I helped judge a contest that was also the final project for an illustration class at one of the best public art schools in the US of A, Mass Art (Massachusetts College of Art.)

The teacher is a very good teacher and

good guy, Bob Maloney.

He has been teaching illustration for five years there and obviously does a good job.

The project was to design a t-shirt for a hot sauce company, Mad Dog.

Tonight we gave feedback to the students who had all done three preliminary designs, and we also picked one for them to take to completion.

This art was better than 80% of the art we receive, even supposedly by “professional.”
What there was not:
- no full squares or rectangles of ink
- no circles or ovals of ink
- not one was too “inky”
- not one superfluous blend or fade
- not one design wrapped around the whole shirt or went over the shoulder
- not one was over five or six colors
- not one boring typeface
- no clip art

What there was:
- some nice hand done type
- classical references without being boring or pretentious
- bold illustration
- some whimsey
- great use of the t-shirt color within the design
- illustration that looks good from across the whole room, which is key on a t-shirt which is basically a moving palette
- designs that told a story
- designs that took risks with unusual color combinations

I hope that tomorrow, I don’t see a design that has three blends and wraps around the whole shirt.

I really am hoping for that.

Stay tuned for the w inner, to be picked

in two weeks.

You print on the front of a shirt and a ghostly mage shows up on the back of the shirt.

You print on the front of the shirt, box up the shirts and when the customer takes them out, they find a ghostly image on the tails of the shirts.

Th is

is quite a mystery

and a damn disaster.

Check out the photos below of the frog print, the ghost frog, and both together.

It is tempting to use low bleed ink on everything because you want the busy (or frankly, sometimes dumb) folks in your shop to not even possibly forget to use low bleed ink when you print 50/50’s. However, this use of 50/50 ink on everything can lead to disaster.

Low bleed ink  for 50/50’s often has peroxide in it and this peroxide when hot  basically “bleaches” any o ther parts of

the shirt that

the image touches.

 So that means when stacking them at the end of the dryer the front hits the back, and if you box them hot, the front hits the tail of the shirt on top of it.

Both lead to a deadly ghost image as the ink image permanently bleaches the fabric with a hazy dull mirror image of itself.

I could be wrong but it seems like it cheap ink does this more, they must use more peroxide or fillers. It al so seems to happen more often on garment dyed shirts,

so watch out.

How to fix this right:
Use a good cotton white ink, we use Rutland’s EH9072 Cotton White for all printing on cotton. It will give you a slightly smoother print than a low bleed white and will not ghost. For a non ghosting low bleed white we use M39000 Retro White that can be used for cotton or poly/cotton fabrics, so if you are printing 100% cotton shirts and 50/50 sweats on the same run you don’t have to change out your ink.

Poor man’s fix: you can also set up a million fans  stack the shirts all over the place and cool off the shirts before stacking them. This is a desperate move (you are printing at night and don’t have any other ink) or a dumb move (time is money too, don’t cheap out on buying the ink.)

Proper froggie print

The ghastly ghost image

Frog print and his ghost

Our business of slinging ink is a sleazy one. The rag trade tends to the dishonest, the penny pinching, and the unethical. My good pal and former partner in crime Colin Cheer always has mused that it came from screen printers historically plying their trade printing license plates in prison.

I don’t buy that explanation, as the most stand up guy I know in the industry spent 7 years behind bars, and two of the best employees I have had each spent a couple years in jail as well. However, that’s a story for another day.

Yesterday nobody pinched one of my pennies, stole a customer, lied about how many boxes they received, or claimed that the too many shirts they ordered have a minor defect. Yesterday some screen printers came to the rescue.

Some times

despite everyone’s best intentions some job can fall between the cracks.

A week of warm weather around here and suddenly everyone remembered that they need shirts this summer. So being busy and throw in a heavy dose of a key person going on maternity leave unexpectedly early, and a job just plain fell off the radar screen. We all leave something to a panic last minute, UPS red label, driver waiting on the loading dock moment.

