How to Create Vintage Screen Prints: Distress, Duotone, and Ink Opacity Techniques

THERE WAS A PREDICTION decades ago that the distressed or vintage look would be a short fad that would quickly peak in popularity and disappear. Why would anyone want a printed shirt that looks “worn out” or “retro” when you could get a bright, shiny new-looking print?

Obviously, that prediction did not come true. In fact, it seems that vintage prints have an ongoing appeal and there is an ever-increasing demand for retro graphics for different niches.

Applying a worn-out effect to a graphic implies it was popular enough to be worn repeatedly, and that appeals to our interest in selecting things that are trendy and comfortable.

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Fortunately for artists and printers, it has never been easier to create prints that look vintage. This article covers three popular screen-printing methods: distress overlays, duotones, and alternative underbases or ink sets. (Figure 1)

Using these techniques changes things about the graphics and the final prints. By understanding their application and controlling their variables, you will create a worn-out look that positively enhances your apparel.

A worn-out look isn’t appropriate for every graphic or product. 

When you apply vintage treatment to a screen-printed design, it makes a normal print look older for more commercial appeal. It is most often used for fashion.

These changes can affect type legibility and color integrity. It can even create corporate logo concerns if it causes a recognizable logo to look too damaged or eroded. Use these effects with care and intention and always communicate with your customer.

In most cases, the client must approve a simulation of the final print with the vintage look applied so they can see how it will look before printing. Although digital or paper-printed simulations are never a perfect match, with practice and experience, you can get close enough that the customer will be comfortable with the approval and its similarity to the final prints.

A useful thing to have during the sales and approval process is previous examples of other digital approvals and their final printed pieces using a similar vintage effect. (Figure 2)

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Three Ways to Create Vintage Designs

1. Distress overlays
The most popular — and in many ways the easiest — vintage effect is called a distress overlay or knockout pattern that makes a previously solid print look broken, scratched, or eroded.

Distressed patterns are easy to find online, but I have found a lot of satisfaction from making my own patterns by using photos of textures I collect for this purpose.

When you start with a retro design in CorelDRAW, Illustrator, or Photoshop, all you have to do is import your photo as a separate element or file, turn the photo into a grayscale bitmap, squeeze out the mid-tone grays using the curves or levels commands, and convert it to a black-and-white bitmap. (I typically use at least a 300-dpi resolution at actual size.)

FIGURE 3: Distressed patterns are easy to find online, but I have found a lot of satisfaction from making my own by using photos of textures I collect for this purpose.

You can then apply the background color (or shirt color) to the distress overlay so that it appears transparent in fill and just the smaller distress pieces become colored. Then, place it strategically over your design to make it look cracked and/or eroded. (Figure 3)

Using distress overlays that are online will shortcut the process but provide less control over where the specific effect falls on your graphic.

Using a more advanced approach to distress overlays provides the most control, although it makes it more challenging to color-separate the results. Creating patterns this way can make a convincing final print, so depending on the goal of your design, it may be worth the hassle to consider a more detailed approach.

To control exactly where on the design your distress falls, it is useful to create distress “brushes” that use smaller chunks of bitmaps or vector pieces. This way, you can duplicate, size, rotate, and precisely place the pieces of distress across the elements in your designs.

To manage how much distress is applied to a design area versus using only the knockout overlay (which completely removes what is underneath), you can “nest” a distress overlay inside of your design elements, which will be a less-solid percentage of the final print.

This especially is useful when you need to maintain text or logo legibility while maintaining the vintage look. I test this effect with a 40% tint of the top color so the effect on a dark garment is that the color is faded more toward the garment color in those areas.

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Using the brush and nested distress effects together creates a high-quality vintage effect that is completely controlled and still subtle, depending on where it is applied to the design. Often, these can be confined to layers of duplicates of the original design, so they are easily removable and adjustable in case the client changes their mind before production. (Figure 4.)

