How We Print

There's printing..... and then, there's printing!

At Pixcel we adopt a wide variety of different printing processes and techniques to produce our products. Below is a general list of the way we print.

Canvas, Photos, Posters & Watercolour prints

Using a 12 colour wide-format printer with pigmented inks, colour calibrated with a professional x-rite eye-one profile system, we produce vibrant colour correct, archival, fade resistant prints with exceptional resolution.

T-Shirts, Hoodies, Polos, Beanies & accessories

To produce great quality printed clothing we use a special transfer material that is extremely thin and stretchy, we print onto this material with a solvent ink based printer which automatically cuts the design out, we then press the design onto the clothing with a flat bed heat press, this not only produces great printed results, but also makes them waterproof so they'll survive countless washes without deterioration.

Photo gift-ware (mugs, phone cases, coasters & placemats etc.)

As you can imagine, you can't just stick a mug in your printer and out pops a dishwasher-proof printed mug.

To produce all of these photo gifts we use a process called dye-sublimation, this technique involves printing your design onto a special paper with special heat-activated ink. After your design is printed we attach the print to the product i.e. mug and pop it into a heat-press which converts the solid ink into gas, this then transfers directly onto the specially coated product as if by magic. This type of printing alchemy is difficult to manage colour correctness, so there may be a slight difference in colour when compared to the original image.

Lithographic printing (business cards and flyers)

To produce large runs of the same printing as cost effective as possible we use a lithograpic press, there's a great deal to this process but to keep it simple 4 plates are manufactured from your design (seperations), these plates transfer the correct amount of cyan, magenta, yellow & black ink onto the substrate with a printing press, when all of the plates are pressed, the resulting colours build up to produce a full colour image with excellent colour range and tones.