DesignFix Design Studio
Artwork for screen printing
Screen printing rewards restraint. Every colour is a screen, every screen is setup time and cost, and effects that are free on a monitor — soft shadows, subtle gradients, hundreds of intermediate tones — are either impossible or expensive. Good screen-print artwork is usually artwork that decided what it could do without.
What this covers
What we work on in screen print design
Designing to a colour count
Artwork built from the start for the number of screens you actually have available.
Simplifying existing artwork
A design with too many colours or too much soft detail reworked into something a press can hold.
Vector artwork
Shapes rather than pixels, so edges stay hard at size and colours can be genuinely separated.
Separation preparation
Artwork split into its production colours, with underbase and trapping where the job calls for it.
Projects that fit here
Examples of the kind of thing people send us. If yours isn’t on the list, describe it anyway.
- A full-colour design reduced to four workable spot colours
- Artwork redrawn as vector because the supplied file is a compressed image
- A design on a dark garment that needs an underbase built
- Fine detail thickened so it survives the mesh and the ink
- A gradient rebuilt as a halftone or replaced with flat colour
- A logo prepared as separations for a specific press setup
Who this tends to be for
Screen printers
Customer artwork that arrives unusable and has to be made printable before it can be quoted.
Brands printing runs
Where colour count is the cost and the artwork should be designed around that from the start.
Anyone told their design has too many colours
Reducing them well is a design decision, not a slider.
Separation depends on your press, not on a formula
There is no universal separation. How artwork should be split depends on the number of screens available, the mesh, the inks, the garment colour, whether an underbase is being printed, how the shop handles trapping, and whether halftones are viable on that setup. Two competent printers will sometimes want the same design separated differently, and both are right for their own press.
So the honest answer to "can you separate this?" is: tell us what you're printing on and with. Garment colour, number of screens, whether you want an underbase, and any house conventions your shop works to. With that, separations are prepared to fit. Without it, we can prepare artwork that is sound in the general case and say clearly which decisions still need your printer's confirmation.
A related point worth making early: not every design can become a good screen print, and forcing it produces an expensive disappointment. Photographic imagery, subtle gradients and very fine detail either need reworking into something the process can hold, or point toward a different process altogether. If your design is one of those, we will say so — sometimes the useful advice is that DTF or DTG suits this particular artwork better.
Where a design can work, most of the effort goes into deciding what to simplify and where to keep the detail that carries it. That is a design judgement, which is why it is worth discussing rather than automating.
How it works
From a sentence to a finished design
- Step 1
Tell us what you need
One or two sentences is enough to start. You don't have to know what the work is called or which category it belongs in.
- Step 2
We discuss the project
We ask what we need to know — where it will be used, what size, what it has to work on — and tell you honestly what is and isn't possible.
- Step 3
Share files or references
Send the artwork you already have, a photo, a sketch, or examples of the look you're after. Files go straight into private storage.
- Step 4
You get a custom offer
A written scope and a fixed price for your project specifically. Nothing is charged and nothing is started until you accept it.
- Step 5
Approve and pay
Accepting the offer creates the order and takes you to payment. Decline it or ignore it and nothing happens.
- Step 6
We complete the design
The work runs through the same production and delivery process as every other DesignFix order, with revisions included in the scope.
What to send us
You don't need to know what to ask for
None of this is required, and a single sentence is enough to start. It's simply what tends to be useful, so a first message doesn't turn into three.
Whatever artwork you have
The file itself, however rough — an export, a screenshot, a photo of something printed, or the version a supplier rejected.
A reference or a sketch
Something you like the look of, a rough drawing, or an existing design you want the new work to sit alongside.
Where it's going
The product, the size, and the process if you know it. Print, garment, screen or sign changes what the artwork has to be.
Any specification you were given
A printer's requirements, a supplier's template, or the rejection message you received — that usually says exactly what needs fixing.
Colours and brand material
Existing brand colours, fonts or guidelines, so new work matches what you already have.
What you want changed
A sentence is enough. "Make this printable", "this needs to work on a dark shirt", "I want something like this but ours".
Questions
Common questions
Tell us what you need
Describe the project in a sentence or two. We’ll ask what we need to know, then send a written scope and a fixed price before anything is charged.