There are a few basic principles involved in the process of drying screens after they have been coated. You can make a “drying closet” out of very simple materials. Lack of sophisticated materials is not a problem when drying screens, but violation of certain principles IS a problem. I have been in beginner’s shops and…
We received a panic inquiry from a supplier that we work closely with. They had a customer who claimed that they could not get their prints to cure on a canvas bag. We field many questions for our vendors, since printers love to blame the substrate for printing problems, so our vendors use us to…
Bayside is the pre-eminent maker of USA made and union made apparel in the country. I have visited their facilities over the past couple years. They are vertically integrated, taking cotton and other raw materials and turning them through all the steps to a finished garment. They have come a long way from their start…
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…
Alphabroder has acquired Golden State Activewear it was announced today. Some key Golden State employees will be staying on and insuring no interruption of service to their existing customers. There was no initial word on if and when the Golden State warenhouse might close down. Owners Scott and Laurie Prestine have operated Golden State for…
Northeastern researcher Xue Lin has invented a t-shirt that won’t make you invisible to humans, but it can confuse a video surveillance system, basically rendering you invisible to the system. The images on the shirt basically confuse and overwhelm the surveillance system and it can’t “see” you. The bright crazy image on the shirt is…
Hey, the Mets, Royals, Blue Jays, Cubs and Dodgers all win in the baseball play-offs and your shirt distributors run out of Royal Blue t-shirts for a month. Maybe Taylor Swift is seen in a video that goes viral and she is wearing a pink Dickies work shirt and you then can’t get one for…
This is my kind of fighting back, making hilarious fun while screwing with bad guys. Basically folks have fooled bots that troll twitter for ideas that people want made into shirts. The results are hilarious and subversive. Check out my new favorite blog (well, besides inkkitchen.com 😉 waxy.org which is by Andy Baio . Reading…
KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Noted by the US Navy in 1960, this is an engineering principle used from mechanical to software applications. I’ll keep it simple today. Safety procedures and devices that are not simple, that are complicated, are pretty useless in my experience. The person that follows some very elaborate safety scheme or…
The Washington Post this morning has an article about how Amazon aids and abets thieves in selling counterfeit merchandise. This is rampant in the t-shirt world as well. I regularly have to police all the many many sites selling shirts that have bootlegs of even my non-profit and charitable organization clients. Printers have to get…
