Screen Printing History, Process, and Prices (what you need to know)

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There’s a lot of different ways out there to take an image and have it printed onto just about any surface imaginable. One of the oldest styles of printing is still alive, and well today, this method is none other than screen printing. It’s a relatively straightforward process that results in extremely high-quality prints, time and time again. People also gravitate towards screen printing because of the large variety of different materials that an image can be placed on. Of course, there’s a lot more to the entire process than just finding an image and then putting it into the machine to get the work done.

To get a better understanding of what screen printing is and why it’s endured all of these years, it’s important to start at the very beginning:

The History Of Screen Printing

Examples of screen printing as we know it today can be traced back to the early first millennium in China, but it didn’t become popular in the Western world until around the 1800s.

By the 1900s, screen printing was recognized as one of the most versatile printing methods possible thanks to the sheer number of materials it worked with effectively. It was not uncommon to find underground printers of various subcultures using the technique to quickly and effectively disseminate any information of their choosing.

As a whole, however, it wasn’t until the 1960s that screen printing was brought to the forefront of the art world by Andy Warhol through his screen-printed depictions of Marilyn Monroe.

Even more time elapsed, and it was discovered that screen printing was a very effective way to print designs onto garments. This quickly created an entire industry around customized t-shirts where any design could be very quickly reproduced on a mass scale. In modern times specialized equipment is

Basic Screen Printing Process

A lot more goes into the process than what I’ll describe here. The following is an absolute bare-bones description of the screen printing process to help understand the general process:

Screen printing involves firstly the use of a screen that is made out of mesh stretched across the frame. Early screen printing used silk mesh, but now synthetic materials like nylon are often employed. The fineness of the mesh can be changed to make a higher-level detail in the finished product. From there, a stencil is made in such a way that all of the negative space that ink shouldn’t go on is blocked, leaving only the negative image of the design.

After a few other preparatory steps to the mesh itself, after which the entire unit is placed on top of the material that will have the final printed design placed onto it. From there ink is applied to the mesh and then forced through the individual holes using a squeegee bar. After the ink is in the mesh itself, the squeegee bar is brought back again which transfers the ink onto the final material. From there different screens will be applied that have different stencils based on what colors need to be placed where. Each screen will vary slightly and allows more or less ink to be placed in them to make certain areas more vibrant than others.

The benefit of this method would be that ink is directly transferred to the material in question instead of simply resting on top of it. That means screen-printed designs are a lot more resistant to the elements compared to other print techniques.

Why Is Screen Printing Still Relevant Today?

Even with the advent of digital printing, screen printed materials still show up en masse in modern life because the methods used are well understood and lend themselves to excellently produced work.

Relatively Low Cost

Most of the costs associated with screen printing would be the prices of the ink used as well as the creation of the initial stencil. Once the first stencil has been made, every subsequent print job using it will go down in price since it is effectively subsidizing the creation of the stencil in the first place. That means for bigger jobs, screen printing is a very cost-effective way to create a large number of completed works with only a small initial investment being necessary.

Extremely High Quality

Few other methods can create a high quality typical of screen printing. Since it’s mainly an analog process a wide array of color palettes can be employed thanks to the fact that it’s simply a matter of modifying already existing ink or layering different colors on top of each other until the desired hue is achieved. Also, screen printed materials are ludicrously simple to add supplementary treatments to that will make them resistant to UV rays or otherwise protected from the elements. The way the ink is layered on using the mesh also leads to very defined edges that create an image that pops out to viewers.

Unique Prints That Stand Out

Screen printing is perhaps one of the few printing methods that still create end products that seem almost hand-made. The ink soaks in much deeper using this technique compared to other methods, leading to a much more vibrant final image since more layers can be applied over time. The edges of the design will be extremely well defined while the thicker ink allows for designs that seem much more authentic versus something hastily printed on to a material for a quick buck.

Insanely Versatile

The sheer number of materials that screen printing can transfer an image to is part of its enduring popularity. Everything from wood to specially treated materials is on offer. The main difficult material used in screen printing would be fabrics that makeup garments. Other printing methods leave an image that won’t transfer properly or if it does transfers in such a way that simply won’t have a lot of longevity. This high-quality printing job is infinitely repeatable regardless of the material used. Many print shops such as Thrive Screen Printing use this versatility to offer a wide array of possible garment choices should someone require. A single stencil can be placed on these different materials with very little extra preparation required. It is not uncommon for someone to begin with screen printed materials with the end goal of placing those designs on a wider array of materials as necessary.

Well Developed Industry

Since screen printing techniques have such a long history compared to newer methods, a lot of effort has been put into perfecting the techniques used. The end result in modern times is a highly dependable system that can be very easily replicated as well as kept functioning with relatively little maintenance. Unlike digital printing, there is seldom any industry shattering changes to the software or hardware used, which would require a print shop to change their current setup drastically. The analog nature of screen printing also reduces the overall complexity of each piece of equipment, which helps to keep costs low.

Perfect For High Volume Jobs

Using modern industrial techniques it is ludicrously simple to make a machine that can very quickly produce finished designs. Because of this, many manufacturers who need a large number of finished products rely on the ease and speed at which screen printed materials can be produced to satisfy demand quickly. Different screens are used for different parts of the printing job depending on where color needs to go, modern machines can quickly cycle between these screens to make what was previously a very labor-intensive process happen in the blink of an eye. The application of colors is also kept extremely consistent using these machines versus the uneven squeegeeing that can happen with human hands.

Extreme Durability

The fact that the ink actually moves into the substrate it is placed onto makes the images extremely long-lasting. Surface level printing techniques are notorious for creating images that won’t stand the test of time. With screen printing techniques, you have a design that’s as much a part of the material as the material itself. In effect, to destroy the transferred design, you’ll need to destroy the material itself. This is especially poignant in the garment manufacturing industry since cheaper printing methods will often leave a design that will slowly decay until it is unrecognizable. 

Conclusion

All of this comes together to show that screen printing is one of the most valuable techniques ever developed for the print industry. People will always need high-quality designs transferred to materials simply and in a fashion that is meant to last. Once the design has a stencil created, it’s extremely straightforward to scale that design as necessary in a cost-effective way. Large-volume jobs are often done using screen printing methods because the price per print goes down the more anyone stencil is used. The fact that each design is durable and of high quality makes it even easier for large manufacturers to commit to a screen printing operation at the end of the day. Screen printing is only becoming more and more streamlined as time goes on, the main barriers are the initial start-up costs, but as the techniques for making stencils become more simple and easy to modify these costs are going down. In the end, screen printing isn’t just keeping its place in the world of print, but solidifying it day after day.

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