I was stoked that the road back from Farm Aid passes right by Jakprints and I got to see my buds the owners Jacob and Dameon and my other buds working there LT and Jeff and to talk shop and as always to have a good time.

My take on Jakprints is that two skatepunks wanted to figure out how you could get 75 shirts, 50 posters, and 250 stickers for their band at a reasonable price. A reasonable idea, but not possible back in 1999 when they started. Embracing all the newest technology and with a whole lot of hard hard work, they actually figured it out. They also figured out that those are the quantities that everyone, not just metal bands want. They now have an absolutely huge operation that cranks out an absolute incredible array of printed goods from aluminum signs to pocket notebooks to zip hoodies to sublimated running shirts. They have great prices and have loyal customers that still include bands, but are every kind of business you can imagine.

They take great care of their workers, I think that is as much a part of their success as the incredible technology that they have invested in.They care deeply about the environment and they do something about it instead of just freakin’ yakking about it like most people I run into. When I checked out their new state of the art Heidelberg offset press, Dameon was more pumped about how many trees per week would be saved (60) than any other aspect of it.

Here’s some photos of their work, their shop in Cleveland O Hio, and some of the folks that work there. In particular their DTG (Digital Direct to Garment) work is at the pinnacle of that type of printing. Even Jacob and I had to look twice at images to figure out if a particular shirt print is digital or screened. There are no photos of the backend of their business, which is some genius damn software that runs everything. Nevertheless, there is some photos of some other very cool aspects of Jakprints.

Some more digital prints:

And they are not too shabby at screenprinting, and they totally crank out the work at breakneck speed. Their team of production artists are both top shelf in quality, but probably one of the fastest in the world, they absolutely fly.

They have a lot of long term employees, testament to how they treat their people at Jakprints.

And this is the new Heidelberg offset press called Speedmaster XL 75 Anicolor and it will allow them to crank out small runs efficiently, no more barrel after barrel of waste paper. They never stop investing in equipment that can do shorter and shorter runs in a cost effective way, always with less waste as well.

More shots of the shot, walls of stickers, old school lamination devices, and state of the art laser cutters that replace dies for cutting out stickers.

Kornit Avalanche city. Not many companies like Jakprints have embraced digital printing to the same level.

and some kick ass screenprinting production. It is all about turn time and Jakprints actually got rid of all their traditional screenprint equipment and went to MHM’s which have the fastest set up times.