Roger L. Jennings

Companies want their name or logo on apparel to match their advertising, packaging and stationary.

For many companies, the colors must match a specified PMS (Pantone® Matching System) color. Certainly, the image must be printed with a sharp, clean resolution. If there are small letters or other details in the image, they too must be clearly readable. Apparel has the additional requirement of being comfortable to wear.

Producing high resolution images and matching PMS colors is easy on hard, smooth surfaces like paper. Textiles are a different story. The texture and content of the textile can affect how well the corporate image is reproduced.

The trend in apparel has been from smooth, 100% cotton T-shirts to textures like pique and herringbone golf shirts, caps with seams in the middle of the image area, and rough surface bags like 600 denier polyester. The proliferation of textures and materials satisfies the market demand for variety of choice, but has made decorating increasingly difficult. Ten or more years ago most decorating was by screen printing, but today most of the corporate work is embroidery. Traditional screen printing methods do not produce the high resolution, quality images corporations demand.

Now the screen printing industry has new tools to produce high resolution images in any PMS color on any texture and material content. Perhaps best of all, the images are soft and flexible rather than requiring backing material inside a shirt that can be uncomfortable to wear. Screen printing permits high speed, high volume, production like 400-600 shirts, bags or aprons per hour regardless of image size compared to less than 10% of that production depending on stitch count on an embroidery machine. Screen printers are better equipped to meet critical delivery schedules even on sizable orders.

The Adobe image is presented both as embroidery (#19) and screen printing (#20) on a pique shirt for your comparison. (Bruce…..under photos, please show credits. #19, 20 are The Printed Image, Chico, CA (530) 898-9525). Notice the differences in image resolution. The screen printed image has no backing material so that a person will not feel the image on the shirt, even when swinging a golf club.

One of the major concerns over the years has been durability of screen printed images that are washed a lot. All of the shops that contributed garments to this article are professional and know to leave the garment in the dryer long enough for the ink to reach a temperature required for fusion to the garment. These shirts will be threadbare and fall apart before the images crack or fade away.

The Abbott Foods image (#25) shows how screen printing on a top quality pique golf shirt with these new materials and methods can hold fine line and detailed dimensions as they appear on paper. Abbott Foods will maintain an image that is consistent with their advertising and packaging. (Custom Sportswear & Embroidery, Urbana, OH (937) 652-3557)

McCain which has been ordering embroidered garments will be pleasantly surprised when they are offered these new cutting edge images on white and black shirts printed with the high square inks that are soft and flexible. (#26, 27) (Shirts in the Works, Watertown, SD (605) 886-4687).

Some companies use a multitude of colors like the NBC peacock. Also printed using high square inks, the image has great resolution, opacity and flexibility to be worn on a softball shirt. (#10) (All-U, Albany, NY (518) 438-2558).

Paramount Pictures has been in business many years with the same script font. This image is well-established, and being in the movie business, a top quality image reproduction is the Holy Grail. There is no decorating method available at any price, except the high square ink and new printing methods used by The Printed Image that could produce an image of this quality. (#1) (The Printed Image, Chico, CA (530) 898-9525).

These images all respond to the typical corporate specification. However, the potential is much greater. For example, different colors can be layered in a 3 dimensional image. Textures can be printed like realistic looking bumps on a basketball, or the raised dimensions of a tiger’s face. There are no limitations on how fine the detail can be, because the image is a photographic reproduction printed in layers rather than sewn.

Welcome to the 21^st Century! The decorating industry is making a sharp turn towards computer generated graphics as sophisticated as your customers.

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