With Summer finally here, the high street will soon be awash with a swath of new ‘must-have’ items. And whilst the 80’s theme, comprising bold, bright colours and big, bouffant hair, looks set to make a comeback, there are some things from twenty years ago that are definitely best left behind – like elements of the printing process for starters!
When Club Row Creations launched over 22 years ago (wow, where did that time go?!), the machines and inks that we used were pretty basic – the norm was 4 or 6 colour carousel manual and semi-automatic printing machines using standard water-based inks for textiles.
Nowadays it’s a totally different story – the most common ink today is Plastisol, which is easy to print with (the ink doesn’t dry in the screen like water-based versions do), very opaque and adheres to most textiles. Other popular inks are discharge inks (used to print light colours onto dark shirts by removing the dye from the garment) and glitter and metallic inks (which contain small metallic particles for that fabulous looking ‘bling’ effect!). These days our machines can print a minimum of 10 – 15 colours too; ideal for the evermore outrageous and challenging custom t-shirt ideas that our customers throw at us!
Yet amongst all the technological innovations and modernisation, the basic technique of screen printing hasn’t changed that much – the biggest changes have taken place in artwork supply and preparation.
When we started out 22 years ago, before the internet (yes, there was a time when we didn’t turn to the internet for everything?!!), all artwork was supplied as ‘paste up’ – the design would be black, stuck on a white board with an overlay to indicate the different print colours. What’s more, artwork would be sent to us by bike or post (remember the good ol’ courier bike?) and we would then transfer the design onto film positives with our PMT camera. Full colour or four colour process designs would usually be sent to us as hard copy (not even CD’s were used back then!) which would then be scanned into a computer and separated onto film. In other words, a lot of hard work!!
Fortunately the 21st Century dawned and artwork is now either sent by email, via an FTP site or by using clever ‘file sharing’ websites which allow you to upload and download big files in a jiffy.
The important thing is that even after 22 years, we at Club Row Creations are just as passionate about printing today as we were back then. Enough said!