Big Boys Rules

An artist named Amanda Appleby came to Indigo Clothing with a t-shirt printing request. She wondered if we could take some artwork she had produced and turn it into a screen-printed t-shirt. “Fine”, we said, “we do this everyday”. However, we shocked when a beautiful print of four SAS soldiers arrived at the office the next day. We normally expect artwork to arrive in electronic format rather than in a bubble-wrapped crate!

Dickie, a fully paid up member of the National Rifle Association, thought someone had sent him an early Christmas present and was crestfallen once he found out that instead of being a gift from his godfather, it was from a client, and had to be returned.

Our first challenge was to get the print into an electronic format that would be suitable for ‘separation’. After a found call to our friends at Kingswood-Steele, a high-tech, digital printer near Liverpool Street, Dickie set off to deliver the print so it could be scanned with an industrial size flatbed scanner. Watching Dickie wander off with the print under his arm and a wide grin on his face, I did for one minute wonder if we or Amanda would ever see it again, but sure enough, a few hours later, Dickie, the print and a DVD-R containing the scanned artwork was safely back in Bucklersbury House.

The disc then was sent to a specialist separation house that produces films for a screen printer to use. Artwork separation is a very skilled process and can cost anywhere up to £300 for very complex, multi-colour designs. Indigo outsource separation, as you can’t beat the experience that specialist brings to the job and the ultimate quality of the t-shirt very much depends on the skill of the separator.

Amanda will be getting her t-shirts today. I hope she likes them as much as we liked the challenge of producing them for her. Amanda doesn’t have anymore of these prints left, before anyone asks, but she can be contacted on +44 (0)7788548167 should anyone want to discuss her work with her. