The Ink Kitchen

FESPA digital 2014 had all kinds of decoration innovation and another we saw was old school toner based transfers, with a bright white toner for dark garments.

Although a digital show, direct digital printing has not stopped other forms of decoration, nor stopped innovation in other forms. Transfers were one form going strong, here we see new forms or improvements for transfers that resist dye migration or can stretch with the new fabrics, apply to odd shaped substrates (shoes!) or machines that enable quick…

Why a car in an environmental post? We rented this Audi A1 to make our factory tours while at the FESPA in Germany. Great sporty car, no problem doing 110 MPH or more on the Autobahn. However, its diesel engine also had this baby getting almost 60 miles per gallon. It also has innovative environmental features such…

This sign for the Fair Wear Foundation was outside a t-shirt shop selling pretty typical tourist shirts in Heidelberg Germany. I asked the owner about the Fair Trade shirts and whether any consumers there cared about that. She looked at me like I was crazy and said, “yes, of course.” I think that in the…

A booth with a display of furoshiki, tradtional Japanese wrapping cloths, caught my eye at FESPA Digital last week. It was a Japanese company called Denatex, who were promoting their new zero-emission, smoke-free sublimation transfer system. They collaborated with a traditional furoshiki maker from Kyoto to create their display items, which were beautiful. And they were handing out squares of printed…

A few notes while passing through the Amsterdam airport and looking at shirts. I don’t know about the rest of you in the business but before I can even think of how clever (or not) a shirt might be, my eyes automatically scan it for being out of register, dye migration, off the mark right…

Imprimir sobre ropa realmente ha evolucionado mucho y el mejor lugar para verlo es en los ganadores de los premios FESPA 2014. EEUU lideraba el mundo de la impresión pero los ganadores de este año eran de Rusia y Polonia. Cuentan con detalles increíbles en 3D e impresiones lenticulares, el resto del mundo está en…

In Heidelberg it was interesting to see folks (Volk) selling shirts. Most of them in this case were using plotters and heat transfer machines. Also typically they were paranoid about us photographing their designs, like I Heart Heidelberg was f’n original or something. There was an emphasis on Fair Trade (Fair Wear) and organic cotton…

The FESPA digital show in Munich was not only a great exposition on what is going on in printing, but it also shows the potential for trade shows themselves to be so much more than what we typically see in the US of A. This is not exactly what we see when we go for…

Improvements to digital printing on fabric, improvements to transfers for textile, improvements to sublimation on fabric, and yes even improvements for screenprinting on textiles. In many ways it is an exciting time to be a decorator of garments because so many techniques are possible and they all seem to be improving. The look on this…