Large Format Printing
You have a great idea for a printed t-shirt design or sign for a business or event. The problem, though, is size. Print shops are turning you away or trying to talk you down to something smaller because your design is too large. The solution is large format printing, something only select print shops are equipped to provide. Large format printing is meant to catch people’s attention, convey messages from afar, and easily provide information.
Put your large format printing needs only in the hands of the screen print shop that you can trust to take the painstaking care and utter excellence they apply to every job: Shirt.Co We have established ourselves as one of the top screen printing shops in the Greater St. Louis area and have been trusted by countless families and businesses to deliver on all screen printing and embroidery requests large and small.
Shirt.Co is physically located in St. Louis, MO, but we offer rush shipping to anywhere in the continental U.S. in just a few days! Contact us now for more details and tell us about your project!
Begin your large format printing order and leave the rest up to us. Contact us online, call us at (636) 926-2777, or send us a text at (636) 299-0162. Shirt.Co has your back when it comes to large format printing.
Large Format Print Shop
Large format printing is a specialty printing service that involves printing designs and printing on surfaces that are larger than standard screen printing is meant to handle (which is typically capped at around 14 inches). In order for a shop to bring large format printing options to their customers, they must comply with certain space requirements and invest in special machinery and equipment, typically only available by custom order from manufacturers. STL Shirt. Co is proud to bring premium-level large format printing to the Greater St. Louis area.
Uses for Large Format Printing
Large format printing can be used for anything from a really big design printed on a t shirt, printing on large clothing items, and a whole slue of promotional and industrial marterials. Some common uses of large format printing are:
- Whole-shirt designs
- Window and wall displays and posters
- Store displays
- Banners
- Trade show displays
- Indoor/outdoor signage for business promotion
- Vehicle wraps
- Backdrops
- Signs and calendars
- Murals
When it comes to large format printing on t-shirts and other garments, there are lots of cool things we can do. We see a lot of excellent large format printing jobs for t-shirts and other clothing items for uses like:
- Clothing Brands and Brand Merch: A large logo or other artwork covering a wearer’s front side instantly grabs attention, boosts brand recognition, and sends a bold message. Large prints are a useful tool in branding and wearable marketing.
- Music Industry: Enter the band tee. A large, bold, colorful print works perfectly to visually express the message a band or DJ wants to send. Extend your art to the t-shirts that help bring in extra revenue and give your fans a way to support you by designing exciting, daring large format printed shirts and other merchandise.
- Special Events: Special events are the perfect occasion of screen printed t-shirts of any kind. There are always so many individuals and organizations that contribute to making any event happen. For runs, festivals, fundraising events, competitions, and more, you want to commemorate the date and honor everyone who made the event possible. Do both well with large format printing for your event t-shirts. Large format allows you to fit all sponsor logos without cramming them together in tiny columns.
How Large Format Printing is Possible
Large format printing is a beast all its own. In order to provide true large format printing options with quality results, a screen printing shop must have the right equipment. The major three things a screen printer needs to produce large format printing work are:
1. The Press
Screen printing wouldn't be possible without the printing press. For both manual and automatic presses, the print area can only be as large as the squeegee is wide. The consistent, even colors on a screen printed garment are the work of the machine, and large format printing means - you guessed it - a machine with larger-than-average parts to allow for a larger print area.
2. The Film
If you're not familiar with how screen printing works, here's a micro-lesson of the set-up process; your design is "stenciled" onto a mesh screen that is in a frame, holding the mesh taut. How does one get that image or pattern stenciled onto the screen, you ask? The image is printed on film, and a photosensitive chemical called emulsion is applied to the screen. The light hardens the emulsion to the screen in the areas of the image where the film is transparent and allows light through. The hardened parts are where the ink will not pass through. The negative space where the mesh is still exposed shows your image and is where the ink will pass through the screen and then adhere to the shirt or other printing surface.
Make sense? If not, no sweat (your shirts will still come out looking just as great)! Because we need film to put your design on the screen, your design is limited by the size of the film. The film comes in standard sheet sizes, but for larger designs, we have film with a larger surface area.
3. The Screens
The screen is the second ingredient to printing your design. Without a screen, screen printing would just produce a messy, undefined blob. Maybe you're going for an abstract look, but in most cases, this is not what you want.
The size of your stencil and, in turn, your design, is limited by the screen as well as the film. Large film sheets do no good if the frames being used are too small to fit the entire image. Likewise, your frame could be big enough to cover a huge area, but without film in the correct size, the image would end or would simply print smaller than you would like. When printing in larger sizes than usual, we often use a different type of mesh that allows for clean lines and detail that looks great for the particular size of the print.
The paintbrush in the hands of a novice, though, does not produce the same results as it does in Van Gough's hand. What we mean by that is that these large format printing tools and equipment won't do any good on their own. Quality large format printing, along with any type of screen printing, requires the touch of a skilled craftsman. When you need large format printing, all print shops are not created equal. Some print shops carry the film, screens, and presses capable of large format printing, but they may not necessarily have experience specifically in large format printing. To produce good large format printing work, we also invest in special inks and meshes and modify our technique to make sure what we print looks good, lasts, and isn't too heavy or thick.
Large Format Printing Near Me | STL Shirt. Co
Don't let other screen print shops limit you by trying to keep your ideas small. You can count on Shirt.Co for all your large format printing needs. Whether you need a large printed sign for an event or just like the look of a big, full print on a shirt, Shirt.Co can walk you through every step of the process, from the initial design to the final product. We guarantee quality, long-lasting results from all our work.
Get in touch with us to begin your large format printing now, and see what can happen when there are truly no limits! Learn more about Shirt.Co's large format printing or any of our other services, get in touch with us today. Call us at (636) 926-2777, send us a text at (636) 299-0162, or jump right in by requesting a quote.
