The status of screen printing in the graphic design profession
More and more schools realize the importance of typography for design courses. All design products, especially graphic design products, need to be realized by printing. Almost all art colleges now offer printing courses. Of course, silk screen Printing is also indispensable. In the teaching process of design, focusing on practical teaching is no longer a problem that a school attaches great importance to. Now all courses allow students to materialize the design as much as possible, and let students experience it in the printing course.
Hand printing, actually visit the printing factory, and see the complete process from design to printing to finished product. Students must actually operate these real things, such as the typesetting, offset printing, screen printing, etc. of the books themselves, so as to present the final and complete production of their own design works.
With more and more academic exchanges, some foreign teaching concepts of graphic design courses have been gradually brought to our country and applied to actual teaching. Among the printing methods, screen printing has the lowest investment and the most convenient Schools have established studios, and many schools have established screen printing studios on their campuses, offering screen printing courses for students, teaching in practice, and experiencing the wonders of screen printing. Graphic design and printing complement each other, especially for learning graphic classes
Cheng’s students, it is very important to understand printing technology. Whether it is different materials, inks, or post-press processing methods, they can provide more inspiration for future design, and also provide more ideas for future designers to show their design works and creative ideas. chance.
1. Advantages of screen printing in graphic design
Compared with letterpress, gravure, and offset screen printing, it has strong advantages in texture, touch, and color brightness. In addition, screen printing technology can achieve large-format printing. With the advantages of its own color and texture, the printed product has a more eye-catching effect. Especially in the use of color, you can give full play to the texture that the designer wants to achieve, fully display the charm of the color in the design, and bring the viewers a different sense of vision and touch.
It is not limited by the shape of the substrate, so that it provides a wider space for graphic designers to express freely in terms of shape and structure. Most designs include two processes of “design” and “completion”. Most of the graphic design works need to be copied and completed by means of printing before the entire design process is completed. Different printing production techniques determine the different works of the work. Personal style. Different printing times, different substrates, and different ink coatings will bring different texture styles. Screen printing is the printing method that achieves the most textured style.
As we all know, the completion of a graphic design product includes pre-press design, printing, and post-press processes. Screen printing can not only undertake the printing and copying functions during printing, but also many special processes after printing are inseparable from screen printing. The participation of, more precisely, screen printing in graphic design is more about carrying novel textures and new ideas.
The effect is not simply used for large-scale replication and reproduction. The modernity and artistry of screen printing in the application of graphic design far exceed other printing technologies. Only when a graphic designer fully understands or masters the technical and artistic features of screen printing and fully participates in printing practice, can they continuously create unique and shocking screen printing graphic design works.
2.The combination of creative materials and screen printing generates new design inspiration
Acrylic Synthetic Paper: Designers are available in a variety of colors, shapes and thicknesses. This material is characterized by a high degree of smoothness and scratch resistance, so it can be widely used as a protective film for other materials. Acrylic synthetic paper can be cut into different shapes with a saw. After cutting, it can be waxed and polished to produce smooth edges; it can be heated, softened and bent into specific angles to produce different shapes; it can be thermoformed and manufactured special three-dimensional form. And this kind of shape with thickness and special shape requires screen printing to realize the printing of the graphic part and convey the designer’s concept.
Cover cloth: also known as book cloth, the production process of this material is to attach a layer of starch and pigment mixture that has been steamed and baked at high temperature on the surface of the woven cotton cloth, so that the surface of the cotton cloth is uniformly hardened, and then steam-dried in a heating tank Dry, high temperature coagulates the starch on the surface of the cotton cloth. When the material is glued, the process is reversed, and the moisture in the glue softens the starch granules, making the cover cloth flexible and easy to bend, which is conducive to printing. And starch granules can always avoid glue penetration to the outer layer of the cover cloth.
Books were originally bound by materials such as animal skins, which were poor in operability and costly, and animal skins were prone to many defects due to their different shapes. In the mid-nineteenth century, with the development of printing and human civilization, people’s demand for books was increasing day by day, and books were gradually becoming popular. At this time, the low-cost and convenient cover cloth was more suitable for mass production, and the economical and practical characteristics were gradually replaced. Animal skin has become one of the main materials for book binding. Now there is no Whether it is artificial leather or the surface of the cover cloth for decoration of text patterns, in addition to bronzing and hot stamping, the most important printing method is screen printing. Cover cloth and artificial leather are not only applied to book binding in current designs, but different materials create conditions for designers to develop inspiration.
Cork Chips: The bark of the cork ridge. Cork chips have been used in the industry for a long time, and the main breakthrough is to replace other wooden corks as corks for champagne and red wine. Because 50% of cork is air, it has strong buoyancy, elasticity, toughness and is not easy to break. It is a good anti-buffer material. Because it is a natural material, it is difficult to achieve smooth and smooth printing on cork sheets, and it is difficult to achieve printing effects for complex characters and labels. Rustic special printing effect.
