Babylon Burning Screen Printing in San Francisco was founded in 1976 with the mission to provide top quality products and outstanding customer service. They offer T-shirt screen printing with a turnaround time of as few as four days, as well as art design, scanning, spot color, and other services.
Located in San Francisco, Camputee Press was founded in 2002 by members of the band The Angry Amputees, with a focus on quality printing, customer service, and environmentally safe practices as well as giving back to the local community. Services include standard and screen printing for apparel, decals, custom embroidery, patches, heat transfers, promotional items, vinyl banners, jerseys, and custom art and design. Fast turnaround (within 24 hours) is available.
Based in San Francisco, Design Like Whoa is a boutique apparel design, screen printing, and embroidery shop that helps clients make unique creations at affordable prices. Services include a line of ready-made shirts as well as custom apparel and graphic design. This business prides itself on excellent customer service, high quality products, and fast turnaround times.
Located in San Francisco, DSF Clothing Company and Screen Printing offers custom apparel as well as its own line of creative men's and women's clothing, home decor, and accessories. This business was founded in 2006 in an effort to support independent and creative artists and designers while allowing clients to purchase unique products. Custom screen printing is available on a wide range of apparel styles and brands.
Graphic Sportswear in San Francisco provides an extensive range of screen printing services and promotional products. This company was founded in 1979 and has a long history of producing T-shirts and items for national events, including tours by the Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones and major sporting events like the Super Bowl and World Series. They offer many services in-house, including design, printing, re-labeling, folding, polybagging, hang tags and distribution.
Based in Oakland, Grease Diner offers commercial screen printing services as well as silk screening classes and workshops, printing parties, large format printing, screen printing supply retail, and more. In addition to these services, clients can rent studio time for do-it-yourself screen printing, either using their own materials or purchasing kits available at the Grease Diner.
Founded in 2006, Leftside Printing and Graphic Design provides custom screen printing, direct to garment printing, graphic design, and embroidery. They specialize in T-shirts, jackets, polo shirts, work safety vests, and tote bags constructed with high-quality materials. This business has an overall five-star customer rating on Facebook, with clients praising their professionalism and talent.
Based in San Francisco, Logos Graphics was founded in 1974 and offers a range of graphic services, including plates, letterpress, screen printing, intaglio, and paper making. Specialties include fine art pieces, event and concert posters, handmade paper retail, and limited edition intaglio, photogravure, and monotype prints. Workshops and open studio time are also available.
Serving the Oakland and San Francisco Bay Area, Merch Monster Custom Screen Printing offers low-cost, high-quality custom prints and T-shirts. They offer a one-year workmanship warranty on all printed designs, turnaround times between five and 10 business days, free delivery on orders over $250, and free set-up on reorders greater than $500. They will also beat any quoted price within 40 miles of their location by 5 percent.
Personal Awards has provided custom screen printing, embroidery, and engraving throughout the San Francisco area since 1976. Specialties include trophy and plaque making, custom screen printing and embroidery for various types of apparel, graphic and logo design, and related services. Clients praise this business's high quality workmanship and helpful staff members.
San Franpsycho is a San Francisco apparel brand inspired by a surf video of the same name and founded by the video's creators. This company strives to support the Bay Area's active art and music communities. They offer custom printing services as well as a line of shirts for men, women, and children, as well as accessories like bags, sunglasses, hats, and even items for pets.
The Lords of Print is a custom screen printing shop in San Francisco specializing in T-shirts and posters. Services include design, production, live event printing, artist branding, and merchandising services. They also offer screen printing workshop for customers who want to learn this skill. Convenient online quotes are available, and the typical turnaround time is 10 business days.
TNT's Custom Screen Printing has offered quality custom screen printing throughout the San Francisco Bay Area since 1990, with clients that include Pixar, the San Francisco Giants, and the Oakland Athletics. Services include full-service screen printing and embroidery on various types of apparel. Convenient online price quotes are available. This business has a customer rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars on Facebook.
Screen printing is a method of applying graphics to a T-shirt. It typically involves layering thick inks onto the shirt's surface instead of soaking them into the fabric. Screen printing is also sometimes called silk screening.
Since screen printing generally uses thicker inks, this type of fabric printing is usually better for graphics with one or two colors. If you have more complicated, colorful graphics, direct to garment printing, or DTG, may be a better option.
Major fabric printing methods include:
Screen printing or silk screening
Direct to garment printing
Stamp printing
Thermal transfer printing
Sublimation transfer printing
Screen printing works by using a silkscreen with an exposed design. Ink is swiped across the screen with a squeegee tool, and this action sends the ink design through the screen and onto the T-shirt.
When graphics are printed onto a T-shirt using screen-printing techniques, the colors are sometimes allowed to dry between color applications, and subsequent colors are printed with another screen after the T-shirt is realigned on the press.
Traditionally, screen printing has been called silk-screen printing because originally, silk was the primary material used in the process. The mesh portion of the screen was made of silk. In modern times, synthetic threads are commonly used in the silk-screening process, with polyester being one of the most popular choices. Nylon and stainless steel are also used in some screen-printing applications.
If you want to try screen printing at home, you can do it with a little bit of practice and some basic materials. To get started with screen printing, you may need:
A screen, usually made of polyester
Photo emulsion
A 150W light bulb
A screen-printing squeegee
Fabric paint
Two pieces of glass
To print T-shirts at home, you can try the screen-printing method described above. To print a lot of shirts, you may consider using a screen-printing company.
While the exact steps and process varies by company, in general, you can expect to provide the T-shirt company with your desired design, either electronically or in person. You can choose other options, and the screen-printing company typically sends you a mock-up of what the finished design will look like; Then, after you approve it, they produce it according to your specifications.
If you'd rather not go the screen-printing route, you can customize T-shirts in other ways.
Heat transfers, which involve using a printing machine and heat press machine to transfer designs to fabric
Embroidery, which involves intricate stitching using thread and special needles
Direct to garment (DTG) digital printing, a process that uses a special inkjet printer with special ink to print designs onto the fabric directly
Engraved roller printing, a process that involves dye being applied to fabric that’s passed through rollers engraved with designs in a printing machine
When you design a T-shirt, there are a lot of factors to consider. Most of the time, screen-printing companies will ask you to submit a high-resolution file of the design you want printed. Sometimes, the company has in-house graphic designers who can create a design for you based on your specifications or ideas.
Here are a few suggestions for optimizing your T-shirt design:
Ensure any text is readable, and you can do this by selecting the right fabric and paint color combination
Consider creating a contrast between your chosen T-shirt color and the screen-printing ink
Make sure the type size is big enough to read from a distance
Direct to garment printing involves spraying ink directly onto a T-shirt, and then the ink soaks into the garment fibers.
Where DTG uses a printer to spray ink on a garment, screen printing layers ink on top of the fabric. DTG is typically better for more detailed designs, and you may be limited to a color palette for screen printing. This may not be a problem if your design is meant to be simple and uses only three or four colors, for example.
Custom all over print shirts typically have a design printed over the T-shirt's entire length or width instead of just being centered in one area, as it typically is with screen printing.
It's usually advisable to use a T-shirt printing company for all over print T-shirts because they have specialized equipment, like DTG printers, to create intricate all over designs. Screen printing can either be done DIY or with a screen-printing company.
