Impressions - September 2014 - 61

you already are comfortable with it, take a
second look at the three areas that make
this printing method a success: customer
education, artwork preparation and printing execution.

CREATE THE IDEAL CUSTOMER
The biggest challenge of working with
water-based inks isn't in the artwork or
the different production variables. The
hardest thing to accomplish is to "create"
customers that appreciate and demand
the value that water-based inks provide.
A typical screen printing client will not
know the differences between ink types,
but they can be shown quickly how much
softer water-based inks feel. After a quick
example, the client may want the feel and
look of a water-based print, but the bigger
step involves him justifying and choosing
to pay more for the look and feel.
It is a lot harder to explain that the
value of a water-based print is in the longevity and appreciation that the product
creates, when clients that are accustomed
to getting inexpensive printed products
that have thick ink on the surface. The
person that ends up with a shirt printed
with water-based ink will wear it more
often and keep it longer than other shirts.
But how can this added value be applied to a price increase in the garment?
Often, clients have ﬁxed budgets and they
will decline the more expensive process
and say, "Maybe next time." This can leave
the printer that wants to encourage a water-based process thinking that there isn't
a realistic market for the cost difference.
Work around this by creating your own
customer base using progressive sampling
and personal marketing. The easiest way
to sell a client on a new effect is to let him
appreciate it ﬁrst and then - once desired
- he will ask for it without a necessary
sales process. In this manner, you are not
even doing sales; you are simply offering
the soft-feeling print style to clients that
already want them.
To create a quality sample program, it is
effective to produce designs that are popular in style that also advertise your company. You will then have samples that you
can distribute to your better clients, as well
as examples that you can wear to show the
difference between the printing styles.
Another way to entice clients is to use
a comparison of prints that can be created
using different sets of inks. The advantage
impressionsmag.com

to this type of display is that clients can feel
the difference and also compare how the
different ink surfaces look with regard to
color vibrancy and ink saturation (Figure 1).
Once you have created a demand for
the process, you can start to promote
the speciﬁc value of softer prints in all of
your marketing efforts by illustrating the
advantages via testimonials from alreadysatisﬁed clients. Whenever a client requests
the water-based ink as part of an order, you
know that you have conquered the most
difﬁcult challenge of the new process.

USE WATER-BASED-FRIENDLY
ARTWORK
There are several important considerations when designing or modifying
artwork for water-based inks compared
to traditional plastisols. Fine lines and
details in the image may cause issues in
the print because the small pieces can be
prone to dry in the screen during a production run.
Images with a lot of ink colors can be
problematic for decorators who are just
learning water-based printing because
colors have a shelf life and they can be
expensive to mix, modify and match.

Figure 2
Water-based inks tend to have less
color intensity than plastisols due to the way the
pigments display in the ink and absorb into the
garments. Thus, artwork that has a vintage look
works well.
It also is important to remember that
water-based printing on dark garments
requires a discharge agent to release the
dye in the shirt so that the colors will appear brighter. Of course, printing a garment with discharge ink
also has it's own separate
issues to which you must
adapt, in addition to the
water-based ink variables.
If you are using provided
artwork, you may have to
modify it to reduce the
detail or colors in the original to make it work better
for water-based printing. A
quick way to do this is to
posterize the artwork by
converting blends and gradients to ﬂatter colors. This
can make the artwork look
less smooth, but it will aid
in the ﬁnal printing. Waterbased inks tend to have less

By using halftone dot

Figure 3

variations, the screen printer
doesn't have to worry about
smaller dots because all of the
dots are the same size; they
just vary in frequency, so they
are closer together or farther
away to simulate a change in
color value.

September 2014 | Impressions

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Impressions - September 2014

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