Mikesigns Custom Screenprinting, Custom Embroidery and Personalized Apparel in Salinas, CA

Mikesigns was established in the Salinas area in 1973. We are family owned and operated since inception, and strive to provide big city quality with small town service. We offer a wide array of services; from hand lettering and pinstriping to cutting edge digital printing and direct to garment shirt printing.

All art is done "in house" by our artists who have decades of experience between them. We can take you from initial ideas and concepts to a final product that you are happy with and we are proud of. Here are a few of the processes we offer...

SCREENPRINTING

Most T-Shirts and sweatshirts that you see are silk screened. Image positives are burned into screens made of silk (who would have guessed?). We put plastisol ink through the screens and onto the shirts, which are then dried. Each color on the shirt has to go on its own screen, which means that the more colors you get, the more expensive it is. However, once all the screens are lined up and ready to go, printing 100 shirts is as easy as printing 50. This means that the more shirts you get, the cheaper the individual price gets per shirt (the old joke goes "just print them until they are free..."). For multi color jobs or larger orders, screen printing is the way to go.

DIRECT TO GARMENT PRINTING

This is a cutting edge technology; the next generation of heat transfers. Each individual garment is fed through a machine that is much like an ink-jet printer that uses T-shirt inks. This means that "one-off" shirts with many colors can be done for a much lower price than if they were to be silk screened. the print lasts long, and has a much softer "hand" (the amount you can feel the print on the shirt...think of the black shirts with the big sweat block print on them as a thick handed print) than a heat transfer. If you want a few shirts, this is the way to go. There is no minimum order for direct-to-garment printing, in fact, it is catered to small shirt (sweatshirt, jacket, work shirts, pants, etc.)orders.

EMBROIDERY

Embroidery is stitching thread onto garments. Typically you see embroidery on polo shirts, jackets, dress shirts and hats. It is a more professional looking embellishment. Embroidery prices are not dependent on the number colors in a design; instead the stitch count (number of stitches) in the design is what determines cost. From one hat to a thousand polo shirts, we do our embroidery on site. Just like direct to garment printing, we do not require a minimum order.

PLYWOOD SIGNS

Plywood signs are best made of an overlaid material called MDO. Originally this stood for
"medium density one-side", it now describes a plywood sign that sandwiches layers of wood glued with a durable marine adhesive and coated with a hardboard surface that is kind of like fiberglass. This allows you to have a sign that can be painted with an oil based enamel to give a "metal smooth" surface, with no grain or grooves that will last for years and years. This is probably the most popular non-electric sign material. It comes in 4'x8' boards and ranges from 3/8" to 3/4" thick and can be single or double sided. If you are putting it on a wall on the front of your building, 3/8" is fine but if you are doing a real estate sign bolted to a couple of 4"x4" posts, 3/4" will cost more but will perform better and be less likely to warp. The MDO signs can be painted and cut to reflect any shape and will accept paint or vinyl signage.

COROPLAST

Coroplast is best described as "plastic cardboard" - the name is short for corrugated plastic. It looks like a piece of cardboard with the same flutes and ribs and thickness, but its made of plastic. They come in a limited number of colors and are either 4mm or 10mm thick. 4mm is about 1/4" thick. These are pretty much indestructible and while they are flimsy as far as dimensional stability (they are very flexible) they are impervious to the elements. The signs you see around town that advertise the Airshow, Rodeo, Monster Trucks and most of the political campaign signs are coroplast. A 4'x8' sheet of coroplast is about 1/3 the price of a comparable sheet of plywood. This material is best with vinyl as regular paint doesn't stick to the plastic very well although they can be screenprinted with a special coroplast ink. This is the most popular substrate, and works great with digital graphics.

ALUMINUM

Aluminum metal blanks are required for certain applications including "no parking" signs if they are to be approved by the Salinas Police Department. Aluminum blanks come in various sizes from 12"x18" to 4'x8' and range in thickness from .030 (pretty thin) to .080 or 1/8". The corners are rounded, usually are white front and back, can be made reflective and can be painted or vinyled.

BANNERS

BANNERS are signs on a flexible vinyl covered fabric that can be rolled up and moved or stored. Banners can be painted, vinyled or digitally printed in full color (including photographs) and you should discuss if you need it with a hem and grommets, clearcoated, neon colored or double sided. While most banners are temporary use items, I do know that some of my customers have had them up as permanent signs and used them for years.

Once you know where the sign should go, what it will be made of and how big, the next consideration is design. Art costs money and as much as software has made things simpler over the past 30 years, its still a little more involved than just "pushing a button on the computer". If you pick a lettering style that is already in the computer's program, it will be a smaller setup charge. If you bring us a business card, well we can usually work from that but the art design costs will be greater. If you have digital art it will come in a format or language like .ai, .jpg, .psd, .eps, .tif, .cdr or some equally random appearing series of letters like that. Some formats can be fed directly into the computer and the sign making is on, while others must be converted into vector art that the plotter can recognize. We will be glad to tell you if what you have is sign ready or if it needs to be translated, and what that will cost. We can work from a napkin sketch if we have to, but its usually more time-consuming and therefore more expensive. If you have a graphic artist as either an employee or a friend who did your art, the best thing is to have us talk directly so as to get your project done with the least amount of B.S. and therefore cost, to you.