May 25, 2015

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! :)












May 12, 2015

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).