design has, the more screens it will require to print. This could result on the project being more expensive and harder to do depending on the equipment you have available. If you are designing a logo or any other type of graphic for a client that is going to be screen printed for the first time, I recommend you use no more than two colors. I also recommend that you go with a simple design with big/ bold design elements. As you get used to the process and you become comfortable with aligning the screens you can use more colors and perhaps and go with a more detailed design. This post will show you how to make a color separation for a three-color screen-printing project for a white and dark substrate. ( a white and black t-shirt). 

Here are the general steps you need to follow in order to make your design ready for screen printing.

STEP 1:  

Have your design open in illustrator.

STEP 2:

Make three registration marks by drawing a circle with one vertical line and a horizontal line going through the circle. Place one at the top and two at the bottom. These marks will help you align the design once you print them to the screens. This will help you once you start the production process. Your marks should look something like this!

STEP 3:

Make each color its own layer.

 As you can see, we have two colors. Therefore, we will need two different screens. Each screen will carry one color just like this.  (The registration marks that we made in step 2 will help you align the design once it is on a screen. )

A good thing to remember if you are a graphic designer new to the screen-printing process is that the more simple and bigger the elements on your design, the easier it will be to align the screens for production. Also one thing to know is that bigger design elements print better than smaller ones because bigger elements are easier to wash out when you are in the process of making the screens ready for production.

Since hour design will be going to a white substrate (a white t-shirt), we do not have to worry about making another layer for the color white. If we were printing this design on a dark substrate (like a black t-shirt) or other color than white, we want to make sure to make another layer with the entire design white so our colors don’t get darker or change due to the t-shirts color. This is how it would look like if we were printing this on a black t-shirt.

Here is how the design would look like on a black t-shirt

Here are the color separations you would need.

Here is green.

Here is blue.

And here is the white. Remember, we add the color white on dark or colored substrates so that our colors remain consistent and do not change due to the color of the substrate that is being printed on.

And there it is! Your design is now ready for screen-printing. Make sure you save each layer as a different file.

How to make a screen

I have decided to make a quick short video about how to make a screen for screen printing. This video will show you how to make a screen. Enjoy!

PS: All pictures taken as well as the video that was recorded were all  edited using an Iphone 6! 

Screen Printing 101- The Tools

Small business help build a strong economy on any small town community. Most people are happy and willing to buy things that are locally made on their community. So if you are looking into starting a local owned business, you should consider on opening a small shirt design business in your community. You are probably wandering what kind of tools are needed for screen printing. There are a lot of tools and supplies that can be used in the screen printing process, but here I will provide you with a list of some of the basic equipment that is used. 

LIST OF COMMON TOOLS USED IN THE SCREEN PRINTING INDUSTRY:

This is where the design is placed. It determines the design and image output. It refers to the frame, the mesh and the photosensitive material on which the image is created.

It is made up of rubber held up by a rigid handle, either wood or plastic. It is used to help print the image that is on the screen onto the object that is being printed on. The rubber part is what touches the ink. For best results it is better to hold the squeegee at an angle. 

It’s the substance that is used to print the art work with. It is recommended that you use different screens for every color of ink so that every screen prints a certain color of the artwork. So if your design has the colors green, red, and blue you will need three separate screens for each color. 

Refers to the surface on which the design is to be printed on, it can be a t-shirt, bag, a koozie etc.

 Is a substance that is placed on the screen. This substance is what essentially carries the image and makes it visible. This substance once it’s exposed to light it will not let water or anything go through. Only the parts that were not exposed to light will be able to be removed with water. 

This machine holds the substrate as well as the screen. It also allows the screen to print on the substrate and is often the base of the entire screen printing unit. 

Having a dryer machine will help speed up the ink drying process. Most screen printing shops have some type of dryer in order to be more efficient. Drying the substrates after they are screen printed often gives better results. It also helps prevent ink from getting everywhere!

Are there any important screen printing tools that I missed? 

If you have any further questions or comments feel free to comment below!

Follow me on twitter: @Squeegee_Grafx 

Screen Printing 101- What is Screen Printing?

Do you ever wonder how your favorite band, video game or sports team t-shirts are made?

READ ON TO FIND OUT!

Before we start I would like for you to meet Squeaky the squeegee. 

Squeaky will be your teacher and he will teach you all there is to know about the world of screen printing. 

This week you will learn the basics about the screen printing process. You might be asking yourself.. "what is screen printing?".   Well lets start by asking our little friend Squeaky.

#HEYSQUEAKY what is screen printing?

The surfaces on which screen printing can be carried out are too many to be named. Any surface that can be stretched and printed on is a surface for screen printing. The CD covers you see are all screen printed. Beautiful cotton fabrics, silk and polyesters can all be screen printed on. Posters, signs, flyers, advertisements on buses, t-shirts and even watch dials are screen printed. Thus there are many applications of screen printing! 

If you have any questions about screen printing make sure you comment below and I will answer any questions you may have about the screen printing process!

