Garrett Kaule is one energetic dude. He prints and prints and when he isn’t printing he is communicating. He has a lot to say to his customers in the Pittsburgh area, and he communicates like crazy with his screenprinting brothers and sisters. He’s the straw that stirs the drink. We love his enthusiasm. We asked…
Is a design crooked, off center, too low, too high or rotated right or left? If you are asking about it, probably it is a reject. If you let something go through and the customer gets a ruler out, you are done for. Shirts are made by real live humans and printing (and loading) is…
The original design of this Octoberfest Lederhosen shirts was to go from the top seam of the shirt down to the bottom of the shirt, bleeding off the top and bottom and if possible going up over the shoulders of the shirt. There are ways to get that done, but at a considerable cost and with…
For blocking out screens for printing water-based discharge inks, regular old generic clear nail polish works very well. It holds up and that aggressive discharge ink doesn’t get through, and also importantly it reclaims fine. It isn’t expensive either. Another trick we did not follow in this situation, don’t print out so much crap on…
Out Of Print Clothing is a line of tees and products based on the imagery of classic and/or out of print book covers. I love this idea. The designs are absolutely stunning (the printing looks good too but of course it’s easy to make printing look good when you are working with great artwork. Here’s a…
A variety of specialty pallets are available today for printing over and/or around zippers. Six+ years ago the options were not quite what they are today and I chose a DIY approach which resulted in a foam-top pallet design which we still utilize today…
For all of the goofy print placements that we do it is a rare occasion that the finished design is truly something awesome. I mean to say that a stupid piece of “art” or a bad corporate logo placed in a funky position on the garment does not make for a great finished piece. This…
Silicone ink is like insurance, you hate it but sometimes you just have to have it. As with many things in life, you have to take the good with the bad with silicone ink. It is expensive to buy the ink, roughly three times the cost of plastisol inks. However, ink isn’t the main part…
Soft plastisol inks can be a viable alternative to water base inks (and even discharge inks depending on the design, graphic and garment) with respect to visual and tactile characteristics. Soft plastisol inks are also easier to print, especially when printing high resolution halftones through high mesh counts. The key to soft plastisol ink is…
This print was rejected a few years back due to the visible gaps between the black and white lines which allowed the red substrate to show through. In an effort to more reliably hold fine detail throughout a print run we were experimenting with applying strokes of various weight to elements within highly detailed line art…