2. Duotone image mode changes

The most popular examples of duotone effects are “Wanted” posters looks from the Old West. This could also be called a sepia-tone effect. A duotone is created by converting a full-color photo into a sepia image using black and varying shades of dark red/brown.

This look is also popular for vintage-looking logos and labels on a variety of products to make them look older: whiskey labels, wine labels, cigar labels, soaps, and beauty products, for example.

A version of duotone employed for horror movie graphics uses a dark navy blue. The image looks creepy, antique, and like it’s being viewed late at night with a cold light source.

Images can be converted to this look in graphics software by changing a full-color image to grayscale and then applying a “hue/saturation – colorize” effect (as in Photoshop) and then setting the hue and saturation.

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In vector software, such as CorelDRAW, a similar effect can be achieved with filters (using a grayscale and then adjusting the hue to colorize). Images in bitmap software also can be converted to a duotone image mode in some cases. To achieve the desired look and control, test your software to find what works best. (Figure 5.)

Separating these can be a bit more challenging than with distress overlays. You must extract several colors and likely need specific inks to define the printing process that best replicates the look.

A good way to manage this is to record all the steps: converting the image, the separation process, halftones, mesh, and the final inks. If you save this as an example and then show the design, approval, and final print to another client, you have a quick way to accurately replicate the previous look successfully.

3. Alternative Underbases and Ink Sets

For many screen printers, the first time they print the opacity style, which can create a vintage print, is by accident. They forget to print the underbase on a full-color design on a dark shirt.

The top-color inks, while they still have some opacity, lose most of their vibrancy and appear faded, and almost sink into the garment. In some cases, the printer may notice this accident and prefer the faded print, even though it wasn’t intended. The goal, of course, is to do this intentionally and make it consistent and repeatable.

These inks can be used as solid prints or in various percentages, depending on the desired opacity. The easiest way to experiment with this type of effect, without changing inks or other supplies, is to test what their standard inks look like with an underbase other than white. Some common alternatives for underbases are gray, cream, and a variety of other colors.

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The key to gaining enough experience to offer this solution is to test and document the final results. (Figure 6.)

Once you know what the results will be and how changing the underbase affects the overprinted colors, the look can be simulated for art approvals and for production references digitally. As with the duotone mapping, it is key to record positive results and examples, so you can easily replicate it for future jobs.

A big appeal to this style of vintage printing is that it can affect the hand of the print. It tends to make it less heavy on the garment. Two ways to further decrease the hand is to use a higher mesh count for the non-white underbase or switch to water-based inks.

Keep in mind water-based inks require different stencils and have different production variables. They also must be cured differently, so do your homework.

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Water-based inks tend to print deeper into the fabric, causing the final print to feel less like it’s on the surface. Many customers often comment on soft-hand feeling prints, and it is a popular style, particularly on lightweight fabrics and those that have retro-style imagery. (Figure 7)

If you are interested in changing your approach to how opaque to print your inks, it is critical to be touch with your customers and make sure they want the look and feel of the final product.

At a certain point, there is only so much you can do to the actual art file to achieve a vintage look and feel. If you truly want a print to feel washed out, then you might have to adjust the opacity of your prints to reach it.

The key is controlling the ink opacity as well as the process to get the desired result. Talk to your local ink supplier and find a printer who has mastered the process to learn this style of printing.

When you become comfortable creating and executing these vintage styles, it makes it easier to offer the right solution that fits the graphic requested and the final order. In some situations, you may use a combination of these styles to achieve the ideal results for the customer. It is less about the method and more about a high-quality effect that enhances the finished product.

Creating vintage-looking screen prints is an easy way to make designs look appealing and fashionable. Using a variety of techniques like distress overlays, duotone image adjustments, and alternative opacity prints gives you a great start on producing convincing, popular printed effects.

You can wow your customers and keep production simple. The next time you get a retro design request, you can ask, “Would you like that with a vintage effect?”