The Ink Kitchen

Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls makes a statement with a t-shirt last night. That is a t-shirt that is going to be seen millions of times. Simple and to the point like a good t-shirt should be.

Our translator is in NYC and can’t translate a post for Sunday because she is in NY.  There are massive rallies going on in NYC tonight. I ran into this in my twitter feed tonight about the rallies. The ACLU is giving out free shirts at the rallies protesting the police killing of Eric Garner…

I love simple yet effective printing techniques.  Overprinting semi-opaque inks creates a level of transparency which reveals a percentage of the underlying color.  It’s simple, but not as easy as it seems.  A surprising amount of consideration went in to determining print order, flash positions, ink formulations, etc., to pull-off the effect.

A good customer recently sent me a quote request for a large volume program.  Due to the size of the program, pressure from the “end user”, and because it was “commodity printing”. I was told that the job was going out for bid and that I needed to be very competitive.  Being put in a bid situation is…

We’re pretty high-tech around here (well, at least by textile screen-printing standards).  I’d love to say that our screen coating methodology follows suit and show off pics or video of a bitchin’ auto-coater, but I can’t.  When it comes to screen coating, we still do it the old school way.  It’s not that I don’t…

Wearables Nov/Dec issue showcase their Top Decorator competition.  Check it out.

The man himself, Mark Diehl, President of Douthitt Corp, is spending a few days with us this week.  The purpose of Mark’s visit is to do some in-depth training on CTS maintenance and repair work with a couple of our key team members.  When Mark arrived this morning and I made the introductions, his first…

The hottest fashion of the past five plus years is the fitted t-shirt. It is interesting that the biggest jump in t-shirt sales ever was after Marlon Brando wore one on screen in 1951. Not only did he start the fashion of wearing t-shirts, he also was way ahead of his time. It turns out…

And this ends our dip into the world of fashion that we covered over the past week. Of course no discussion of fashion trends in the t-shirt world would be complete without a mention of American Apparel. Echoing some of what we heard from other brands and of course taking a bit further, here is…

San Mar has emails you can sign up for to get a head up on style developments, they call it “The Style Network.” You can view it here. Among trends they identify are new uses of neon color accents, pockets, “sporty” casual athletic looks, further advance in polyester technical pieces, and use of mesh. They…