Screen printing is a kind of printing where you let the ink pass through a mesh by applying force in order for the ink to transfer to any material. That is pretty much the description of the process. And screen printing is widely used in the advertising industry, from clothing to signages, labels, and fashion.

It is also called serigraphy. It’s from the Latin words sericum (which means silk) and Greek word graphe (which means to engrave or draw). In short, it is a process of stamping on a shirt, or printing using a mesh and ink. It’s a repetitive process. If you have a screenprint on say 100 shirts, with one color print, you would do the stamping or printing strokes 100 times.

Modern-day screen printing uses a wood or aluminum frame to mount a screen or mesh. This is called a screen frame. This then gets coated with a light-sensitive emulsion where the image to be screen printed will get “burn” into. The word burn is a term used to describe the process of chemically etching the image onto the screen. A bright light is used in this etching process. Any emulsion exposed to the light gets hardened and any part of the emulsion that is not exposed to the light will fall off when washing with water.

After etching, the screen frame is dried before it can be used.

At Poco Shirt Printing, we use this modern-day screen printing process to custom print on shirts. It has the most durable printing result. It’s our first go-to process for a high-quality custom printed shirt.