28 Feb Designing a T-shirt for screen print

Maybe it is because I was born in the 80s, but man, a bright, screen-printed T-shirt makes me happy. I run with the Muizenberg Trail Dawgs and felt like creating a leisure t-shirt for our pack of trail runners (who runs with their dogs). I decided to try my hand at a halftone screen design, that overlays to form mountains within the Muizies Trail Dawgs letterforms.

Layered colour gives the illusion of gradients

The design is build up using three colours that are printed on top of each other.
First, the peachy coral is printed using a solid screen that lets through ink in the shape of the lettering. After that, a halftone screen that only lets through dots of ink is used to print the light blue on top (see screen 2). Another halftone screen (screen 3) is then used to print the dark blue on top of the first two colours. This results in a layered print that appears to use more than three colours.

Off to the printers

We worked with the team at Lucky Friday. They made silkscreens from the artwork we supplied and matched the ink colour to the Pantone codes we provided. We received colour strike-offs to approve and they then made up a few t-shirt samples. The hand printing process creates interesting variations in the final prints. Polynation supplied the T-shirts, and we were impressed with the range of apparel they have available to choose from. They have a factory that makes all their garments in Salt River, Cape Town.

A Range of T-shirts ready to wear

We ended up printing the shirts in white, navy and charcoal melange on a fitted men’s and women’s cut as well as a 100% cotton classic cut t-shirts.

Need to get some prints of your own done? phone Dean at Polynation on 021 447 7731.
You can also chat with us about custom design work for your brand by contacting us here.