Most of us even know the last minute fedex at the airport will take a package.

In over t wenty years of doing this, I do not think

we ever missed getting shirts to an event.

I can’t tolerate that kind of not doing my job and nobody working with me can tolerate it either.

Actually most screen printers that I know are those kind of people. I’ve slept at the end of the dryer until shirts landed on me waking me up, worked all night for a couple nights, called employees to help that I haven’t seen in two years, called suppliers on Sunday,… my whatever means necessary to get things done in time.

Sometimes this has even required asking favors of the competition in the area. Printers around me have come to the rescue when equipment has gone down or somebody forgo to order something. Cool Air has made films for me, jMack studios printed a job for me in a pinch, Liquid Blue has lent me ink, and most recently Sports Systems shot a bunch of screens for us with no notice and saved our butts.

We’ve either returned those favors or we are willing to.

Yesterday, I thought no favor would save us.

I thought no knowledge of speedy expedited services would either.

At 1:30 PM on Thursday I found out that we were supposed to have printed shirts the day before and expedited them to a music festival that started Thursday night, one hour North of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Since we print in South Carolina and Rhode Island.

The first step in damage control is to not even for a moment think about why this disaster has occurred or who’s fault it is, but rather to spring to action to provide remedy. I calmed the customer and told her we would do the best we could.

This was also one of those times that you can’t wait for one plan not to materialize and then go to Plan B. We sprung into action to both try and print the job and get it there somehow, and to also get it printed near the venue. It is a good thing we tried more than one plan. Plan A of printing and getting it there immediately did not work. I called the cell of my screen print pal Bill Mooney in NC. He quickly agreed to let me use his “at once” delivery account. Since 9/11 you can’t just go to the airport anymore and do Delta Dash or other same day services. This was an excellent plan, but unfortunately no airlines were going to fly into Grand Rapids or even Detroit until after midnight. Ouch.

I know some guys at a plant called Perrin in MI and I called the three guys I knew at that plant. Panic set in, but after a couple frantic calls, emails, and pagings I reached them. They are a big place and I know enough to know that having a couple dozen presses might mean you have less availability, not more to squeeze in a rush job.

I started to panic when I heard they were in a deadline situation themselves and could not help, but they did suggest other printers in town. My heart sunk when the first company got the art and said they probably could do the job, but then called back and said no.

One of the guys at Perrin gave me a lead. I called Seth Bussert of Screengraphix Ink of Comstock Park, MI and he came to the rescue. He listened to my story of woe and desperation and said he would do the job. Nothing is that easy though, but after us getting through an art problem, he went and got the shirts, printed them, and then drove them himself to the venue fifty miles away and found the recipient at the show and delivered the goods. He even trusted me to send a check today to him. He so much did not extort me in my time of need, that we are paying him $100 more than he asked for.

Thanks Seth.

Up all night,

we are in some “hot market” printing today. Basically you make a battle plan and then either go into overdrive and start printing as fast as you can, or you send everyone home.

This time thanks to Tim Thom as, Marchand, Bergeron and company, we are printing Bruins shirts

as fast as we can.

Up all night, something always doesn’t go quite right when you get squirrelly around 4 or 5AM, then you get in a groove again and the printed shirts pile up.

It is neither that lucrative nor

that fun to stay up all night.

However, it is cool to be a part of something bigger than your shop once in awhile.

This isn’t d aily routine, there is

a little more adrenaline involved and a little more fun.

We were interviewed by every TV station a few times. You can’t say what you want on TV, but I made sure to wear my Farm Aid shirt on camera.

Bruins Stanley Cup shirt

Bruins shirts coming down the belt

Let’s say unfortunate image,

unfortunate interviewer but this is an off the hook digital direct to garment press.

It looks like this thing will do 400 shirts an hour, inexpensive ink, great interface and great image/order software. These are some very smart Austrian dudes.