THE 10 COMMANDMENTS FOR BEGINNING GRAPHIC DESIGNERS

This blog will teach you the essentials you need to know about the field of graphic design with an emphasis on screen printing, which is a form of print making- I will go into the details later. But for now I want to start with the basics, with the morals, rules and the mind set one needs to have in order to be not only successful, but happy in the field of graphic design.  

These are the rules and morals that every young graphic designer needs to follow if he or she wants to be successful in the field of graphic design. I have taken many courses about layout design, color theory, typography as well as printing. This knowledge has thought me the skills I need, but no class that I have taken has thought me the morals one needs to posses when you get into the field. These are based on my experience as a senior in college graphic designer can only be learned once you put everything you know into practice: 

There is a reason why some graphic designers are famous and some are not, find out why!. Find your style and find someone who represents that similar style and look up to them. They know more about the industry than you do and can give you tips on how to find the best solution to a problem.  Try to find a role model that represents who you are. They will become influential and will help you a lot in the long run. The reason is simple. If you feel down or seem to question why you are in the field or need inspiration, having someone to look up to for comfort or motivation can help a lot!

You don’t need to be prolific at drawing to benefit from keeping a small book in your bag or back pocket. Ideas tend to arrive at the strangest times, and being able to record them on the spot will help you remember them later. When you fill a book, date, number and shelve it. Soon your bookcase will be a library of your best thoughts and ideas!

Speculative work, or spec work, is a request by a potential client for uncompensated creative and design work at the inception of a project. Avoid this like the plague—it’s a devaluation of the entire design process and marginalizes our efforts as a whole. The AIGA- the professional association for design has great resources for dealing with spec work, including a sample letter that you can personalize and send to clients explaining why their request is unappreciated.  Go to AIGA.org to learn more.

Whether you are a newbie, a student or just in need of a refresher you should always try to stay up with new terms and old ones. Graphic design, like any profession, is littered with jargon and terms you may not be familiar with. I will make separate blog post dedicated to the most used terms in the industry. Knowing the terms will make it easier for you to communicate with clients but most importantly with other graphic designers and print shops. If you are a graphic designer you are pretty much the guy in the middle, the one that has to explain the customer why certain things can’t be done and you need to be able to communicate that in a way that is easy for the client to understand.  You also need to be able to communicate with and understand print terms so that everything prints out how it looks on screen so that there are no surprises once the entire project is done. 

Your work will be criticized, if you can’t handle criticism you will have a hard time in this field.  Sometimes you need to listen, and sometimes you need to defend your work. The best way to defend your work when being criticized is to explain your actions. Sometimes a client doesn’t understand why certain things are placed the way they are. You need to be able to explain why you chose certain colors or a certain layout. If you can’t do that then you have no reason to argue with your client. At the end, you know you have done the work and taken the classes needed to be where you are today. Sometimes you need to stand up for yourself, and that’s ok, as long as you also listen and not just talk. Remember, you are being paid to do your job, so you need to do it to the fullest and be confident with your work.

Picasso had his Blue and Rose Periods, Georgia O’Keeffe obsessed over flowers and animal bones. The difference between them and you? They were artists solving their own personal communication problems. We are designers, primarily tasked with solving the communication problems of others. Using one singular style or direction for multiple clients or projects will rarely be successful and, in retrospect, will look one-dimensional. You’ll never know as much about your clients’ businesses as they do, but part of our job as designers is to try. Learn as much as you possibly can at the inception of a project about your client’s business space, their goals, their competition and their history. Dedicate a half- or full-day download session, ask a lot of questions, and then shut up and listen. Besides, they are the ones who will pay you

Backing up your files is something you need to get into a habit of doing. I always recommend creating folders by naming them correctly and dating them to keep everything organized. Once you have organized your files, save them somewhere else. Use two flash drives instead of one, that way if you lose one you still have another one somewhere, but make sure you save your work on both flash drives so that both have your latest projects. I strongly recommend using some type of cloud drive, like Google drive or iCloud. These drives can be accessed anywhere there is internet connection so you don’t have to worry about brining your flash drive to class or work.

If you are looking for ideas, it’s ok to look at other people’s work, in fact, I encourage you do. However you shouldn’t copy someone else’s work.  You need to find your own solution to your own client’s problem. Not every solution will be able to solve the same problem. 

In order to get better in the field it helps to look at other people’s work with an analytical eye. This will help you understand why certain things work and why certain things don’t.  One way to do this is by engaging yourself in helpful criticism. I think of helpful criticism as a helpful evaluation. When you evaluate someone’s work you need to describe what elements in the piece help communicate the message, as well as elements that are not so well implemented or distract rather than help convey the message. You should give tips on what the designer could do to make the message more clear or make the piece pull the reader’s attention. 

Are you the sort of person who likes to push themselves?, improve your skills and produce the best work you can? Design as a discipline never stands still and as a designer you will be constantly developing. There are always new trends, new tools, new technologies, new theories, new sources of inspiration – a creative mind never stops learning. Graphic design also encompasses a variety of specialism too, so whether you want to tighten up your digital skills, master the art of print production, become perfect at packaging or tackle typography head on, there is always a new direction to pursue.