Curtain call: Producing T-shirts for a school drama department

We’ve said it a time or two before. Every great production starts with a bold vision. Sometimes it’s a meticulously developed art file. Sometimes it’s a sketch. And sometimes, it’s a crayon drawing from spirited middle schoolers with big ideas. That’s where this project began, backstage with the Liberty Junior High Drama Club. A drama club is focused on theatrical arts, where members engage in activities like acting, singing, dancing, and set design to develop skills to produce performances. It’s a community where young students can hone their abilities, explore their interests in the performing arts, and create a fun and engaging environment.

The kids were gearing up for their spring performances when their teachers reached out about getting some merch for the club. To get the ball rolling, he sent us the “artwork.” If you’ve ever seen a director’s notes on a bar napkin sketched in pencil, you know the vibe. This wasn’t a polished file by any stretch. It was raw, joyfully creative, and hand-drawn with love. This was heart-on-your-sleeve imagination straight from the kids. We could see magic in those scribbles. Our job? Put that energy onto a garment that would say, “Welcome to opening night!”

In many of these columns, we share fairly complicated projects that sometimes take weeks to create and separate, not to mention the prepress involved with multiple screens, raster/vector components, split whites, split blacks, special effects, flashes, print order, and more. This month’s contribution is a bit more straightforward. It’s about timing, and it was time to bring it down a notch — or eleven. We thought we would share a little more common and simple project we just completed recently. We like simplicity, particularly for kids.

Shirt back

Let’s talk back. Not like the children might, but the actual back of this shirt. The Liberty Junior High Drama Club wanted a simple, basic one-color print. Something that would unify the cast and crew, from rehearsal to curtain call. We converted the original artwork, complete with stick figures and hand-drawn type into a clean one-color screen print file by scanning and tracing it into Adobe Illustrator, where we would do our cleanup. We squinted a lot and laughed a little. Then we redrew nearly from scratch. We didn’t just trace, we interpreted, and we adapted.

We cleaned lines and added weight to give the kids’ art a chance to scream from stage. Every scribble had a voice, and we weren’t about to silence it. We reshaped it a bit and manipulated it into place, then locked the original. With it still selected, we made it into a spot color. Since this was for the drama club, and we weren’t printing thousands of items each, more like 50, one color was the way to go. Liberty was looking for something simple, clean, and basic in concept. We outputted using computer to screen on a 156 tpi mesh at 35 N/cm.

Ink choice? Straight navy using a 65/90/65 triple ply duel durometer squeegee and, dare we say, a double stroke for adequate saturation. Fabric? Bold gold cotton tees and heather gray heavy sweatshirts. Simple? Sure. But effective. That single color on those fabrics popped with a dramatic ta-da!  We’ve said this many times: “There is something to be said for keeping things simple.” And simple can be super clean and sharp. And many times preferred. Done. Screen print portion complete.

Complicated front

Here’s where things got a little dicey. The front original imagery was anything but simple. We’re talking eight, maybe 10 colors, depending on which angle we looked at it. Multiple blues, golds, orange, black, white, transitions, and more. Ugh! It’s painful to separate and screen print at these numbers. The design was an explosion of childlike energy, however, complete with character silhouettes, theatrical lighting, and a dramatic typestyle. OK, not so much, but it was super-clever and creative.

Screen printing that many colors would have been a logistical circus, and certainly not practical. So, we would pivot. It’s what we are supposed to do these days, right? We brought in the not-so-secret weapon to complete the project. After setting up the proper file, we would order in full-color hybrid digital transfers. These bad boys let us preserve every detail without making ten screens and without giving our press operator a nervous breakdown. We matched the back prints perfectly, making sure everything looked cohesive and stage-ready by calling out a PMS color to match our navy ink for the type. Nailed it.

The transfers arrived within just a few days and were applied using heat transfer equipment. Pressure was set to a medium 40 psi with heat at 295 degrees for an even 10 seconds. If there was any magic here, it was to get an immediate hot peel release on the carrier. We kissed the adhered transfer a second time with paper for a few seconds to take off the shine and to make sure no corners pulled up. We gave the back side print the same kiss so it would have the same touch, feel, and drape as the front.

The cast and crew looked like pros, or so we were told. We like to think every shirt tells a story all its own. And for the Liberty Junior High Drama Club, we were proud to play our part behind the scenes. The kids wore their gear like armor, expressing their identity. Their art, on their backs, on their stage. Sometimes the best gigs aren’t the biggest. They’re the ones that remind us why we started doing this in the first place, with a pencil, an idea, and a dream. Break a leg, kids. You already stole the show.