I had the pleasure of visiting Midnight Prints and Bill Heintz in New Orleans and even got to hear his great band The Bills. I have been very lucky in my life to have been able to visit many many shops from some of the biggest with dozens of giant autos, to people printing 12…
If you’re looking for a dose of inspiration, you are in for a treat with this Shop Talk with industry legend Dave Gardner, the inventor of simulated process printing, the “underbase” print, creator of the iconic Harley Davidson t-shirts of the 1980s and now Director of Creative Embellishment at Gildan. When he started there were…
It is always very interesting to see what is offered at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival for merchandise. The music is the best it could be as is the food, and the merch is no exception, also good stuff. Close to 500,000 people attend over two long weekends and besides seeing everything from…
Dye migration is when the color in a fabric (usually polyester or a poly blend) “migrates” into the ink you have printed. Just the other day in an airport I saw a group of people all wearing the same red golf shirts and the prints on them all were pink to varying degrees instead of…
We use Newman Roller Frames and have always had trouble keeping track of what mesh is on them. “Permanent” marker is erased after a few screen washes. You can’t etch the metal as the mesh on any frame might eventually change. A tip of the proverbial cap to Erik at Saati for this trick We…
Ink Kitchen went old school into the future at the Impressions Expo in Atlantic City. We did some great live poster printing, in keeping with analog hand-done artwork being more and more appreciated in a world filling up with digital work. Recent shows indicate how our industry can go into a community and make a…
Tax season is coming up soon and there’s a lot of misleading business advice flying around on social media, so we asked Tyrone Gregory @TheSelfEmployedTaxGuy and Stan Banks @StanBanks to join us in a Shop Talk about Protecting Your Profits. Nothing is certain but death and taxes, so keep your books in order and make…
We gathered some of the most knowledgable water-based screen printers in the country for this Shop Talk on printing with water-based inks. Val and Eric Solomon of Night Owls, Danny Gruninger of DG Consulting and Tony Palmer of PalmPrint Screen Printing Consulting shared their expertise with the crowd at Impressions Expo Long Beach and our…
If you run Shopify stores as part of your business, you’ll probably see a new feature the next time you create a product. “Autowrite” will generate product descriptions for you based on a list of features and key words. It will even adjust the tone of your prose. I gave it a try with a…
I had a great tour of Los Angeles Apparel in Downtown Los Angeles. With barely any notice they gave me the run of the place and let me talk to anyone. Their claims of making all their shirts and treating their workers with respect are ABSOLUTELY true. Even after many years in a somewhat volatile…
