How To Achieve High Quality Prints
BE BIG, BE BOLD
Artwork that is too thin and too fine will not image well to a screen and may drop out entirely. For best results, steer away from super-fine lines and extensive detail.
Here’s an example of a bold font with different stroke weights. It’s likely to lose its fine detail if the font size is reduced and won’t correctly image during the screen-making process.
IT’S ALL ABOUT TYPE
More often than not, a design is made or broken based on its typeface. Be aware that some fonts are better for quality screen prints than others. Bold, block fonts, for example, have a higher chance of a clean print than serif and hand-written fonts. For best results, steer clear of fonts with super fine lines and be mindful of serif fonts with very thin feet, legs, ears, etc., and other fonts with letters that are prone to fill-in its counter or aperture ( such as “A”, “B” “P”, and more.) The size of your fonts is another consideration. Naturally, the smaller the fonts in your design-the less likely they are to print cleanly and legibly.
Serif and handwritten fonts become hard to read as they decrease in size due to their unique character anatomy. Block fonts, or Serifs, are easier to read and image better during the screen-making process.
SIMPLE IS BETTER
Vessel artwork is creative and can vary in style! However, designs with extensive detail or significant ink coverage may prove challenging to the screen-printing process. For best results, keep graphics simple and allow for elements to breathe. This design choice will make your designs more organized and easy to digest for your consumers when the finished product sits on store shelves.
This design is an example that places graphics too close together and uses fonts that are too detailed to image through a screen. To produce a printable design, try simplifying artwork, giving graphics space “to breathe,” and increasing the size of your serif and handwritten fonts.
ART FILE TYPE MATTERS
When choosing our screen-printing services, we require that our customers provide a vector art file for their chosen design. Vector art files are file names ending in .ai, .cdr, .eps. Vector files are created in drawing programs such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW. In order for a vector file to be usable it must be created in one of these types of programs. However, taking a bitmap file (.jpg, .png, .jpeg, .bmp) and importing it into a drawing program, and saving it as a .eps or .ai file will not make it a usable vector file.
Bitmap art utilizes pixels to create the image. Vector art saves the image as lines with their starting and ending points coordinates. Vector graphics can be resized without compromising the quality of the image while Bitmap art becomes jagged when enlarged. Details from Bitmap files cause the desired image to become altered and/or inferior quality.
When Bitmap files are received, conversions are needed (however, not always doable) and will have to be redrawn in a drawing program to make the file usable. Which, consequently, will result in the alteration of the logo/design and potential added service fees.
For more information on Vector files versus Bitmap files, view this YouTube explainer video.
Source: https://lasergods.com/