The Ink Kitchen

Good music, good beer, and good times, it’s the 4th Annual Nashville Honkytonk Hoedown!

Your trusty observers Tom and Rick will have more in depth reports but here is what we see and what we heard so far in the first two days of FESPA in Hamburg, Germany  this week of visiting exhibitors and talking to attendees. A few observations so far: Digital/Screen-print hybrid machines are here in force.…

When unveiled at the SGIA Expo last year MHM’s iQ Digital showed serious potential of being the first DTG solution for high-volume production in garment printing.  We couldn’t wait to get our hands on this new technology, so when MHM invited us to play I booked my flight to visit the Arioli Group, parent company of MHM and developer of the digital…

I say a rare fix, because 95% of the time you try and fix a misprint with some overprint, etc. you are wasting your time. It usually looks stupid or worse and takes a long time. Usually it isn’t worth it. Get the depressing misprints out of your sight asap for any price and move on…

Fonts In Use typography archive is a terrific resource for graphic designers (or pseudo-graphic designers such as myself).  Have fun…

One of my favorite parts of business is meeting new people.  Throughout the several years that we have been around, there have been so many wonderful people that have come through my life.  When you can establish great relationships with people and take care of them well,  your business is bound to grow.  A couple…

Our buddy Garrett Kaule installed a Saati LED light in place of his UV lamp system. There is a video showing them doing it. It is worth checking out the video and also it is worth considering the SAATI exposure lamp from what I’ve seen.

I got a request last week to help someone figure out why their ink cracked. They thought it was the shirts. I have never seen a shirt that would cause the ink to crack all by itself. There is always an ink solution for cracking. WHAT CAUSES INK TO CRACK? Primarily the cause of the ink cracking…

So,  I own a skate shop that is right down the street from my print shop.  Because of this I decided that we should print our own skateboards. Last year we purchased this fancy little press: http://www.neverthelessscreenprintingsupplies.com/silk-skates-deluxe-skateboard-screen-printing-press/ Really, we probably could have just built a jig and used some hinges, but these press has a couple…

We discovered a cool Union Ink product this week called Black Light Clear. It is transparent when printed but glows under blacklight. We printed a normal ink and then printed the clear over it. It glows under blacklight. Rave On!