FAQ

Please read the following before enquiring about poster designs and screenprints.

Q: How much does it cost to have a poster designed and screenprinted?

A: There is no easy answer to this. The costs involved depend on a lot of factors such as the amount of screens (colours), amount and size of posters you require, type of paper, how many plates would need to be  commercially manufactured, how thirsty the print is ie how much ink it’ll use, etc.
The basic rule of thumb is R250 per screen, R3 per A2 sheet of paper and R150 per kilo of ink.
Strictly speaking screenprinting is an expensive and laborious medium – it is NOT a cheap alternative to offset litho or digital printing – there are also limitations to the medium that need to be taken into account when setting up a design. For instance, the medium is most suited to flat colours; any halftones in a design will be broken up into a fairly coarse dot screen.
At the moment, i’m prone to approaching bands that i like and feel would want to have this kind of poster done for them. Then i usually base the deal on the band covering hard costs (such as inks, positives, exposures, paper, studio time), and me keeping an agreed amount of prints from the edition to sell in order to make money from it.
In light of this, i think it’s fair to reserve the right to do work i can take pride in and potentially sell.

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Q. Why are silkscreen positives so expensive?

A. Because they are made by feeding gold nuggets to trained Madagascan lizards, who then meticulously shit out the toner onto acetate that is hand woven by Tibetan monks from the dried saliva of the rare and possibly fictional Himalayan Alpaca.

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Q: Do you screenprint other designers’ designs?

Generally speaking, not in the way a commercial printer would . However, i will make an exception if the design is really exciting and will translate into an excellent print. Again, i will  decide based on whether it’d be worth my while to keep some of the prints.

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Q: We’re in a big rush, can you quickly run x amount of black prints?

A: Unfortunately not. At the moment setting up prints is very difficult and time-consuming for me as i need to outsource the posi’s, exposures etc. just getting things set up can take a whole day of running back and forth between suppliers, so the words ‘quick’ and ‘screenprint’ in the same sentence do not compute.

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Q. What’s your size limit?

A. A2. I’ll get some A1 screens sometime soon, but i generally find A2 to be ample.

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Q. What paper do you generally use?

A. I buy my paper wholesale from NOR Services in Maitland – (021) 511 3810.
For CD sleeves, or other diecut boxes, i use Supreme Art Board. It’s a sturdy board that is coated on the outside and uncoated on the inside.
For posters/art prints i either use Top Art Matt (coated, white) or Munken Pure (uncoated, slightly off-white).On coated papers, the print lies nicely on top of the the paper and you get a very nice shiny finish (and good contrast if you use matted inks). However, I find that the ink can crack after a few years if you don’t ensure that the print stays flat.
On uncoated papers, the ink absorbs into the paper more.
Another perennial favourite is Cape Liner,  the brown board which unfortunately only comes in the standard grammage of 200gsm, great for posters but not quite sturdy enough for boxes.
I stick to the above as a rule, because they are functional and inexpensive, however i can source other paper if necessary.

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Q. Things to keep in mind when setting up a design?

A. VERY important is to make sure that any jpeg’s used in your design are GRAYSCALE, and that any black is 100% black. If the black is 100% but the jpeg is RGB or CMYK, the positive plays the black out as 90% , resulting in a halftone screen all over your flat colour. NOT nice.
While vector art is great for digitally played out positives, for raster based art, consider things like positives photocopied onto acetate – while this takes away some control in terms of what comes out on the screen, it makes textural elements more real.
A good idea is to try make some trapping (overlap) between colours, ie, margin for error in registration. Registration is never really 100% spot on.
I can do CMYK, if you can live with the fact that the halftone will be fairly coarse, and that the colour balance and registration won’t be 100% consistent.
I like to play around with ‘extended techniques’ of screenprinting, such as colour merges (printing a gradient), layering see-through colours  etc. These are the things that can set your print apart from a litho or digital print.

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Q. What ink do you use?

A. At the moment i use Unigloss/ Polybrite, a solvent based ink which is quite expensive, more out of force of habit and obstinacy than anything else. I’m  looking into acrylic based inks that can give me the same level of finish and colourfast-ness, but that may entail me importing inks at great cost.

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Q. Do you mix your colours scientifically?

A. No, i mix colours using my best judgement from Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black, White and process extender. If you require a very specific Pantone i can always buy it ready-mixed. At heart-stopping cost.

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Q. Do you do training workshops/ allow other artists to use your equipment?

A. Of  course – i haven’t worked out a formal pricing structure, but would be happy to have other artists come in and use my equipment, provided i can supervise. Cost would be worked out on a basis of basic rent+ consumables used + amount of supervision required.  Do not hesitate to enquire!