Entries Tagged as 'Uncategorized'

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

A good trick on re-labeling

You have cut out the label of a shirt to print.  Unfortunately it isn’t one of the increasing number of brands with tear away labels.
So, those annoying little threads are still there, left from the label. It takes longer to pull them out than it did to razor cut the label out. The problem is [...]

Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Spring

After the winter of our discontent, well at least in our Northern climes, Spring is here.
Thoughts turn to verse:
You can’t see Canada across lake Erie, but you know it’s there.  It’s the same with spring.  You have to have faith, especially in Cleveland.  ~Paul Fleischman
People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no [...]

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

Choking

A friend just called me. His underprint white is peeking out around the spot color over it.
In screenprinting one chokes the under printed white ink, meaning that you cut it back slightly from the color that goes over it. Nobody can print in absolute perfect registration is one reason you do this, and you don’t [...]

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

Don’t Poison Yourself and Your Workers

I was just at the Atlantic City ISS show. Someone was asking me about the use of a discharge ink as an underbase.
Discharge ink is an ink that basically neutralizes the dye in a shirt instead of printing over the dye. So with discharge ink you  don’t need two prints (usually white and then the [...]

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010

Disaster

This isn’t about screen printing, but I can’t help but comment.
The earthquake in Chile is nearly incomprehensible.
Santiago, Chile has extensive damage. Santiago is three hundred miles from the epicenter of the quake. That is like a quake in Philadelphia causing extensive damage in Boston. I can’t fathom that.
There are an estimated 500,000 homes in ruins. [...]

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Hot Market Printing: Yankees (or Saints) Win!

I’m thinking about the Saints this morning. I’m thinking about incredible smart and bold coaching by Sean Payton.  I thinking about clutch QB Drew Brees (32 of 39 and one was a spike.) Watch some film of Doug Flutie and Drew Brees and tell me a quarterback has to be tall. I”m thinking of a [...]

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Bad T-Shirt Design Recipes

This post isn’t going to have illustration. There are many many possible illustrations for this post, but there is no reason to hurt anyone’s feelings.
Do you want a bad looking t-shirt? Here are a few pointers:
1. Just design whatever you want and don’t think about what kind of shirt it is going on. It looks [...]

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Over Under Sideways Down

Rush job.
No surprise there, we do rush jobs all the time. However, usually not to go to life and death situations. We got asked on the weekend to source vests for Doctors to wear for Partners in Health in Haiti. Their shirts were getting dirty and better to have a vest and then they could [...]

Saturday, January 16th, 2010

A Real Emergency

I just returned on a red-eye from selling our contract printing at the PPAI show in Las Vegas. I was awakened from sleeping this afternoon by a call from the mother of a classmate of one of my kids. She was trying to find 500 orange t-shirts for doctors to wear in Haiti, they will [...]

Friday, January 8th, 2010

Mother of Invention, Fun with nylon and sticks and stones

I would rather be writing about the Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa and all that, than thinking about nylon.
We have always avoided printing on nylon, but I’m learning to embrace it. Nylon shrinks when you heat it and ink doesn’t really want to adhere to it and nobody technical gives you any consistent information, other [...]