Here at Manx Media, we have had a season of strong demand for full color printing on both light and dark T Shirts, mostly on slinky women's styles from Bella and American Apparel.
We printed the Spring / Summer line for Eden Dawn Apparel of Portland. The line featured 14 items, including six full color designs. It was both a technical and production challenge to pump these clever designs out, but by all accounts the shirts looked great. This is a young designer with a lot of style and a great future, so be sure to visit her site.
Next up was a new color design from beloved kick-ass comedian, Margaret Cho. Margaret is now doing a show called "The Sensuous Woman", and the shirts feature a faux-forties style pin-up illustration of the notorious Cho in full lingerie. Wow! Who knew? This is one of the best shirts we've ever done, it just looks superb (thanks to the great illustration of Margaret by Olivia).
Okay! What have we at Manx Media learned about printing full color on Tees? Simple! With our level of technology, the best results come from enhanced process color printing, usually using an underbase white and either a "popper" spot color, or a high light white. Before this rash of challenging jobs, I usually would go with "simulated process" or index color for full color on a dark shirt; I've had good results with these techniques before. But to tell the truth, I've gained experience and confidence with process printing that makes me ready to tackle more full color images.
One caveat to full process color printing--with the cost of setting up six films and screens for a job, best to consider a minimum of 100 shirts to defray the cost of set up. There are always transfers for short color runs...
Kudos go to David Perkin, my stalwart press operator who couldn't print a bad shirt if you paid him. You're the man, David!
Steve Lafler
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Monday, January 16, 2006
Tour Merch
Manx Media Custom Screen Printing has years of experience supplying touring acts with merchandise. We have provided the whole range of screen printed and embroidered items from work shirts, panties, zipper hoodies and nylon jackets all the way to the ubiquitous t-shirt (in both men's and women's styles) to some demanding acts with ingenious designs. You'd be amazed at some of the unusual print jobs we've produced for our touring clientele--we're always up for a challenge!
White some acts prefer to purchase goods for the whole tour up front and load up the van, others prefer to travel light and have us drop ship the goods to them as they travel from venue to venue. In a pinch, we have shipped overnight or 2nd day when a hot item sells out (we ship via DHL, who are not only efficient, but by far the best deal in the shipping industry). Our priority is to keep our touring clients supplied with the merch they need to make the tour a profitable venture.
Some of the acts we have worked with over the past decade:
Peaches
The Residents
Margaret Cho
Angry Samoans
Themselves
Anticon
Chix on Speed
Send me an email at steve.lafler@gmail.com with any questions you have about touring merch. Let's look at all the garment decorating and design options to come up with the right mix of touring merchandise for your act.
Steve Lafler
Visit the Manx Media homepage.
White some acts prefer to purchase goods for the whole tour up front and load up the van, others prefer to travel light and have us drop ship the goods to them as they travel from venue to venue. In a pinch, we have shipped overnight or 2nd day when a hot item sells out (we ship via DHL, who are not only efficient, but by far the best deal in the shipping industry). Our priority is to keep our touring clients supplied with the merch they need to make the tour a profitable venture.
Some of the acts we have worked with over the past decade:
Peaches
The Residents
Margaret Cho
Angry Samoans
Themselves
Anticon
Chix on Speed
Send me an email at steve.lafler@gmail.com with any questions you have about touring merch. Let's look at all the garment decorating and design options to come up with the right mix of touring merchandise for your act.
Steve Lafler
Visit the Manx Media homepage.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Full Color T-Shirt Decorating
Manx Media is able to offer our customers two great options for decorating T Shirts with full color graphics.
Screen Printing
Traditional screen printing continues to be the best way to produce full color images on T Shirts when you need a large quantity of shirts. Our minimum order for full color (4-6 colors in your design) screen printed shirts is 72 pieces.
In terms of the brillance of color and the durability of the print, there is no technology better than screen printing to decorate garments.
Depending on the nature of your design, we can use spot color, index color, simulated process color, or index color to recreate your graphic on a shirt. We use a Photoshop plug-in program created just for the apparel decorator to generate the best possible version of your graphics for T Shirts.
As it is necessary to produce a film positive and screen for each color in your design, the economies of scale kick in nicely at the six dozen quantity.
Digital Imaging
The revolutionary good news in the shirt biz is that transfers are back. These are not your dad's transfers--the cheesy muscle car design that washed off before you could even break it in. With improvements in ink and transfer technology, todays digital transfers look vibrant and are washfast.
For full color apparel decorating on quantities less than six dozen, transfers are a great option. Working from your digital image, we create transfers that are heat pressed onto shirts. You get a great full color shirt that is easy on the budget.
At present, this technology works best on white or light colored garments.
If your design requires one, two or three colors, screen printing is still the way to go even with smaller quantities.
Questions? Send Steve an email at steve.lafler@gmail.com with your apparel decorating question.
Click here to return to Manx Media.
Screen Printing
Traditional screen printing continues to be the best way to produce full color images on T Shirts when you need a large quantity of shirts. Our minimum order for full color (4-6 colors in your design) screen printed shirts is 72 pieces.
In terms of the brillance of color and the durability of the print, there is no technology better than screen printing to decorate garments.
Depending on the nature of your design, we can use spot color, index color, simulated process color, or index color to recreate your graphic on a shirt. We use a Photoshop plug-in program created just for the apparel decorator to generate the best possible version of your graphics for T Shirts.
As it is necessary to produce a film positive and screen for each color in your design, the economies of scale kick in nicely at the six dozen quantity.
Digital Imaging
The revolutionary good news in the shirt biz is that transfers are back. These are not your dad's transfers--the cheesy muscle car design that washed off before you could even break it in. With improvements in ink and transfer technology, todays digital transfers look vibrant and are washfast.
For full color apparel decorating on quantities less than six dozen, transfers are a great option. Working from your digital image, we create transfers that are heat pressed onto shirts. You get a great full color shirt that is easy on the budget.
At present, this technology works best on white or light colored garments.
If your design requires one, two or three colors, screen printing is still the way to go even with smaller quantities.
Questions? Send Steve an email at steve.lafler@gmail.com with your apparel decorating question.
Click here to return to Manx Media.
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