How printmaking taught me to think in layers.

Screen Printing · Vector Illustration · Printmaking Systems · Production Workflows · Adobe Illustrator

CONTEXT

Before Illustrator was muscle memory, I learned to think in plates. Every print is a stack of decisions: what prints first, what overprints, what knocks out, what chokes or spreads, and what survives the trip from screen to shirt. Once you’ve burned screens, mixed ink, cut vinyl, and watched a “perfect” file fall apart on press, you start drawing for the press. I still do.

APPROACH

I sketch in layers. Even in a hand drawing I’m thinking about the base plate, the highlight plate and the texture plate, what needs to trap, and what needs its own color so it doesn’t muddy. That’s why my illustrations look simple. They’re built like print plates, and every shape has a job.

When I moved to digital, I brought the print shop with me. On design teams I helped build shared libraries of Illustrator actions that did what a print shop does by hand: expand strokes, outline type, simplify paths, split spot colors, preview overprints, prep files for the vinyl cutter, and flatten transparency for screen print. Teaching people to use them spread print shop thinking across teams that had never stood at a press.

OUTCOME

Because my vectors are built like stencils and plates, the same file can be screen printed, vinyl cut, laser etched, risographed or animated without rebuilding the art.

Print taught me to like constraints. Most of what I make still starts with the question a printer asks first: what has to survive the trip to the next medium?

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