Lori Fenn is a true artist. Based in Phoenix, and after calling dozens of print shops in 3 different states, she finally found us. She told us that she had a 12 color poster job, 24" x 24", and that everyone she called either told her that they wouldn't do it, or it would cost her over $50 per print. As always, we stood out as being the diamond in the rough: the print shop that not only says YES to things most wont touch, but our prices were extremely competitive.
So, off to the races. We were able to cut these posters down ourselves to prep for this job, and given the larger-than-normal number of colors in this particular print, every stage of prep just seemed to take a whole lot longer. Mixing 12 custom Pantone colors, burning 12 'Tier 4' sized screens, registering each color...very time consuming.
The printing process is really a science: it doesnt matter if you are printing a 2 color or 200 color job: the process and steps are all the same, and if you have everything down pat, its like anything else: you get into a rhythm and slowly chip away at the creation process. The cool thing is that as you layer color on top of color on top of color, you are able to see the artwork develop in front of your very eyes.
This is why we, as printers, love what we do. Yeah, we print for other people, mainly using their own artwork that they have created, but to be able to have a hand in building the art from a production stand point; to create something identically to someone specifications by using the skills artistic abilities that we have: this is the true art of print!
Special Effects printing in Screen Printing is sometimes something of wonder. Its amazing to see the modern advances of science and ink research & development in today's day in age.
With 'Always Out Front', we have been working with these guys for years and years, and their brand has surprisingly evolved from a fixie bike crew to now a car racing crew. They build old cars, put mega-motors inside them and take them to the race track to see what their time will do in terms of speed.
They are always looking for something unique: nothing standard, but they always seem to have an "over the edge" mentality of the design and printing of their merch. I love that about screen printing, because clients like this keep us screen printers on our toes, making sure we are to our best potential and on our best foot always.
These are fashion fit tank tops, Tultex brand, with a single color print on the Front, Back and inside tags. This ink is metallic gold plastisol, printed thru a very low 110 mesh screen (so the metallic pieces can slip thru the small holes of the screen) and dried on our belt dryer with forced air (the only way to truly cure metallic inks) for 3 minutes under 320 degrees.
There are those who are OK with what is traditional. Sometimes a basic wedding is OK for people. Basic dress. Basic ceremony. Basic cake. Basic reception. Basic wedding invitations. For others, basic is far from what they envision for their special day. They go out on a limb, reach for the non-traditional, and sometimes really outshine others.
We had the opportunity to print some amazing wedding invites for the later. They had a great vision, one that went against the grain, was inventive, was forward thinking, yet served multiple purposes at once. Wedding invite, postcard style, scored and perforated, then folded making the final product 6" x 4". But, its like an according, when unfolded reveals 4 sections on each side, each with a different element of the wedding that needs to be communicated to the attendees. Then the last page, perforated and tearable, is the RSVP card to mail back to them. All in one.
When exploring our options for this card, one of the limitations for us was printing super fine text with metallic ink. Most metallic inks have metallic pieces actually inside the ink, requiring them to be burned on lower mesh screens so the metal pieces can pass thru the holes of the screen. Lower mesh screens make it impossible to burn and keep fine detail in artwork. This was a concern, but we solved it.
We printed black French paper, custom cut at 17" x 6". 80 hand printed, limited edition pieces. We custom mixed the Permaset inks to the colors requested (White, Metallic Gold, Mint) and went to town on these. Once printed, we scored and perforated them, then folded for delivery. We were happy with the final product, and so were they! This is what happens when you think outside the box.
The time is again upon us: the time where the moon calendar printing begins. We have had Jeremy at Margins as a customer for over 5 years now, and every single year his orders get larger and larger. A great sign of something that is successful!!
This year for the 2015 calendar run, he wanted to try some new things out. So, he asked us if we could start running some samples early (obviously, a few months into 2014 were already beginning to print calendars for the next year) so he really has a jump on things this year!
This post was to showcase the Gold Metallic ink prints. These prints were done on White and Black paper, and personally I thought black looked better but he really liked them on the white paper, but either way you look at it, Gold Metallic ink is amazing regardless of the paper color. Most metallic inks have larger metallic pieces inside the ink, limiting the mesh of screen that you can print through. (Jantex ink says to not print thru anything larger than an 86 mesh. Haha) And with the detail that is in the moon calendars, this would be impossible. We had to go with the Jacquard ink, which allowed us to print through a 200 mesh screen, still holding the detail of the moon calendar print yet still looks like the metallicy goodness that it is! Good work, Jeremy!!
