I’ve received numerous requests for the Players pinup artwork as a poster, and it’s something we’re looking into (along with some other designs). There were also some requests for shirts. Normally this design would contain too many colors for the standard screen-printing process we regularly use.

I don’t know how much most of you know about the screen-printing process, but it works basically like this: You have a series of silk screens with negative areas on them, and when ink is pushed across the screen, ink only passes through the negative areas (onto the shirt or whatever is below). So when you see a shirt, all of the red areas are from one screen, for instance, then the shirt is swiveled over to the next screen, which may lay down all of the blue areas, or whatever. After all the screens have been used, you have a full image on the shirt. The more colors a shirt has, the more screens you need, and so the more expensive it is. And more complicated designs usually aren’t possible

Anyway, long story short, I’m told we now have access to a high-end digital dye-ink printer. I guess it actually dyes the shirt fabric the colors desired, and you don’t end up with that thick, “plastic” feel on the design. It’s still a little bit more expensive than silk screening, but it lets us do more complicated designs. So why not give it a try with the players artwork, right?

They did a prototype print, and it looked cool enough that I thought we should run with it. It looks like we’re going to print some off and see how they sell and how people like them. Here are the pictures of the test they ran today, so you can see the design on a shirt.

Of course we won’t be cutting out silk-screen designs, but it definitely gives us some options for more complicated designs.