We’ve been publishing since 2014. That’s twelve years of screen printing posts: techniques that turned into industry standards, characters worth re-introducing to a new generation of shop owners, and arguments about ink, pricing, and process that read like they were written this morning. What Throwback Thursday Is: Here’s the Rundown.

The premise is simple. The print industry keeps recycling the same problems. Surfacing the old answers is a public service.

Where TBT Started Here

Rick Roth kicked it off in March 2014 with a post about the first commercial screen print job he ever ran  hand-stretched mesh on scrap wood, exposed with a 150-watt bulb and a pie plate reflector. Then he ran a Throwback Thursday on organic ink, reprinting his very first blog post about an edible ink made from 100% certified organic materials at Mirror Image.

That set the template. A weekly feature that goes back into the archive, pulls something out, and tells you why it still matters now.

What We Pull

The Origin Stories. Posts documenting how the industry got here. The first intentionally distressed shirt design from April 2014, when Rick’s shop tried to reproduce a Frank Zappa cover and accidentally invented a technique that now defines half the prints in the market. How Rick got into screen printing at Colgate with R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural and the Save Old Bio campaign. The origin of “lenticular” as a screen printing term, born from staring at a slatted billboard across the street and figuring out how to fake the effect with high-density ink.

The Industry Characters. People you should know. The Stefan Bergill interview from 2014, back when he was running Patagonia’s Beneficial T’s program — his case for organic cotton holds up cleanly in 2026.

The Stuff That Aged Disturbingly Well. The #TBT Customer From Heck video from August 2014 is still painful to watch because every line in it is still a line shops hear every week. Free shirts for “exposure.” Logo placement deals that go nowhere. Print runs of three with rush turnaround and a phantom budget. Eleven years on, the script hasn’t changed.

Why The Archive Is the Point

Embellishment grows or stalls on the same fundamentals it always has: pricing discipline, technique mastery, knowing your characters. The shops that win don’t reinvent the wheel every cycle. They study what already worked and update the margins.

A 2014 post about edible organic ink is also a 2026 post about sustainable apparel sourcing. A 2014 customer-from-heck rant is a 2026 chargeback policy. A 2015 origin story about a hand-stretched screen is the same argument we’re making this year about why automation is a tool, not a replacement for craft. The dates change. The lessons don’t.

What Throwback Thursday Is: Here’s the Rundown

Every Thursday, one post from the archive. New context, current data, same insight that held up the first time. If you missed the early ones, welcome to the catch-up. If you were here, thanks.