T-Shirts

While our prices do depend on many factors; such as, artwork, order size, garment quality, and deadline, we’ve put together a list of some tips to keep your costs down and save a bit of money on your order.

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Behind the Scenes: The Art of Designing Custom Merchandise That Stands Out

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ICON Printing Ltd, 1 Mentmore Terrace, London E8 3PN - Registered in England, Company No: 07369266 | Website by Page

Inspiration

Our Favourite This Week: It’s Pop It’s Art Series

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This week we stumbled upon some print inspiration with a series, titled ‘It’s Pop It’s Art’.

Commissioned by Sony ATV as their first collection exploring song titles, the series re-imagines famous song lyrics into printed artworks.

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Tips and tricks

Behind the Scenes: The Art of Designing Custom Merchandise That Stands Out

Tips and tricks

The ROI of Custom Merchandise: How Branded Swag Can Boost Your Business

Designer Profiles, Features

Screen Printing Charlene Man’s Illustrations

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Transnational artist, Charlene Man, shuffles between work in London and Hong Kong. Her art covers a range of mediums, including illustration, zines, and mural painting.

We’ve printed some t-shirts for Charlene and couldn’t wait to check out some more of her work.

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Behind the Scenes: The Art of Designing Custom Merchandise That Stands Out

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The ROI of Custom Merchandise: How Branded Swag Can Boost Your Business

Inspiration, What's On

Take a trip at London Illustration Fair’s psychedelic showcase

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This weekend the London Illustration Fair returns to the Hoxton Arches with their Summer Festival: Psychedelia. The three day celebration of mind-bending work showcases visual treats from illustrators, designers, collectives, and print studios working within the UK. (more…)

Tips and tricks

Behind the Scenes: The Art of Designing Custom Merchandise That Stands Out

Tips and tricks

The ROI of Custom Merchandise: How Branded Swag Can Boost Your Business

Support

An Introduction to Screen Printing

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Screen printing is just one of many services we offer. As well as t-shirts, the screen printing process is also ideal for producing personalised hoodies and tote bags. But how exactly does it work?

As the name suggests, an important part of this particular process is the screen itself. This is basically a polyester woven mesh that is stretched over an aluminium frame. During a pre-press process, a stencil of your artwork will be made by printing the design onto a sheet of clear film and placing it over the top of the screen, which will be coated with an emulsion or film. The screen is then exposed and cleaned. When this is done, an open area of mesh in the shape of your design will be left on the screen, while the surrounding areas of negative space will be blocked out by the remaining emulsion.

Above: An exposed screen in the press, ready for the next stage of printing

Ink is then pulled across the entire screen using a squeegee. The fine mesh of the screen allows the ink to pass freely through the open areas of the stencil and onto the garment beneath, and the emulsion successfully prevents any excess from getting through.

Unlike other processes, such as DTG Printing which can be used for intricate full colour designs, during screen printing designs are printed one colour at a time. Each colour will require its own screen. For example, a screen printed t-shirt featuring a red, yellow and blue design will need three screens. The more colourful the design, the more screens it will need.

Before any printing takes place, it’s important that you prepare your artwork by separating it into different coloured layers. When setting up the press, we will add registration marks to the screens to ensure the colours remain in the right place and the design is aligned properly during printing. If you’d like your design to be printed onto a coloured garment then an initial base layer will be required to ensure the rest of the colours remain bright.

Above: Inks are carefully mixed to match the colours of your design

We can print up to 10 colours per item and have a number of different inks at our disposal. We are also able to match Pantone PMS colours, so your design will look as vibrant printed as it does on the screen.

We offer a variety of screen printing methods, each of which yield very different results. For example, there is halftone printing, which enables single or multiple coloured designs to be printed in gradients. There is also discharge ink printing, which replaces the colour of the fabric itself with another of your choosing.