Corrugated cardboard: Corrugated cardboard usually only has two options of double-sided white and double-sided brown. Usually, corrugated cardboard is used as a fine packaging and its surface will be pasted with a layer of printing to produce better visual effects.
Screen printing of graphics and text on natural corrugated paper can also produce different effects and make packaging with different textures, which is also a creative way for designers.
Felt cloth: Felt cloth is processed through a series of processes using animal fibers and chemical fibers as raw materials. Felt cloth can be dyed. Felt cloth materials with rich colors can be seen everywhere on the market. Industrial sheep felt cloth, like recycled cardboard and corrugated cardboard, plays a very important role in printing design although it is not very attractive. Screen printing on felt is very technically demanding, and it is almost impossible to achieve the precision of printing on paper. but
It is the special texture of felt cloth that will produce a unique visual touch when applied to the cover package.
Soft polyvinyl chloride paper (PVC): Soft polyvinyl chloride paper has a variety of colors, and the post-press process is mature. Like colored paper, soft polyvinyl chloride can be decorated with rich post-press processes. Each type of PVC paper has its own unique characteristics. Different printing on it will produce different special effects. As a carrier for screen printing, its high-frequency welding and melting concave effect is very good, and the color and The rich post-press process makes soft PVC a perfect substrate for prints with high printing requirements, such as invitations. Designers need to pay attention to the rare and more characteristic PVC materials on the market and try to apply them to different designs.
Greyboard: Greyboard is made from recycled waste paper. Although the texture is hard, the surface can be screen-printed or gold-plated and coated to create a sunken effect and an interesting artistic effect. Grayboard paper needs to be sealed and milled before screen printing to prevent the grayboard paper from excessively infiltrating and reducing the printing effect. However, without sealing and grinding, repeated printing can achieve the expected printing effect, but it is difficult to achieve a perfect picture after repeated printing.
like coincidence. The matt layer process will produce random special texture effects due to the rough surface of the grayboard paper in the application of the grayboard paper. Greyboard is a rough-looking material, but when used properly, this dissonance is a special artistic effect.
Leather: Choose leather or artificial leather as the carrier of the design, there are many rich choices, whether it is color or texture. Leather gives people a sense of wealth and luxury, and can be screen-printed on the surface to print graphics, or with post-press processing embossing effects, bronzing and hot stamping effects, etc.
Metal: Metal is the least common material in the process of graphic design. Whether it is the appearance, texture, touch and price of metal, it is difficult to be widely used in design. , but it is precisely because of these limitations that metal materials become a more creative implementation after printing. Metals go through complicated pre-processing procedures before printing. Common metal materials in design and printing are aluminum and stainless steel.
The quality is easier to bend and cut, and the screen printing effect is excellent. Stainless steel can also be etched and hollowed out. Aluminum, on the other hand, is lighter and can be used to bind books.
In order to control this complex and expensive material, designers need to know more in detail, experiment and choose appropriate processing technology with screen printing to achieve good application effects.
Hardness and texture also make it irreplaceable in design printing.
Polypropylene paper: Yes – a base material for a wide range of applications. This wide range of applications benefits from the multifunctional, strong and stable properties of polypropylene paper itself. Polypropylene paper is available in a variety of colors and thicknesses. Screen printing is commonly used in the printing of polypropylene paper and can achieve perfect results. With coating and bronzing, it can create a sharp convex effect without surface coating.
Rigid PVC: As a printed carrier, there are usually white and transparent colors to choose from. There are limited colors available on the market for rigid PVC. The PVC material with special texture needs to be specially customized with the manufacturer. The designer is choosing When this material is used, try to communicate and coordinate with the manufacturer as much as possible. Carry out some special textured poster printing.
Rubber: Rubber has a unique sense of smell and touch. Although it cannot carry printing as well as paper, rubber with screen printing graphics can often be used as auxiliary decoration for book binding. Wood: The raw materials of many products in our daily life are paper or cardboard, and the raw materials of paper or plate making are wood. For graphic designers, we seem to have little contact with wood, and it is more difficult to apply it to the design. However, for some design commissions such as furniture manufacturers, designers must master the information characteristics of wood and wood, enrich their information reserves, make themselves more confident in design, and ultimately meet customer requirements. In the case where wood is used in the design, the choice of wood has its own orientation, and it is a thin board of natural color with a wood texture, which can guarantee the printing. The printed matter designed in this way can not only be put into production, but also retain the texture and texture of the original color of the wood. If you want to print logos or fonts on the wood, screen printing is undoubtedly the best choice. If the wood of the colleague is thick enough to even be gilded and etched for unique design ideas.