The Ink Kitchen

Working with MHM’s iQ Digital this morning and I’m starting to believe this is the future of garment decoration.  More to follow…  

The doors open officially tomorrow morning at SGIA Expo 2016 Las Vegas.  Walking the floor the day before a show is my little tradition.  The opportunity to talk to friends and colleagues in a relaxed environment (not for the technicians of course) is both fun and informative. I’m really excited about a number of the new and/or…

MHM has a new machine and it sure to turn some heads at the SGIA show in Las Vegas this week. It prints digital images at speeds that can exceed 1000 pieces per hour. This is the thing that so many people have been looking for, a viable hybrid of screenprinting and digital printing. This…

Frankly, most of the glow-in-the-dark inks on the market SUCK. The results always seem to disappoint unless you are willing to lay down so much ink as to make for a totally undesirable hand and high-cost per print.  Thus, I’m super stoked on this high-solids water-based glow ink from Allureglow, USA (not a sponsor of The Ink…

Brett Bowden of Printed Threads goofing’ around.

If you like doing samples and get paid well for all of them that you do you are a better business person than most of us. Generally most printing folks I talk to are lucky to get most of their expenses covered for the pre-production samples they do. It is more of a necessary evil…

Hey, I’ll get to the point first, the shameless ask… If you can, donate to a great free music and arts festival happening in the Caucasus region, the country of Georgia to be exact. gofundme.com/onecaucasus is where I’m collecting money to help them raise money. Next week this reporter will be traveling for about thirty…

Gildan just announced purchase of socks company Peds for $55 million (American not Canadian dollars…) This comes on the heels of their acquisitions in the past few years of Anvil, Comfort Colors, New Buffalo Shirt Company, and most recently Alstyle Apparel. Peds was in the news recently for “reshoring” some of their knitting. They brought…

Let’s talk pallet (platen actually…) adhesives. These are also called spray tack or roll tack. People think they are all the same. They are not. I actually consulted with a shop where bad adhesive was ruining their entire printing effort. They could not print in register and their shop was a mess. It does matter.…

When designing a logo for a race, event, concert, or company where t-shirts will figure heavily in the mix, here are some considerations: Don’t make it a full color or rasterized image. The logo should be a vector file so that it reproduces in bold color with clearly defined colors. Minimize blends. Blends are easy…