Polo Shirts: Personalize Them By Screen Printing Your Designs

By Author: Benoit Larouza
Total Articles: 916
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Screen printing shirts are widely available everywhere, and that goes for polo shirts as well. Polos , also known as golf shirts, have always been part of the fashion trend, and they are conventional even in everyday wear. This undiminished favoritism is due largely in part to the popularity of golf. You can actually see prominent professional players like Tiger Woods, Annika Sorenstam and Jack Nicklaus strutting about in golf shirts.

Among the different kinds of golf shirts available, you can always have shirts that have screen printing. You can even submit your own original design or you can ask polo printing companies to copy the ones that the pros are often seen sporting.

Of course, the pros get to wear expensive designer-made golf shirts. Some of these shirts carry product names and they are usually supplied by sponsors. So, unless you are spectacularly great at golf and everyone knows about your so-called legendary skills, you probably won’t be getting your own custom made shirts delivered to your doorstep. That is, unless you decide to design them yourself.

Your custom polo shirt need not be ...
... expensive. Certainly, if you want only one piece for yourself, you shouldn’t bargain an arm and leg for it. However, if you feel the golfing bug bite you, and you want to share your screen printing designs with your golfing buddies or anyone else, you may want to buy a number of golf shirts to hand out.

For example, if the company you are working for likes to have an annual event to foster employee camaraderie, you can volunteer your golf shirts as a way to commemorate the event, and yeah, suggest that you all go golfing too. How about family reunion events? Custom polo shirts would be a great and reusable token to share.

Screen printing is not as expensive as you think. You can avail of some great discounts if you just take the time to scout around online. Large polo printing businesses may have the experience but you can try checking out smaller businesses, since these are the ones that are desperately seeking your business. These companies may just give you attractive packages and faster services.

There are many, many specialized polo printing companies in the World Wide Web. There might even be some price-cuts if you order in bulk or if you choose a specific type of cloth fiber. Some polo printing companies give special rates if you ask for reproduction of their best-selling designs. However, if you prefer to submit your own design or logo, perhaps the most affordable way is to screen print your designs rather than have your original design embroidered or digitally printed on the polo shirts.

Screen Printing

The process of screen printing your custom polo begins with your design. You submit your original artwork to the polo printing company and you specify that you want your order for screen printing only.

You do have to remember though that the cost of screen printing is dictated by the number of colors you have in your design. The more colors you have, the higher the cost because each color means a different silk screen. Try to make your design for silk screen printing not too garish because this printing process can only follow clear and precise outlines. Go for something solid, something that will look bold at a distance, something easily recognizable or even readable from a few feet away.

If your design is too complicated, the polo printing company will have to retrace your design from scratch so as to make definitive outlines; and that can delay the process of your polos’ printing. Once your design is approved by the polo printing company, your silk screens are lined with photosensitive emulsions to blot out most of the colors until only one outline is retained. Once the screen dries, it is exposed to a 3,000 watt metal halide light on a vacuum light table.

The screens are then washed, dried and pressed into service. Each color of your design is placed on the shirt using a squeegee, and this process is repeated until your entire design is completed. Then the golf shirts are left to dry.

You can order bulk orders because these usually come with lower prices per shirt. Mass orders for the screen printing process are usually run by machines. For smaller orders, though, manual processes are the norm and these may become a bit pricey per shirt.

The great thing about this is that you will have full control of your orders, and you can tell them exactly how many pieces you want, what color and fabric they should use, what screen printing design and when you want them delivered.

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If you want to make your own polo print design, or you would like your company to have a unique advertising item, you may want to log on to www.customyourshirt.com for more info.