A silk screen is simply a rectangle frame, with a piece of mesh stretched across it very tightly.  Think of it as a picture frame without the glass and picture and a wedding veil stretched over it.  For as complex as shirt printing may seem, it is a very simple and tried and true way of producing a high quality image on apparel.

There are two types of frames for a silk screen.  The first is aluminum.  This is much more sturdy and can withhold many thousands of prints.  It is also very hard to bend and will keep shape nicely.  The second type of frame is a wood frame.  These frames are often less expensive, but are more susceptible to warping and breaking.  Frames come in all sizes depending on the needs of your print shop.  Many times, a common size will be 18″ x 24″.

The mesh on the inside can come in all different sizes as well.  The most common and versatile size is 110 mesh count.  This size is the most common for most printing situations.  There are also sizes that go as low as 56 all the way into the 300′s.  The lower the mesh count, the more ink that is able to pass through.  The higher mesh counts allow less ink to pass through.  Higher mesh counts also allow for more detail in your design, whereas the low mesh counts are for basic logos with not much complexity.

For an image to be transferred onto a screen, it is a several step process.  First the screen must be completely cleaned using emulsion removers, haze removers, and degreasers.  After this step, a light-sensitive emulsion is applied to the screen.  This is much like a photo emulsion and this process must be done in a darkroom much like a photographer would use.  After the emulsion has dried for several hours, a film printout is made of the image on to a transparency much like those that are used in a classroom setting for an overhead projector.  Next, the image is placed on the screen, and is exposed to light causing the parts that are not covered with the image to be fully exposed and hardened.  The image is then sprayed out with a high pressure water nozzle leaving a negative space for the image.  The final step is to let the screen dry and then you are ready to print merch with it.

Silk screen printing allows for several different types of inks to be used such as plastisol and water based.  The most common ink is plastisol and it is what you would typically find on a band t shirt.  Each color represented in a design must have its own screen thus making it a very tedious and precise process.  The ink is passed through the screen using a squeegee.  The ink is them cured on the shirt with extreme heat so that it dries.

Band merch is most often printed this way and this is the most cost effective method to printing your band t shirts.  Silk screen printing is an art in itself.  Designing for it is an art as well as you must take into consideration how it is printed.

However, the cost of using these shirts for your custom band merch can sometimes be astronomical in price due to the cost of the blanks that the printing company (us) has to aquire.  So when should you use this type of shirt?

For most bands or clothing companies just starting out, this can be a question they ask when getting their merch printed.  The number one reason why a band or clothing company would choose an American Apparel or Alternative shirt is simply asthetics.  The shirt has a better look, feel and fit than a traditional 50/50 or 100% cotton t-shirt.  Bottom line though, a shirt is still a shirt.  There is this trend within the music scene that one will not buy a shirt from a band or clothing company unless it is printed on American Apparel. The thing to determine is whether your fan base falls into this category.  While at shows you play or shows you go to of similar artists, look around and see what types of shirts the fans are wearing.  This will usually give you a good indication of which way you need to go.

If you are indeed just starting out and it is your first run of shirts, stick with a simple 100% cotton or 50/50 shirt from a brand like Hanes, Gildan, Fruit of the Loom, or Anvil.  Here’s why.

The first issue is obviously cost.  When printing on American Apparel or a comparable brand, the cost per shirt nears almost double compared to a regular basic shirt.  Your first run of shirts, should be to test the waters to see how well you are received with your new band merch and how well it will sell.  When printing on a basic shirt, the number of shirts to break even is much lower than if you were to print on a highend fashion fit shirt.

The second issue you must consider is the pricing of the shirt.  If you choose to go with a basic shirt, you can easily price your new merch at $10/shirt and easily make a profit.  However, if you try to do that with a high end shirt, your profit margin will be extremely small because of your production costs.  If this is the case, you may need to raise the price of the shirt.  You then may run into the complications of not selling many shirts based on the higher price tag.

The third issue that one must consider is your band’s budget.  If you only have a budget of $500, you will not be able to get the same amount of shirts for each type of shirts.  It is often better when starting out, to have more shirts on hand, not only to sell more and make a better profit, but also to get your name out.  Would you rather sell out of 25 shirts on American Apparel or 50 shirts of Hanes.  Probably the latter.  Not only are more shirts of your band circulated, you will also be making a better profit.

The  main things to think about when starting to choose brands of shirts is how well it will work within your budget, genre, deomographic, and how well established your band or company is.  If you are just starting out, try not to print the most expensive shirt that only your family and best friends will by leaving you stuck with a box full of shirts that you cannot unload and a whole in your bands budget.

