ImagesMagUK_August_20

www.images-magazine.com AUGUST 2020 images 29 KB TIPS & TECHNIQUES Mike Hayes of My T Shirt Printers reveals how he put his grey matter to the test when designing The Creative Brain for his shop Anatomy of a print To see more work from My T Shirt Printers, head to the company’s website where you’ll find a link to its YouTube channel. www.mytshirtprinters.co.uk The design is separated into four colours, allowing it to be printed on both light and dark garments on the same run. The Creator T-shirt by Stanley Stella has a tight, flat weave, allowing for a “superior print quality and ink coverage”. All the squeegees were sharp-edged, triple durometer 75/90/75, as these are ideally suited to the 77T mesh count. Mike achieved the soft hand-feel print by using Virus Hydra White for the water-based underbase, and International Coatings plastisol ink for the colour pop. Mesh counts for all the screens were 77T so as to keep the ink deposit low while retaining the solid print detail needed for this style of print. The plastisol ink colours were printed with slow, controlled strokes, with two strokes on each colour at around 65°. The final cure took a minute and a half in a Harco tunnel dryer at 170°C with the fan engaged to drive any remaining moisture from all the inks. The print sequence was white, flash, white, flash, blue, red, black. The white water-based underbase was printed twice for a solid, bright-white base and flashed for 10 seconds using an M&R Red Chili Quartz Flash at 70%. T his design is from the Creative Range by My T Shirt Printers, a garment decoration business in Bude, Cornwall. The Creative Range is a sample line that the shop sells to its customers. Creative director Mike Hayes explains that he used vivid graphics and colour in The Creative Brain print to capture attention and lift it from being a 'shop shirt' to a 'consumer-wanted item'. "The aim was to have a solid screen print but with a smooth, soft hand-feel and bright, Pantone-matched colours to bring the print to life and show what screen printing can achieve," explains Mike.