If you’d like to find out more, please visit our page about screen printing. Here you will also find some pointers on preparing your artwork for print, as well as a full breakdown of our prices. If you have any other questions about the process, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Tips and tricks

Behind the Scenes: The Art of Designing Custom Merchandise That Stands Out

Tips and tricks

The ROI of Custom Merchandise: How Branded Swag Can Boost Your Business

Support

The Screen Printing Process: Start To Finish

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We are big on t-shirt screen printing here at Icon Printing. If you are after long lasting, super durable print results – this is the print method to go for. Here is a behind the scenes peek into what happens when we screen print your t-shirts…

1. Preparing your artwork…

We normally require a vector file for screen printing; so anything that is created in Adobe Illustrator is ideal. We can work with other file types, but an extra artworking cost may occur. Once we have your vector file, we check it over – making sure all the colour layers are separated and that there are no gradients or hair line graphic elements that may not transfer to screen properly.

2. Transferring your artwork to the screens…

Your artwork is then exposed to the screen. This usually done using photosensitive emulsion in a light booth (shown above). If your artwork has more than one colour in it – each colour will need to be exposed to a separate screen.

3. Mixing the ink…

The great thing about screen printing is that any colour can be matched perfectly. This is usually done by weight, to ensure precision colour matching – which is especially important when matching Pantone© colours. We are also able to print using neon and florescent colours, glow in the dark and light reflective ink to name a few.

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Tips and tricks

Behind the Scenes: The Art of Designing Custom Merchandise That Stands Out

Tips and tricks

The ROI of Custom Merchandise: How Branded Swag Can Boost Your Business

Products, Support

What’s the best t-shirt for printing on a budget?

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We often get asked which t-shirt gives the best print results. If we were to recommend just one from the vast range we stock, we’d go for the GILDAN Softstyle Adult Ringspun T-Shirt (GD001).

Here’s why…

PRICE – It’s the cheapest t-shirt we stock. They’re so reasonable and great value for money, price per unit starts at just £1.91

QUALITY – We stock another Gildan – the Heavy Cotton Adult T-shirt (GD005), that comes in at the same price as our recommended Softstyle Gildan, but the quality is noticeably different. The Heavy Cotton Gildan isn’t as soft, has a baggier fit and isn’t finished as nicely – the hem stitching is really basic.

PRINTABILITY – This Softstyle Gildan is 100% cotton, so any of the print techniques we offer will take to it really well. It washes and wears well too. This style comes in so many different colours, the brand Gildan are great for that.

WEARABILITY – It’s very soft and comfortable to wear. It is a perfect length and the sleeves don’t gape too much.

N.B. If we were to recommend a t-shirt that produces even better print results (this one does come with a slightly higher pricier tag), we would go for anything by Earth Positive. These t-shirts give outstanding print results, as the weave is nice and tight. So, if you’re feeling flush – these are definitely the ones to go for!

The reason we stock so many T-shirts, is because we want to be able to offer something for every budget. And if you still can’t find exactly what you’re looking for, we can help you find it. Choosing a T-shirt depends on your intended spend per unit and what you’re actually going to use your printed T-shirt for. It could be a promotional give away, fashion resale or for uniform, etc. We reckon our recommended Gildan would fit the bill for all of these requirements, it really is a great tee.

If you would like any more information on the types of custom t-shirt printing we offer, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Tips and tricks

Behind the Scenes: The Art of Designing Custom Merchandise That Stands Out

Tips and tricks

The ROI of Custom Merchandise: How Branded Swag Can Boost Your Business

Support, Tips and tricks

5 Tips on Designing Artwork for Screen Printing

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Here are a few important pointers on what not to do when creating your artwork. By following these guidelines it will maximise the quality of your screen printed garment.

1. Web Images

Using images from the web can be handy, but note that most of the time these images are very small and set to only 72 dpi (very low image quality). Web designers use the lowest resolution and size possible so that their pages load fast while keeping the images looking good. Due to this, the image downloaded is designed to look good at the relatively small size it appears on screen and not printed out here in the real world. When it comes to screen printing, these forms of photo images should be avoided altogether – but vector based images are absolutely fine.

As shown above, many internet images are very pixelated and blurred.