There are many different theories out there as to what you should first do when you are forming your band and are trying to generate some revenue. The first thing that most bands will attempt is to record. This is a completely legitimate first step that many take and find great success. After all, this is what it is all about…the music. A good recording can skyrocket your career and get you label attention. Once you have your recording, what will you do with it?

It is sad to say that the CD is now almost obsolete. Even 5 years ago, a band could put out their EP or full length and make a decent profit on it at show or in their online merch store. Those days are however completely gone. Now if you try to sell your music at a show, you will more than likely be shrugged off or asked what your myspace or purevolume addresses are. Fans are just not willing to pay for their music anymore as we have, I feel, officially entered into the digital age of music. This then puts into question, what comes first – the recording or the merch?

If you put up a good amount of cash to record your first EP, you will have a quality recording, but more than likely will have nothing monetarily to show for it. In years past, you could either record or buy custom band merch, and either one would profit in order to fund the other. This is not the case anymore.

It is almost imperative now that you first buy your custom band merchandise in order to fund your recording sessions. Even more so, the business of band merch has exploded in the last 2 years and we are seeing even more detailed designs, full print shirts, gold foil and much more. The talent pool of designers is in full blossom and many are still under the age of 18.

If your band is looking for amazing designs, you can pretty much find anyone that designs on Myspace, or you can check out the best of the best at Emptees. There you can find the top designers in the industry. While you may have to shell out some bucks to get one of them, the return is well worth it for a design that will sell extremely well. Often times, a design can make or break a bands merch box. Spend that extra money to get a great design.

The industry is in a huge shift. There are more bands out there thus making even more competition. Music is at its new height, yet losing money at avalanche speed. The rise of custom band merch is huge at will only continue to get stronger. By investing in this end of your business (yes, your band is your business) you can then fund your other investments.

By delaying your recording, you can refine your sound and have better song selection when you record, you can build a fan base just by playing shows and selling custom band merchandise, and will save and make more money in the long run by initially investing in custom band merch.

Let’s start with resolution. You may already know of resolution from using a digital camera. Most typical digital cameras will take photos at around 300 DPI by default. DPI stands for Dots Per Inch meaning that within a square inch there will be 300 colored dots. This often produces a high quality image that can be zoomed in on fairly easily. The default resolution for the internet is 72 dpi and is mo lower in quality than that of a digital photo. Herein lies our problem. Many bands simply pull an image off of the internet and then proceed to mess with and manipulate the image to produce their custom band merchandise. Thus, when submitting the artwork to us for a full chest print, the image is often far too small and would be very blurry and pixelated when blown up to the actual size that it must be. How do you correct this problem. The answer is you really can’t. You must design your artwork at the actual size that you would like it printed at.

If you have access to it, Adobe Illustrator eliminates the problem of sizing since it is a vector based program. What this means is that when you draw an image in this program, you can scale up and down without any loss in detail simply because each line has a point A to point B and thus is just scaled accordingly when it is resized. Illustrator is ideal for most screen printers because the image can be easily manipulated, but it takes some getting used to for a band to design their custom band merch.

The best and most accessible way to produce custom band merchandise is to use Adobe Photoshop. Most people are already familiar with the program or with something of that nature. When we go about designing custom band merch, we have some general guidelines as to where we want to start.

1. Image Size – We almost always start with a very large document to give us plenty of room to work with. In Photoshop, open up a new document and and create it with a size of 13 inches wide by 15 inches tall. Make sure the resolution is at 300 dpi.

You can also create the image in pixels such as 3900 pixels by 4500 pixels with a resolution of 300 dpi.

Once you have your document created, you can now begin to design your merch. There are endless possibilities when designing and this entry is not to inform you on that. We trust you can use your own creativity for that. However there are a few key concepts that very useful when designing.

Unless you are having someone print DTG (Direct to Garment) you will want to use solid colors. For instance, if you have blue in your design, make sure the blue is all the exact same color. Otherwise you will be charged separately for each blue that you use. There are ways to make shadings and gradients which are much more complicated. All colors must be solid when screen printing so taking a photo of something is not going to print well at all unless you are using 4 color process cmyk printing. Another thing to help us out as printers is to place all of your colors on their very own layer. This makes it much easier for us to see what is going on and exactly how many colors are being used.

Most designs at this size and resolution work just fine. Make sure that your edges do not look blurry and pixelated and you should be fine.

By following these guidelines, your custom band merch should be very easy to translate to a t shirt, hoodie, or zip up.

We are glad to finally get this site up and are planning to update this blog frequently with news, pictures of new merch we are printing, tutorials on how to print and design and much more.  Thanks to everyone that helped get this new site up.  Look forward to hearing from new and old friends alike.