Sponsor Prints: When the Back of the Shirt Becomes the Real Challenge

When I got into screen printing, my dream was to crank out band merch and artsy prints all day long. Custom tees for cool people, creative designs, a press full of fun. But that’s just not how this business works most of the time.

Over the years, I found a niche: marathon shirts. Fun Runs, Turkey Trots, Walks for Life—you name it. We’d print thousands of shirts with decent artwork on the front… and then there was the back. You know the one: a wall of single-color sponsor logos, stacked by tier—Platinum, Gold, and the ever-infamous Silver.

The Sponsor Logo Hierarchy

Platinum sponsors usually had logos designed by professionals. They’d print beautifully in black on white or in reverse—crisp, clean, and consistent.

Gold sponsors were a 50/50 mix. Some were strong vector designs, others had tiny details or halftones that wanted to close up. Manageable, but you had to keep an eye on them.

Silver sponsors? That’s where things got rough. We’re talking logos from the local chiropractor, a vape shop, maybe a food truck—logos “designed” by someone’s nephew who just discovered Photoshop. They had five gradients, three fonts, a drop shadow or two, and once you converted them to black and white? An absolute mess of halftones, mushy text, and headache-inducing detail.

The Halftone Trap

I’d find myself trying to make those Silver-tier logos look halfway decent—adjusting squeegee pressure, tweaking angle and speed—only to see my Platinum logos suffer in quality. The print was turning into a balancing act where the smallest, least valuable logos were taking up the most time and causing the most trouble.

The Fix: Two Screens

One day, I was fighting with a 1-inch-by-1-inch logo made entirely of halftones, watching my nice vector logos turn to mush. I’d had enough. I split the back print into two screens:

• 305 mesh for the halftone-heavy Silver-tier logos

• 156 mesh for the clean, bold vector logos from Gold and Platinum sponsors

It was too late to work the extra screen into the quote, but it paid for itself instantly in saved press time and cleaner prints.

The Takeaway

If you’re printing sponsor-heavy backs, don’t let the weakest logos dictate the quality of the entire print. Use two screens. Save yourself the frustration, the setup time, and the last-minute compromises.

Because at the end of the day, the client only sees one shirt—and they expect every logo, from the $5,000 sponsor to the $50 one, to look its best.