2. Details

Try to avoid very small negative spaces as they can fill in or “bleed”. Ink is a fluid and therefore spreads a little bit by nature. So a very small negative space (such as the words “Screen Printing” – shown in the image below) can be filled in by the ink that surrounds it pretty easily. However, there is no hard and fast rule for avoiding bleed on small type/detailing, so every piece of artwork will be evaluated on a case by case basis. However, a good general guideline is to use fonts at or above 12 points and lines or outlines stroke size larger than 0.3 pt.

The fine or “light” version of this typeface is not a good choice, the hairline box detail also wouldn’t print.

3. Illustrator Effects

Illustrator has some cool effect options, but you’ve got to be careful when using them – especially when creating artwork for screen printing. Try to avoid drop shadow or gradient effects. These often look good (at first glance) and add dimension, but they complicate your file by mixing image types and this type of effect doesn’t translate to the screen successfully. If you do want a slight shaded area effect or gradient within your design or logo, it will need to be made up of a series of very small dots (when viewed close-up) that from a distance, create the look of a gradient or difference in tone. It is more time consuming, but the outcome is a much better print.

4. Transparencies

In Illustrator, when two shapes overlap and the one on top has opacity set lower than 100%, the color of the shape below it will affect its color. For example (see below), when the circle on the bottom is red and the one on top is blue with 50% opacity, the overlapping portion is violet. But when it comes down to printing, it almost never works out like that due to unpredictable ink transparencies and intermingling pigments. If you’ve got a red + blue = violet type scenario, use a spot color violet instead of transparencies.

5. Problem Colours

Inks have varying degrees of transparency. A few color ranges are very transparent and do not look good when printed on a particular colour under base – whether that’s another ink layer or your actual garment colour. This can leave areas looking splotchy, washed out and generally poor. Darker blues tend to be one of these and, unless you’re printing on to white garments, avoid using them. Another one to look out for, is bright fluorescent inks, they too are very transparent and tend to lighten up and lose brightness when printed on an under base.

If you have any questions about your artwork, we are here to help! Drop us an email or just give us a ring –

sales@iconprinting.com or on 0207 183 8431

Tips and tricks

Behind the Scenes: The Art of Designing Custom Merchandise That Stands Out

Tips and tricks

The ROI of Custom Merchandise: How Branded Swag Can Boost Your Business

Designer Profiles

Printed Garment Inspiration – ZOE KARSSEN

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Every once in a while a T-shirt line suddenly appears and proceeds to take the fashion world by storm. This is exactly what happened with the Dutch luxury, printed T-shirt brand Zoe Karssen a mere 18 months ago. The label is a creative partnership between Quince and Zoe Karssen, built on the foundations of cool, easy to wear fashion with a playful, rock n roll twist. The collection channels laid back chic and is an obvious hit.

I personally first came across the brand six months ago whilst on a trip to the ‘t-shirt capital’ that is Australia – well, they have the weather for it! I was enjoying a stroll down the very cool Chapel Street in Melbourne, when I came across a T-Shirt only boutique, called Black Books. Their selection of Karssen tees took pride of place along one wall, and it was love at first sight. Not only was I drawn to their irresistibly understated tongue-in-cheek slogans and bold imagery, but the detail that came with it – even though they initially seemed so low-key and well…simple.

There was the topstitching details, unfinished edges and drop hems to the reverse of some, the pared down colour pallet and my favourite touch – the use of screen printing on the front inside of the garment. This gave a wonderful subtle, almost preworn look to the designs. Each design felt different, carrying its own selection of quirks with it. I had great difficulty in whittling my choices down and not immediately walking out with every single style they had.

It’s no wonder they’ve been picked up by big retailers like Liberty, Net-a-Porter and Harrods. The collection delivers a healthy injection of super-cool “I just threw this on” to any outfit.

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Behind the Scenes: The Art of Designing Custom Merchandise That Stands Out

Tips and tricks

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Our Favourite This Week: It’s Pop It’s Art Series

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