Larger, standard sized prints, I like to use three across the top and three across the bottom. This gives me more points to reference for larger designs and definitely helps. This will make sure nothing is left out or falls out of place on your design. Bonus points if you use the spot colors to mark what colors are to be printed on each film. You should now only see the spot colors you have in your design plus the registration marks.
If any part of your design is missing, it is not set to a spot color. This is a great indicator that will tell you to go back and make that object a spot color. You can also go through only showing one color at a time to confirm what will be printing on each film.
In the video I go through how to print using ImagePrint — a very simple process. As long as we have the artwork setup correctly, printing our films will be the easiest part of the process. The process may seem daunting for your first time, but sticking to it for a couple of jobs will help make this second nature and extremely easy for you quickly. I would recommend you even separate some test designs in this manner to get used to it.
There are all kinds of tips, tricks, and cool ideas out there to help each individual separate artwork in the way that works best for them. Please look into some of those ideas as everyone has a different take on separations. This guide is meant to give you a base to start from and a way to separate most simple designs. Please feel free to reach out with any questions, ideas, comments or suggestions. They are a promotional item that people can actually use, and they have the added bonus of being an advertisement for you.
In this post, Adobe Illustrator will be used to create a three-color screen print using a fictional company logo, and have it set up to allow a screen printer to easily print the color separations that create the separate screens for each color print. Be sure to communicate with your printer as they will specify their requirements, and will often give you tips for avoiding potential issues in the process.
As the t-shirt is going to be printed in three colors, we have to create separate artwork for each layer of color. Each of these layers interact with each other to form a complete image. Examples of Trap, Knockout and Overprint. There are three artwork techniques commonly used for this type of printing: Trap, Knockout and Overprint. Screen printing is not always an exact printing technique, especially when printing onto fabric surfaces; for this reason the Knockout technique is rarely used, as it relies on printing a color precisely in a gap left on the bottom color.
The third technique, Overprint, is the easiest to achieve as the top color prints directly on top of the bottom color; often this produces a new color, as the top ink color is not always opaque. The most reliable way to produce artwork for screen printing is to manually prepare it in Adobe Illustrator. Each of the three colors is going to form a separate artwork in a separate layer, using elements from the main image for each color.
Using Layers does not affect how your artwork is output by your screen printer; it just makes it easier for you to work on. Opening the vector artwork in Illustrator presents the graphic in Layer 1. Select the drop-down menu in the Layers window and select Duplicate Layer twice, to produce three layers of the same graphic; name the three layers after their respective colors, as this will help prevent confusion later on.
Ensure the order of the colors is correct: the bottom layer is White; the next color layer is Orange; and the top layer is the Dark Red, which will be printed last, on top of the other colors. Layers being created and renamed. At this stage — because the artwork is being prepared to be printed on a dark t-shirt — create a fourth layer for a temporary background color and name it Temporary Background.
A rectangle is drawn the full size of the art board, and given a dark color; this layer will be removed later in the process. Drag the layer to the bottom of the layers, and Lock it. Each color of your artwork produces a separate screen, and the order in which the colors are printed is usually from the lightest to the darkest color.
A Temporary Background layer is created. The first layer to be worked on, is the bottom White layer. Hide the Orange and Dark Red layers by clicking the Eye icon next to their layers, and make sure the White layer is selected in the Layers window by clicking on its name. As the artwork layer was duplicated in full, all the objects of the graphic are on this layer; some objects must be removed, leaving the shapes that form the white outline of the rocket, the text, and the orange fan shapes used in the background.
Outline Stroke. This ensures consistency if the artwork needs to be resized Strokes can often be pushed out of proportion when resized with the Scale tool. Spot colo-wa-wah? An underwha? There was set up and print prep that needed to go into every design. While Photoshop and Corel Draw might be the favorite of most print shop art departments, I will forever stand by my opinion that Illustrator is the best and easiest design program for creating graphics for screen printing.
The print flow is better for sending to RIP software, and your artwork is vector graphics so you can scale it up and down without pixelation. I also think it is second to only inDesign when it comes to creating type based artwork. So this guide is not going to teach you the basics of Illustrator.
This guide contains all of the things I think are important to creating screen printing graphics in Illustrator. Part 2 is all about typesetting. One of the best practices if you are using Illustrator for screen printing is to maintain a spot color library of the colors you work with all the time. Another tip is to use a template for your t-shirt designs. This template should be the same size film positive you use so you can build the design with the final outcome in mind.
You may also use the same template or another one if you are designing for a client. Click here to view our Adobe Illustrator template. Once a design is made you are able to print each spot color in the design as a film positive for screen printing.
The film positives will then be exposed onto a screen to make a stencil.
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