PRINT EVOLUTION
Hi There, 👋🏻 i’m Andrea a fashion graphic designer focused on fashion product design for menswear and sportswear. Through this blog I want to share highlights and tips from the field i work in. Hope you enjoy and feel free to get in touch!
left: printing pigment / right: printing boards
Printing Techniques
There are so many ways to brand a garment, one of the most common is for sure by printing on it! But how can a garment or a fabric can be printed?
The most common techniques for both garments and fabrics are digital printing and silk-screen printing (which for fabric printing can be spliced into rotary printing and square print).
left: rotary print / right: digital print
There are some differences between digital and rotary printing. With digital printing there are no limitations of number of colors and “difficulty” of the design, in fact any kind of idea can be printed and the fabric or on a garment. The benefit of digital is the minimum quantity: by choosing this technique there are no particular minimum standards, in fact different files can be printed on the same lot of production. The only defect is the depth and the intensity of the colors.
left: digital printed t-shirt (Moncler) / right: digital printed fabric (Albiate 1830)
With rotary printing/square print (fabrics) or silk-screen printing (garments), the quality and depth of the color is much higher. The starting point of this technique in a mixture of colored pigment and other materials which is then slithered onto the garment or fabric. The thickness of the pigment gives thickness to the print, adding quality to the result.
The problem of this technique is that one board or cylinder represents one color, the more the colors on the design, the more boards needed. Also the dimension of the pattern could be a problem, since the dimensions of boards/cylinders are quite limiting.