Just watch the aeoon fly at the 2 minute mark.

the aeoon

This is painful to watch.

It is hilarious, but

I think nearly every line in it I have actually heard.

There are some swears, don’t watch if you can’ t handle cursing.

They nailed one concept, don’t ever put your logo on shirt to sponsor it.

You won’t get any business, you’ll be marked as a sucker for as long as all those shirts exist and five hundred other people will ask you for free shirts in exchange for your logo being on their shirts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rt2FpVMJwe0

Your shirts are just going to cost more

and more.

Right now you have t-shirt sellers that are successful competing with lousy t-shirt

sellers. The good ones have to compete with shirts produced with newer cotton prices, the lousy ones have inventory bought when cotton was half the price.

When old stock goes, the price will jack even more.

A normal shirt is almost one half pound of cotton.

The price went from $.49 to almost $2 per pound, what do you think will happen

?

Read it and weep, $.49 per pound to $2!

Fact: We have one of the most reliable presses ever built, an MHM SP4000. The SP3000’s and SP4000’s I have had for the past fifteen years have worked day in and day out.

I do not think I have had even five days down TOTAL on all the machines put together! They also work with hardly any maintenance required and they rarely need adjustments. You don’t even have to ever level the platens, arms, or print heads!

Belief: My friend Marty Bailey at American Apparel is to my mind the driving force behind that company. He has that factory humming and cranks out  thous ands of shirts every day,

and does it while treating his workers with dignity and respect.

I once was visiting and was discussing the aerospace manufacturing method of Quality Circles. He has a more homespun version which is have the machines and materials really ready for your workers, and be clear on what they are supposed to get done.

Shame: I know that Marty Bailey is right and you have to have

your equipment correct, your materials lined up, and be clear on what has to get d

one. We had a super rush job that was ten colors and difficult to do last night.

The press looks like this on one station:

Tape doesn't belong on a press. Mea culpa, deferred maintenance is stupid.

The easiest press to fix around, mainly in that it hardly ever needs fixing, and it is down a station. There is no excuse for this, we’re missing a part and I’ve been too lazy to get it and install it. Needless to s ay it w

as a major roadblock to getting the work done last night.

We got it done, but at a price of frustration, extra expense, and aggravation. I ended up sleeping at the shop.

That’s not fun. I’ll order that part today.

It is nice to live long enough to see some progress, to see small steps that make a difference.

We have been working with a woman down South who has worked her butt off to get a source of commercially viable organic embroidery thread.

 She had some black and natural that she sold us,

and then lost her supplier.

She kept at it and she now has genuine certified organic thread in 42 colors!

It is all GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard) certified, so the real deal.

As a Polish friend you to say to me as he struggled to learn English, “Rick, every day is getting lepsze.”  (pronounced LIPE shuh)  He was saying that every day was getting better.

GOTS certified embroidery thread colors

With the proliferation of fashionable garments, more and more customers that would have manufactured their own garments, merely relabel an existing garment.

I got a call today from an old friend in the business today and he said, “I figured my cost is $.70, but I know they won’t pay that!”

Little tiny print unfortunately makes too many customers think it is a little tiny price. It is not.

Even if you are very efficient, cutting out a label and printing a new one is more expensive than putting a giant print on the front of a shirt, and typically more difficult to get right.

If you are not careful, a screenprinted label will show through the back of a shirt, particularly the thin fashionable kinds that most people want to use for their private label line.

One thing that helps, with shirts like Aurum Organic or some Anvil

shirts is that they have perforated labels that just rip right out.

If you aren’t so lucky, you are talking razors or scissors and a time consuming process,

and worse if you need to open the seam to sew a new label under.

The options for relabeling:

sew over

sew under

transfer

screenprint

pad print

All these methods have a plus and minus to them depending on how many colors, quantity, size, type of shirts, turn time….

More on these later.

but conclusion with my pal was, try to get close to break even on relabeling and mark up the whole job, because customers won’t pay what it really costs.