I just want one

September 20, 2005 2:13 PM

I want a single, large, 2-color silk-screened poster made. I have the artwork in a vector file. Is there a shop that does this sort of thing?
posted by rossmeissl to media & arts (10 comments total)

I bet any commerciall silkscreener in your area could make film and screens from clean vector art, if you don't have fine screens or too-tight registration between colors. In the latter case, a centerline trap in a third color can help, or simply output from an app (illustrator, for example) that allows you to control the size of the trap.

I don't know about screenprinters in Vermont, but here in Sacramento anyone who does t-shirts would be happy to do posters.
posted by luriete at 2:16 PM on September 20, 2005

Yes, there are many, many shops that do this sort of thing, because it's pretty easy once you have the equipment.
In fact, you could do it yourself with a purchase of some liquid light, a transparency, a screenframe and some inks. But unless you wanted to make many, many of these posters it's unlikely to be worth your money.
Is the screenprinting necessary? Kinkos (and other equivalent shops) can do the same thing by printing from vector art right onto the paper...
posted by klangklangston at 2:39 PM on September 20, 2005

klangklangston, yes, I'd prefer screenprinting.

Just thought there might be some online shop that specializes in this sort of thing—in the way that oneoff has done for clothes.
posted by rossmeissl at 2:42 PM on September 20, 2005

Screenprinting is like offset printing in that it is the technique, not the medium, that defines it. So any screenprinter can do it. I bet most would rather do posters than shirts, actually; shirts just happen to be the bulk of their business because the technology is particulary suited to printing on rough or flexible surfaces.

And KK is right - it's very easy to set up yourself with a few minutes of instruction-pamphlet-reading, but probably not cost-effective for one job.

What city are you in?
posted by luriete at 3:10 PM on September 20, 2005

These guys do it, they're north of you by an hour or so. My guess is that costs for one poster will be prohibitively expensive, but it totally depends. Learning screen printing isn't terribly tough. If you're at the college down there, you might be best off seeing if one of your fellow students has a screen printing business on the side or check out craigslist
posted by jessamyn at 3:30 PM on September 20, 2005

luriete, I'm back and forth between Middlebury, Vermont, and Ossining, New York.
posted by rossmeissl at 3:47 PM on September 20, 2005

jessamyn,
My guess is that costs for one poster will be prohibitively expensive
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Thought maybe some upstart shop had figured out a way to do it as their specialty, like oneoff.
posted by rossmeissl at 3:49 PM on September 20, 2005

rossmeissi, talk to the local art schools. At least one must do traditional screen printing. You should be able to talk an art student into doing it for a nominal fee.
posted by substrate at 7:22 PM on September 20, 2005

Talk to art students and punk rockers. Nearly everyone in a band around here has some screens so that they can make their own shirts.
And, if you don't mind me asking, why is it important to have it screenprinted? Do you want the Benday screening? Are you afraid of pixellation from your rasterized image? Depending on the quality of the starting file, when I worked at Kinkos we could go up to 7200 dpi and the cost came out to roughly $12 per square foot. A local print shop should be able to do the same thing for $6. If you get this printed at 30"x42" at a screen printer, that's gonna probably run you about $45-$65 including labor (depends on how many colors are necessary for the image, size, how easy your file is to work with, etc. Get a quote first). Again, the economics of screenprinting run toward volume.
Of course, that's probably better than the $50-$80 you'd spend on your own (assuming everything works out on the first try).
posted by klangklangston at 7:39 PM on September 20, 2005

For an example shop near my place (in Toronto), check out studio xix for a guide to pricing, and some good examples of what can be done.
posted by krunk at 9:26 PM on September 20, 2005