T-Shirt Fun Days with Dale McLeod!

On our last 2 days of class in Digital Photography, we are extremely fortunate to have no final exam AND a real live screenprinter, named Dale McLeod, here in the classroom to do a fun demonstration of how the pro's print t-shirts!

If you are interested in having a t-shirt made of one of your designs during the class period, there are some guidelines to consider (some of these guidelines are standard screenprinting guidelines and some are because we are working with a limited time frame and limited, but portable!, equipment).

1. All you have to pay for is the t-shirt itself and Mr. McLeod gets t-shirts very, very cheap!
   Your choices are:
   
   • Bella Ladies' Baby Rib Knit Short Sleeve Crew Neck T-Shirt screen printed with white, black, or 1 color ink, sizes S, M, L, XL, and 2XL available (please note that these t-shirts run very small!)—$5.00 each
     
   • Black Gildan Ultra Cotton T-Shirt screen printed with white or 1 light-color ink, sizes S, M, L, XL, 2XL, 3XL, 4XL, 5XL available—$4.00 each
     
   • White Gildan Ultra Cotton T-Shirt screen printed with black or 1 color ink, sizes S, M, L, XL, 2XL, 3XL, 4XL, 5XL available—$3.00 each
   • Or you can bring in your own t-shirt and print on it for free!
2. You can choose to do your design of anything that's school appropriate and not protected by Copyright (create something that you would actually want to wear!).
3. Make sure your artwork is clean, simple, and camera-ready. The best software program to use is Adobe Illustrator. Adobe Photoshop works, too, but make sure you artwork is clean, simple, camera-ready, and 200 d.p.i. in resolution. You can also hand-draw your artwork on clean white paper with black, black ink.
4. Try to make your artwork fit in a 2.5 inch square so that we can make sure to have enough screens and supplies to give everyone a chance. Depending on how many students sign up to do this, each student might be able to do bigger pieces of artwork.
5. No matter what color ink you want to have your t-shirt printed in, you need your artwork to be black. For instance, if you want to have a white happy face screenprinted on a black t-shirt, then the printed out artwork you give Mr. McLeod needs to be a black happy face printed on white paper (FYI, you would give him the exact same artwork if you wanted a red happy face on a white t-shirt).
6. If you have any gradients or screens (shades) in your artwork, please realize that anything darker than 80% will look like 100% (the dots blend together) and anything lighter than 20% will disappear because the dots are too small.
7. When making any lines or outlining any shape in Illustrator or Photoshop, make the minimum stroke size for black or any color ink on a white shirt 1 point thickness. If you are printing white ink on a black shirt, the minimum stroke size needs to be 2 points.
8. When you print out your artwork, print 2 copies actual size that you want it on the t-shirt. One copy will be given to Mr. McLeod to make the screen (make sure to trim this one as close as possible to the bounding box with scissors, and darken the middle of any significant black area—where it's usually lighter—with a sharpie marker).  The other copy is to tape in position on your shirt as a guide. The best way to do this is with the shirt on, in front of a mirror.
9. If you want to screenprint bigger artwork, more than 1 color ink, or multiple t-shirts, please email Mr. McLeod at dmcl@lonecloud.com to ask him if it's possible to do what you want to do on one of the "T-Shirt Fun Days" or if you need to schedule time with him outside of class.
10. If you have screens (tints or shades) in your artwork in Photoshop, you must set the screen frequency to 53 lpi for black ink on white t-shirt and 40 lpi for white ink on a black t-shirt. The way to do this is the following:
    1. Make sure you're in Grayscale mode and that the resolution is 200 dpi. To change the color mode, go to Image, Mode, Grayscale (click "Don't Flatten" if it asks). To change the resolution, go to Image, Image Size and type in 200 pixels/inch for the resolution.
    2. Use any shade of gray as you are painting, but remember that 20% gray and lighter will disappear and 80% gray and darker will just look 100%.
    3. When it comes time to print, choose File, Print with Preview, and make the following adjustments in the Print dialog box.
       • Make sure "Show More Options" is checked in the lower left corner and then select Output from the menu just below that.
       • Click on Screen and UNcheck "Use Printer's Default Screen." Type in 53 lines/inch if you are printing black ink and 40 lines/inch if you are printing white or color ink.
       • Click OK and then click Print. Click Proceed when the dialog box appears telling you about the resolution being higher than 2.5 times the halftone screen frequency. Then click Print again.
11. If you have screens (tints or shades) in your artwork in Illustrator, you must set the screen frequency to 53 lpi for black ink on white t-shirt and 40 lpi for white ink on a black t-shirt. The way to do this is the following:

1. Make sure you're in the CMYK color mode (go to File, Document Color Mode, and select CMYK).
2. Make sure all your shapes and text are filled and/or stroked with "Global Black." (see figure)
3. When it comes time to print, choose File, Print and make the following adjustments in the Print dialog box.
   • On the left, choose "Output" from the list.
   • In the middle, choose "Separations (Host-Based).
   • Down below where it says "Document Ink Options," make sure that there is only a little printer icon next to Process Black (if you have printer icons next to any other color, you did not fill and stroke all your objects with Global Black; you need to "cancel" and go back and fix that).
   • In the row for Process Black, you need to change the number in the "Frequency" column to 53 lpi if you are printing black ink and 40 lpi if you are printing white or color ink.
   • Then click on print and if you did everything correctly, you will end up with 1 print out of your artwork that will look a little grainy (the joys of silkscreening)!