For the Business of Apparel Decorating
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/670957
20 || P R I N T W E A R M A Y 2 0 1 6 Lon Winters learned screen printing from the bottom up, starting his 20-plus-year career reclaiming screens. He has won nearly 50 international industry awards and honors, published numerous articles, and led several in - dustry seminars and workshops. Currently, he is president of Colorado-based Print This, Inc./GraphicElephants.com, an international consulting firm specializing in technical FROM SOFTWARE TO SUBSTRATE B Y L O N W I N T E R S advances, plant design, layout, troubleshooting, productivity, quality analysis, and complete garment-embellishing solutions. Visit www.graphicelephants.com for more information. Contact Winters at lonwinters@aol.com. Y ou may remember a piece we did around this time last year about the opportunity to print a Stargate image for the StarFest Con in Denver. This annual convention brings to- gether Trekkies young and old for a weekend of good times and catching up on the latest sci-fi news and info. By now you know we are Trekkies and attend the convention al- most every year. In years past, we have printed up Klingons from Deep Space Nine and Star Wars Shirts for Mark Hamill's guest ap- pearance. What you may not remember is where our involvement in Starfest printing all started, 10-plus years ago. TO BOLDLY PRINT Way back when, we were tasked with creating the first official T- shirts in the event's history. Previous shirts were always OK, but just OK. We wanted to boldly go where no printer had gone be- fore, so to speak. We put together several designs over the weeks, but none were what the customer had in mind. They really were unsure about what they wanted. The client ultimately had us create a new version of the Starship Enterprise from the latest Star Trek movie advertising. This original working file was small and low-res, and what was worse, they wanted substantial changes, addi- tions, and alterations. Separations were a trick as well, taking several attempts. As you know: garbage in, gar- bage out. First strike-off was terrible, and it just kept get- Beam Us Up After 50 Years Left: After working with the convention for years, the 5oth anni- versary shirts really needed to stand out. (All images courtesy the author) Above: For the first official shirts of Starfest, the author used the then latest film's Starship Enterprise as inspiration.