Rainbow Printing

Rainbow Printing – Back to school with this one, cutting, sticking and fuzzy felt…mix up a bunch of mutually complimentary and tonally sympathetic colours,  launch them into the same screen in neat little side by side blobs. Then  to create a blended colour look, swipe the squeegee across the screen…more colour, one screen, less cost, shirt off, punch the air. The lines of a rainbow print can run in a variety of directions, depending on how ambidextrous your printer is. This type of printing really wants to be done by hand. One of the advantages being that the screen printer in charge of the squeegee can print your rainbow stripes vertically, horizontally, and if he’s feeling kind he could pull the ink across the design diagonally. If you come in for an October Textiles print day experience however, perhaps don’t attempt rainbow printing on a Friday afternoon, unless you want a really wavy result.

Words to the wise when rainbow printing:

The main words to the wise are that the finished results with rainbow printing will be a trifle random. And for trifle, read very. As the print run continues, the neatly lined up Jamaican flag of stripes will blend more and more into a big pot of brown jerk chicken. To avoid that, perhaps only use in short runs, or in our pack of sales cards play the ‘They all vary to give that one off exclusive feel’ trick – that’s cheating isn’t it? Not really, this game is tough enough, we need to give you every marketing angle we can think of.

Again and as always, not a printing technique for technique’s sake. Rainbow printing for reasons we can’t quite explain, always feels more relevant to World Music, and brands with an earthy, lentil eating sort of look at my sandals vibe. It probably helps sales move well if your target market is members of Greenpeace.