Bikini is a screen print studio based in Brussels. We handprint limited editions on paper and other materials.
We produce quality screen prints on a manual printing table. We use exclusively water-based inks. We predominately print on paper and cardboard but also on fabric, wood and other materials.
Our studio is able to print and insolate sizes up to 85x125cm. Our most common printing size is 70x100cm (or half of it) based on the European paper standards. We can print up to 100x140cm but are not able to insolate such large size frames in-house.
Pricing depends on size, colours, paper, quantities but also on the visual itself and of course on deadlines, shipping …
Send us an email with all the information you have and we come back to you as soon as possible. Here are some guidelines to help you giving us the most possible information.
Size
We are talking about paper size here, not about the area your visual takes. The standard paper sizes most of our dealers offer is 100x70cm (sometimes 102x72cm). Half that size, 70x50cm, is another standard often used for posters. Notice that these are also the most available frame-sizes. If you need something different like very large posters or even tiny business cards just tell us and we will check what we can do.
Colours
In screen printing the number of colours is an important issue. Every colour is printed separately with a dry stage in between each pass. Every colour implicates the preparation of a separated printing frame. So every additional colour increases the complexity of the work and of course the production costs.
Think about the printing order of your colours! Think about opacity and transparency!
In the screen print industry colours are mixed manually from a reduced palette of colours. We do not print Pantone colours but the Pantone System is the best way to give us a guideline of what colours you want to reach. You may want to use one of the pure colours of our colour system to reduce risk of errors and even costs.
We can also print fluorescent, phosphorescent and metallic colours!
Quantity
How many prints do you need?
Notice that variations are possible but involve additional costs. (If for example you would like to have the same visual printed 30 times in red and 30 in blue we have to charge the cleaning step)
Paper
Tell us what sort of paper and weight you are thinking about. If you have a precise paper reference or even a particular dealer do not hesitate to tell us.
Some papers, like lo light papers, tend to flute and are not recommended for precise artwork.
Visual
Graphic designers, Attention, The needs of screen printing are not at all the same as for common printing processes like offset! If you are not a graphic designer our design studio may help you preparing the files for film shooting.
The best way to find out if your Work fits our needs is to send us a preview (even if it's just a sketch)!
Yes, you can use photographic material and grids, but you have to know that the precision of screen printing is far lower than in offset printing. Avoid Bleed colour surfaces to near to the edge of the paper…
Deadline and Shipping
Do not calculate your project too short. Screen printing takes time. And do not forget that it is impossible for our studio to always have all ink and papers on stock.
What we can not print for you
If you have extremely fine artwork or precise photographic material silkscreen printing may not be the right process to reproduce your work. We use very fine mashes and inks but silkscreen printing has its limits.
If you need a very large quantity of prints or a very large amount of colours it could be possible that our manual workflow may not be adapted to you needs. Please also notice that our aim is not to reach the precision of an automated process.
We cannot print on everything but we will try hard. Yes, we do print on fabric, but we are not a Tshirt printing service as we do not use a carousel printing device. But if you need large size limited edition prints on fabric or other material we are your Partner.
We do not want to respond to extreme deadlines. So if you want to print something for tomorrow morning we might have a problem too.