You’ve been asked to go to a trade show. Maybe you’re already sold on the business case, or maybe you’re still on the fence about the time and expense. There are lots of reasons to go to trade shows, and I’m telling you that Atlantic City gets a bad rap. One of my best friends…
The next stop on the Ink Kitchen annual poster printing tour is Atlantic City — this week, starting on Thursday, March 26–29 at the Atlantic City Convention Center. For those who haven’t been following along, here’s the short version: each year at the Impressions shows since 2020, we print limited-edition screen-printed posters live on the…
I run projects across multiple businesses, a screen printing company, a media organization and others. The action items live everywhere. In people’s heads, in transcript files, in meeting notes. Nowhere centralized. I needed to make something everyone on specific teams could access and edit from any device, no app installs, no logins. So I built…
This year’s poster printing at the Impressions show in Long Beach did not go as planned. Not even close. And yet, thanks to the extraordinary generosity of our sponsors, we were able to donate $15,000 to Care Closet LBC — which for a charity with almost no overhead, does a great deal for homeless folks…
We have about 300 handwritten press log sheets sitting in binders. Every job that runs through the shop gets logged by hand, date, order number, screens, setup time, run time, comments. The problem isn’t the logging, the operators are thorough. The problem is that once it’s on paper, it’s dead. You can’t search it, you…
Oliver “Power” Grant, co-founder of the Wu-Tang Clan, has died at 52. If you were around for the rise of Wu-Tang in the early ’90s, you already know: Power wasn’t just in the room, he helped build the room. And if you work in decorated apparel, you definitely know this: Wu Wear changed the fashion…
Custom screen printing in the U.S. alone is a $12.8 billion industry. Business is good, but growth doesn’t mean we’ve solved our fundamental problems. Here are some Hard-Won Wisdoms for Garment Decorators worth remembering. The Lies “You can save $5 a gallon on cheaper emulsion.” Evaluate emulsion by your production numbers and ease of use,…
You can read the fourth quarter results that Gildan posted here. However, in plain English, here’s what they’re actually saying — and what it might mean for printers, decorators, and promo folks. What Happened? Gildan bought Hanes. That makes them a much bigger company. No surprise there. The fourth-quarter numbers look huge because Hanes was…
Back in the days when dinosaurs ruled the earth about 1992 to be exact, we printed a very difficult print for the times. It was a full color CMYK process print of the clock tower in Lawrence. It is the kind of print that made us develop simulated process seps as process printing is very…
We print mostly on material made from plants, and it is sewn and printed by living, breathing human beings. All of that means our work includes some diversity and is absolutely full of imperfections. On the other hand, we are faced with customers operating with their perfect (actually not perfect) Pantone books, icy close stares,…
