I have a question for those that have been screenprinting since the mid-80's (or anyone that knows the history of screenprinting...
How were screens made from artwork in the 80's? I'm pretty certain computers weren't used.
How would they have taken a hand-drawn piece of artwork and turned that into multiple screens? How did they do seperations, and how would the artwork have been submitted?
Areas of flat color were usualy hand cut with x-acto knives onto a film, I can't remember what it was called (rubylith? amberlith? or is that printing). I had to do this in an old graphic class I took in high school.
Photo images are done almost like photos. You would take your artwork and develop it onto an acetate like sheet. Then place it over screen coated with a chemical that is light sensitive, and then burn the image with a super duper powerful light. Then wash away the part that is not burnt. Voila! You have your "negative", which you could print from.
It's been a while, but I think that is the basics of it, from what little I remember.
So if you had a drawing, they would set it up on a "Stat" camera and take a picture of it. Develop the film. Then, if it was in color, make a "positive" for each color (CMYK). burn each positive to a screen and then print them onto the shirts.
Not much has changed, except you can use the computer to output your positives now.
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How would you seperate the individual colors in multi-color designs?
I'm not exaclty sure if they were going with something beyond the typical 4 color. I know from my photo class back in the day, you would use color filters to do each color.
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Let's just say that it was red text with a black dropshadow and it was hand-drawn. How would seperate the colors for the screens? Filters, like you suggested?
Thanks!
I'm only asking because one of my clients would like to know.
Okay, "back in the day" we used to do it with a photo typesetting machine. We had font "films" that used to fit onto a metal wheel, basically just a film negative with all the characters. You'd sit at this machine and type out what letters you needed at whatever point size you were going to use. Then you'd print out the whole thing onto photo paper - basically exposure and developing the paper would be done inside the machine, as the machine had reservoirs for developer/fixer. Then you'd put the paper with your text through the waxer, which applied a thin coat of wax to the back. Grab a sheet of layout board (essentially thick poster board) and hand cut, kern, arch, and whatnot and lay out your whole design on the board. Then it's off to the darkroom where the "stat camera" or "PMT (photomechanical transfer) camera was located. You'd shoot your layout board at whatever size you needed onto a film positive (or negative, depending), you would also do your resizing here. If you needed a drop shadow, you'd shoot another negative of your positive, align the two sheets over a third unexposed sheet so that the drop shadow area would be exposed, then fire up the lights and expose the 3rd film, thus achieving butt registration. If you needed to trap (like we often did in those days, since most screening presses had very rudimentary micro-registration), you'd do that with a rapidograph pen right on the films.
I used to draw my line art right on a sheet of clear film, then shoot a negative of the film and cut away what I didn't need for spot color fills. If I needed to trap, I'd just cut the ruby/amberlith. I also did many multi-color by hand, drawing each separation one at a time and just overprinted the colors - worked great for wildlife-type artwork.
Doing process work was a real chore - you'd have to shoot your artwork with filters for each sep, AND overlay the film with a special film that gave you the halftones - we'd do the angles by hand, but we had different sized films for altering the lpi. If you just had to do a simple halftone - say a 40% screen of one of the colors, we'd buy pre-made dots printed at 40% in whatever lpi, and just apply them by hand to the films.
None of this seems that old to me - we got our first Mac Classics when I was in college as a sophomore back in 1987. At that time, I was also interning as an artist/printer for a screen printing company (which I now own), and I totally revamped the way they worked - they were doing stuff on a photocopier FFS. Anyhoo, about 4 years later we got our first computer and never looked back.
I've still got a roll of old amberlith sitting in my art department - just for nostalgia's sake. Dunno whatever happened to the repro cameras or the waxer.
Let's just say that it was red text with a black dropshadow and it was hand-drawn. How would seperate the colors for the screens? Filters, like you suggested
Because of the process, If you look at a lot of older artwork, there weren't a lot, or any, drop shadows.
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Ya know, it's really not any more time consuming than some of the stuff I do now - putting out channel seps in photoshop can still take me quite a bit of time. Back then, you just kind of went with your gut, and it was a straightforward process. You didn't do a lot of "what would it look like if we changed this one little thing...?" You mostly had one shot, and you'd dang well better do it right. Now I'll tweak and fiddle for hours on end to get things "just so". Yeah, the art and printing is all exponentially better, but the time spent on each job, and the difficulty weren't any worse then - just different.
Having been a screenprinter since the mid-1940s, I suppose I qualify as an old-timer. I started as a screenprinter for my father printing signs and then moved into the art room. Here is a nutshell description of the way we did things back then.
In the 'very old days' we drew the designs on onion skin with india ink. Then we would rub oil on the backs of the onion skin to make it more transparent. This was what the pioneers did for windows in their houses, as well.
Later, Joe Ulano invented Rubylith and sill later Amberlith. This was a clear sheet of acetate with a ruby or amber colored coating that could be cut and peeled away. The finished art (cartoon or keyline as it was then called) was covered with the Amberlith and taped in place. An X-acto knife was used to cut around the first color and everything else was peeled away making the transparency. This was done for each color until you had a transparency for each color. These were registered on the screens and exposed. When the screens were placed in the press they were aligned so that all screens were located in the same place and thus a multi-colored design could be printed.
For process work, at first we made a slide transparency from the art. This was mounted into an enlarger and four 'prints' were made, each using a separate filter so that only a single color would be printed. The next step was to make film negatives of these prints onto paper. Then we would photograph these 'prints' using a halftone screen and film to effectively make a reverse or positive image. Originally, we used a set of glass halftone screens each with a different angle and resolution. Later, these halftone screens were available in plastic sheets.
We would still add some additional colors by hand onto film, such as a spot color that was needed to produce a distinctive logo color such as Coca-Cola red or whatever.
I sure am glad that we don't have to do it this way anymore!
I opened the first computer service bureau in Austin back in 1981 to output films for screenprinters and offset printers. I remember buying my first Mac for $2500, which was a steal at the time for what it was able to do. The Graphical User Interface as a godsend for the world.
The class in serigraphy I took in college was for flat printing on paper stock. We made our own frames, stretched the silk, or whatever it was with staples. For stencils, we used tusche, which was sort of a black lacquer you painted right on the mesh. We also would just draw on a piece of vellum or tracing paper that had a hard enough finish and cut the design out of it with an x-acto, lay it on the "platen", which was just some particle board our screen hinges were screwed to, then pull ink over the whole mess. The ink would cause the vellum to stick to the screen, and away we'd go. Probably had 5 bucks in the whole setup. Multi-color job registration depended a lot on your skill with that knife. The professor told us to sort of snap the squeegie forward to the front of the frame. The first time I did the ink came up all over my shirt. Anyhoo, it taught you the essential elements of screenprinting.
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