For the Business of Apparel Decorating
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16 | PRINTWEAR D EC E M B E R 20 1 4 From Software to Substrate BY LON WINTERS Lon Winters learned screen printing from the bottom up, starting his 20-plus-year career reclaiming screens. He has won nearly 50 interna- tional industry awards and honors, published numerous articles, and led several industry seminars and workshops. Currently, he is president of Co- lo.-based Print This, Inc./GraphicElephants.com, an international consulting firm specializing in technical advances, plant design, layout, troubleshoot- ing, productivity, quality analysis, and complete garment-embellishing solutions. Visit GraphicElephants.com for more information. Contact Winters at lonwinters@aol.com. A s the temperature cools and the snowflakes begin to fly in the Rocky Mountains, we find ourselves writ- ing this month's column about a new client, Spyder, a Boulder, Colorado-based manufacturer of high-end ski ap- parel. As a business, sometimes we overlook local opportuni- ties, but when we had the chance to work with a client right up the street, we wouldn't disappoint. BACKYARD BUSINESS Spyder was working on a couple of jobs, but some unfor- tunate happenings prevented it from meeting deadlines. Rather than pull the plug, we connected with the good folks at Spyder to help. The first job was a doozy. Spyder needed roughly 400 black shirts with five print locations, but just as we were about to order the product, Spyder decided to split the order into half red and half black Ts. To do it right, we needed two sets of separations and screens, which wasn't practical for Spy- der or us, so the project remained black Ts only but required an additional location. That's right. The project included six print locations with graphics on the left and right chest, both sleeves, the locker panel, and the full back. First, we initiated the approval process. The client sent PDF vector logos for the order, so we at least started in the right place. We opened the logos in Illustrator and copied and pasted them on a new layer of our proofing template. On a second layer, we pasted our short-sleeve T-shirt shape. After some modifications in sizing and proportion, we sent the proof with specs to the client for approval and were ready for separations. Because all of the art was created in Il- lustrator, separations were simple. For the logos, we copied and pasted them onto our registration template, which was set up for our computer-to-screen output. After changing the size, we ensured that all colors were spot colors by selecting a color in "Color Palette," opening "Swatch Options," and changing all CMYK from "Color Mode" to "Spot Color." To build the under- bases, we simply added additional layers and copied and pasted pieces as composites. GETTING CREATIVE We wanted to get creative with out- put on this project by using a dif- ferent setup. Most customers don't plan on printing a shirt with six locations, so we had to figure out the best way to run the order. The sleeves were easy and traditional, but the yoke, full back, and left and right chest were challenging. Keeping the two chest logos at equal heights was difficult. We decided to run the two logos at the same time, but the placement changed on the different sizes as the logos needed greater distance Staying Local Opportunity springs from new area client | | | | The shirts were printed with a high-quality white ink, PMS red 185, and PMS green 354 using an ink match- ing system and scale. (All images courtesy the author) l Beginner n Intermediate