“You aren’t telling those people how to make things like you do, are you?” my husband asked in near-horror when I told him I was putting together some articles on printing and making products. “You’ll put yourself out of business!”
Not so! As with many things in the art world, learning to make products with your art is a process, not just a series of trade secrets. Most of the specifics I give you here will be obsolete in a year. The industry is in a constant state of change, and there are new products, new printers, new papers and new software released every week. Probably some of what I’ll tell you here already is out of date! I change my personal printing habits every time I learn a better way to do things, and I recommend that you do the same. Keep abreast of the current technology and keep your ears open to active artists and printing or marketing communities for all the latest scoops on new products.
There is also a lot of work involved! Knowing how to do these things doesn’t magically make your prints come out the right color the first time, or teach you how to press t-shirts without burning your fingers, or make all of your cuts magically straight, and it certainly doesn’t make products create themselves. Most of these techniques will take a bit of experimentation to perfect with your own system, some practice to develop speed and accuracy, and a fair amount of work and investment under the best of conditions. Hopefully these tricks and tips will save you some amount of time and frustration, but if you’re looking for instant product pixie dust, you’ll be looking for a good long time.
Overview of Prints
Prints are probably the easiest and most straightforward products to make or have made. The art is put on paper, and that’s it. They are the least labor-intensive, and just about everything you need to know about making prints will apply to printing every other kind of product.
Please note that there is a class of fine artists who resent the use of the word ‘print’ when applied to anything other than a piece of art created from a press and ink applied to a plate. They insist that what most people call a ‘print’ is actually an ‘art reproduction’ or a ‘digital reproduction. For most purposes, the word ‘print’ is used by laymen (ie: most customers) to cover the entire broad field of art reproduction. I will be using the term ‘print’ in that general sense.
Lithograph: You wouldn’t want to shop for your own lithograph press, but for a service to provide you with lithograph prints. The process is most similar to traditional press printing, where a single color is laid on large metal plates and the paper is pressed down on top of them for imprinting. An offset lithograph is created using multiple plates to stack colors one on top of the other.
This process requires a substantial set-up and is only cost effective when producing a many copies of a single piece. The quality of the prints tends to be excellent, with rich, true colors and lasting results that are waterproof.
Laser: Laser prints are produced using a dry ink called toner in a heat process most similar to a copier. It used to be that laser prints were the best you could get for digital prints. They last as long as their paper holds up, are water safe and don’t fade. The output, however, is less than desirable. Color gradients are clunky and color matching is pretty near impossible. Color also tends to vary from print to print. The range of fine art papers available for laser printers is slim and the printers themselves are very expensive. They are preferable for cases where many copies need to be produced quickly and cheaply and color quality is a secondary consideration. Laser print services are widely available in local copy shops.
Photoprints: This is one of those terms that is tossed around to mean a lot of different things. Technically, this process is an imaging process using chemicals most like the process of photography. You might see it called ‘lightjet’ printing, and it offers great color-matching and modest claims of longevity (25 years). They are, however, expensive and require some setup. You will find that many people casually call glossy giclee prints ‘photoprints’ because they are printed on photographic inkjet paper.
Giclee: You’ve probably heard the term ‘giclee’ prints if you’ve looked into prints at all. Giclee is from the French word for spray, and it refers to the technology that sprays a very, very fine area of ink onto the paper. The brand Iris first introduced the term ‘giclee,’ but it has been since used to refer to nearly all kinds of inkjet print. Since inkjet technology is the affordable kind that doesn’t take up half a garage and is likely to fit into a starving artist’s budget, we’ll take a closer looker at these printers. Note that though the set-up is cheaper than anything comparable, the ink and paper costs are quite high per print. They also print slowly, and are best suited for producing just a few prints at a time.
