Reliance Umbrellas

Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. is a metal distributor in Los Angeles. The company started in the late 1930's in the postwar metal industry boom.  It was listed in Fortune's List of "Most Admired Companies". 

 Print Renegades was thrilled to work with a Los Angeles icon. The job: To screen print on patio umbrellas! This wasn't just a T-shirt one could thread and easily work on, this took time and thought. We had to be precise, working with that large of fabric. It took multiple people to make sure each umbrella was flawless. After the umbrella was printed, we had to fit it into our dryer. Making sure the fabric didn't scorch and the ink dried thoroughly. It was an exhausting job however, it's projects like these that make us love our jobs. We are always ecstatic to have new and interesting projects, where we can showcase our knowledge of the trade. 

The umbrellas turned out great. We hope Reliance can keep their employees and customers cool this summer! 

New PR Website Coming....!!

We are more than thrilled to have a new website coming soon! Literally we hired our website designers and developers back in November of 2013...almost 20 MONTHS AGO!! We have developed all the content ourselves and are super stoked, after years of planning and finding the right look for our website, we are finally at the end stages of the pipeline!! We are adding a lot more content, easier browsing, lots of easy print preparation steps and TONS more information for our clients. We are providing print hints, a run down of ink variations, templates for your art and much more! We wanted to create a space for our visitors to check out our work and answer any questions they may have, without the hassle of looking anywhere else. We even made an amazing intro video as well!! 

Please check back in the coming weeks, for exclusive offers and to surf our new website!! Seriously its going to change things here in our shop immensely!!

Hubble Studio Cocktail Napkin Printing

"Hi, I have a crazy question for you". Something that we hear on a daily basis by people who call our shop wondering if we can help them out with printing with some random crazy idea that they have. Having worked in the printing field for so many years, I understand how other screen printing shops think and operate: They care nothing more than profits. They want their days to be filled with the absolutely the most productivity backed with money as possible, and the least amt of time they can spend talking to someone about a job that they would never take on, the better. (this mainly stems from them not branching out and taking on odd jobs and thus, have no ability or skillset to do such things).

At Print Renegades, we are very different. We see things differently. We have a completely different outlook on business, our clients and our workflow. First off, we love to take on odd jobs. When we have the opportunity to accept a job that we have never done before, we take it head on!! We have professionals that help us figure things out that we can call if we have questions about ink types, mesh counts or ways to do things: but more than anything, we, ourselves, have amazingly creative minds to figure things out on our own: to take a problem, then a solution and draw a line between the two.

Aside from that, taking on jobs that are difficult and require extra work might not make us the most money, but they definitely help in our ability to be better printers and this is invaluable. We have had this mindset for years and years now, and Im sure you can imagine how many crazy odd jobs that we have had to force ourselves to figure out, how much better of printers we are now, after the fact. (which is constantly ongoing).

Here is an example of a job that we had to just figure out: Hubble Studios located in Downtown LA, wanted some cocktail napkins printed for an event they were having, and they only had a few days until their event. We swooped in and helped save the day by figuring out HOW and NAILING the production of these napkins. We were able to print 12 at a time, and when printing 2500 pieces, it is indeed time consuming but also leaves a great feeling that we were able to help someone out in time for an important event they were having. (which is kind of what we live for as workers in the service industry!)

Stamina Nutrition Mylar Protein Powder Bag Printing

Stamina is a nutrition store based out of Los Angeles, helping people reach their fitness goals. They focus on top quality supplements free from growth hormones, artificial colors, flavors, and sweeteners. Nothing but clean energy to fuel your body!
 
Stamina came in with a wonderful idea to screen print their supplement bags. The Print Renegades team was ready to take on this project. A two color print would normally be simple, however, printing on Mylar bags requires an intense and extremely intricate ink that bonds with the foil outside of the bag. (we tested 4 different types of enamel inks before taking on this job to make sure that we were using the correct ink that would never fade, wash off, scratch off or wear down over time). The other element here was the size of the text on the back of the bag: given that the text was extremely detailed, we had to be very meticulous to make sure every print was a success. 

The bags turned out great, not only will the goods inside help you reach your fitness goals, you'll be rocking a great hand screen printed bag while doing it! 

Westwood Music Sign Printing

Westwood Music is the local music store of the West LA area that has all of the small town local guitar shop feel with none of the corporate guitar shop feel. It might be a time warp back to the 1990s when you walk in, but there is no question that you get addressed by a REAL guitar player who knows about every single guitar hanging in that shop and loves what they do and isnt only there to sell sell sell.

WW Music needed some new signs for their store, so they called us to help them with out with getting better signage for their windows. We suggested printing on coroplast signs, since this corrugated plastic material is inexpensive, is durable and lasts thru years of sunlight (which is what their signs will be through sitting in a window for ages). We decided on 4 different signs, each with a different saying on one side and their logo on the other.

Not only is printing on coroplast difficult, as well as printing large format, but doing single sample signs is extremely time consuming and complex: all of which these signs required us to complete. We were able to cut these signs down from a larger plastic, then by using the specialized coroplast ink we could lay down a thick white print, and air dry them until they were ready for delivery. These signs now hang in the windows of Westwood with all their shiny, printed white glory! :)

Hardcore Til I Die Booty Shorts

Our friends over at Rave Ready have some awesome things going: rave clothing for the EDM at heart. They have a great niche market and do really well for what they do. From a printers perspective, they are always trying new and crazy things, really wanting to push the boundaries and putting us printers to the test by pushing the limits of our knowledge at all times.

This last job they wanted to print Booty Shorts...not too crazy of a job but definitely not as simple as a Tshirt print. We helped them layout their artwork so that we split the design they had into 2 separate parts so that none of the artwork went over top of the middle seam (since we all know that would just lead to inconsistencies in the print). We also made sure to get a 100% cotton short so that we could use a Pro Discharge White ink, making it easy to print over such a non-flat surface.

The discharge ink bleaches out the dyes in the existing garment, leaving the natural garment color and making the print very smooth with a little to no hand feel. Because the discharge is a waterbased ink, it also is very smooth with printing over uneven surfaces, over seams/zippers but still keeping the print smooth without ink getting all gunked up.

The shorts turned out pretty rad, and best of all, they were stoked and sold out quickly. (must have been the Coachella crowd who bought them out).