We got a “cool” new sample in a cool piece of packaging from San Mar and Hanes today. A water wicking shirt inside of a water bottle. The shirt is my new favorite, the X-Temp which has the nice feel of some of the thin fabric shirts that are 60/40 but it is cut so…
I just attended the Human Rights Conference of Amnesty International. There I heard of case of Mahmoud Hussein who is a 19-year-old student in Egypt. He has been languishing in an Egyptian jail for wearing a “Nation Without Torture” t-shirt. He was arrested but not been charged or tried for any offences. He has been tortured and…
We spelled “Hopkinton” wrong the other day. Luckily it wasn’t that many shirts. Hopkinton is a very small town, which is primarily known for being the starting place of the Boston Marathon. Our artist put a “G” in there making it Hopkington, which looks correct unless you know otherwise. I just noticed that the autospell…
Sanmar asked us to do some print testing on the new tri-blend tee from District Made®, the Mens Perfect Tri™ Crew Tee DM130. First we tested each color in the style for both dye migration and discharge reactivity (images and results below). Once testing was complete we proceeded to develop a vintage styled surf print to compliment the ridiculously…
This month I wrote an article for the very good trade journal called Printwear. I’ve done that for many many years, through a host of good editors starting with Mark Buchanan right through my pal Emily Thompson and to the current talented Carly Hollman-Long. When you go to China, you can just speak English and…
Question: Our printing doesn’t seem to be getting better, what are the best ways to go about improving our printing abilities? Answer: My two cents? Stop being penny wise and pound foolish. Saving twenty dollars and buying a gallon of inexpensive but inferior emulsion is a terrible idea. Inferior emulsions don’t have the resolution…
This is a first of maybe some more posts about dealing with the “social” elements of your business. When I jumped into this social media role at The Ink Kitchen a couple years ago I wasn’t really aware of what I was getting myself into. Take some photos and post them somewhere “online”, right? Yeah, something…
Maybe it is because we do a great deal of creative and difficult printing, or maybe I was a jerk in a past life and this is my karma, but for some reason I get to see a whole lot of bad art for t-shirts. The worst of it often is not only bad, but…
Day 1 of ISS in Atlantic City. We did this combo screenprint and DTG (direct to garment) print. You can screenprint the underprint quickly and then digitally print a whole series of images that print on top of it. In this case we printed a postcard image of NYC, Atlantic City, Ocean City and so…
Atlantic City show is coming up this Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Come by the Hanes/Champion booth or the Hirsch booth and say hello. We will have a bunch of our Know-It-Alls armed with years of experience and one of those Magic 8 balls and we can thereby answer any or all or your questions about…
