What to know first
Screen printing is a stencil process. A fine mesh is coated with light-sensitive emulsion, the design is burned into it, and ink is pulled through the open areas with a squeegee. Each ink color has its own screen and each print location has its own set, so a design's cost and complexity come down to how many inks it uses and where it prints. On dark shirts most designs need a white underbase first, which counts as one more screen.
Three ideas run through every guide in this section. Setup is fixed and printing is fast, so quantity changes the economics more than anything else. The ink you choose decides the feel and look as much as the art does. And the garment, its fiber, color and cut, limits what ink, size and placement will work.
A reading order
Start with the process. What is screen printing walks through every step from separations to the dryer, including manual and automatic presses. If you are still deciding on a method, types of shirt printing compared sets screen printing beside DTG, DTF, sublimation, vinyl and embroidery.
Choose the look. Screen printing inks explains plastisol, water-based ink and discharge ink: how each cures, feels and suits different fabrics. For a raised effect, read puff print and high-density ink. For sparkle, glow, reflection, foil, suede texture or stretch, read specialty inks.
Get the art right. Preparing artwork for screen printing covers file types, resolution, fonts, Pantone references, separations and what a printer sends back for approval. Spot color vs simulated process vs CMYK explains the three ways to separate a design, and how halftone dots let one ink print shading. The print placement guide gives typical sizes and positions for left chest, full front, back, sleeve and neck prints, and how to size across a run.
Understand feel and quality. Mesh count and print feel explains why two printers can make the same art feel different: mesh, stencil thickness, squeegee hardness, the underbase and the flash cure between colors.
Plan the budget. What drives screen printing cost breaks a quote into setup, quantity, colors, locations, garment, specialty inks, finishing and deadline, and lists ways to cut colors without hurting the design.
Where to go next
For head-to-head decisions, see screen printing vs DTG, screen printing vs embroidery and plastisol vs water-based ink. Prints larger than a standard full front are covered in jumbo and oversized prints. The garment itself has its own section, starting with how to choose a blank. To see the method applied to real products, visit the screen printing page.