Woodcrafters Cabinetry Advertisement Flyer Design

Woodcrafters needed something to leave behind with potential customers that had more information about their cabinet and countertop installation company. The design had to be consistent with their existing marketing materials and target two types of customers. The main message was directed at remodeling home owners but the design also had to appeal to builders.

Woodcrafters Cabinetry is a cabinet company in Greer, SC. They carry many popular cabinet lines such as Kraftmaid and Blackstone Cabinetry. You can visit their website here.

Screen Printing Step by Step

I created this graphic awhile back to illustrate the screen printing process and help my customers understand the process. Screen printing is one of the simplest printing process, but it is probably the one that requires the most imagination to get to the end result.

I get a few calls a month asking to do one t-shirt with a photo on it. While I would like to help these customers out, it takes a minimum of 4 colors to reproduce an image which means 4 separate screens. Most screen printers charge $15 a screen, making just the set up for the shirt $60. A much more economical method to print just one shirt is direct to garment inkjet printers. These are much like your home inkjet printers but on a larger scale. Although there aren’t any printers in the Greenville SC area yet, you can buy one shirt online for around $20 (from instashirt.com).

For orders over 24 t-shirts, we can help you out!

DESIGNING IT

You first have to start out with a design which is made in a combination of programs. Although Microsoft Publisher can be used to send files to be printed, it is not recommended. Designers like Photo Graphics use professional editions of Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Indesign to create the artwork. Creating artwork in these programs ensures quality output (usually at 300 dpi or dots per inch).

FILM, PLATES, OR STRAIGHT TO PRESS!

Once the artwork is ready it can be output to film, plates, or sometimes directly to press! Film is used to expose light sensitive plates. Most large printers today go directly to the printing plates. The plates are mounted to the press. There is material on the plates that attract “water” and others that repel it. This way the ink on the press can only be in the image areas like your logo for instance. Speaking of image areas, images are made up of small dots called halftones that trick the eye into seeing full continuous tone images.

ON PRESS

On press there can be many stations (sometimes 8 colors or more!) with different ink colors. The colors create images, logos, and graphics. The ink is usually pigment based and transparent. An example of how transparent ink works is by adding equal amounts of cyan and yellow together will yield green. Using different sized amounts of ink together yield different shades of colors. Full color in printing terms usually means CMYK. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black ink colors can combine on press to create thousands of colors.

Ink and water are brought to the plate with rollers that make the consistency more even yielding a more uniform ink coverage. When the ink hits the plate and separate image areas and non image areas. Ink and water have to be at the perfect balance or there will be problems on press. The plate hits a blanket(made more of rubber material) which will then hit the paper going by just as the blanket makes it pass. The paper continues on the path through all the colors and to the delivery unit. Once the paper is printed, it is trimmed down to size at the crop marks and doing this takes advantage of the bleeds which make the finished piece look like the ink goes all the way to the edge.

Post press techniques include folding, die cutting, embossing, foil stamping and more!

That is the basics of Offset lithography, I hope it helped your understanding.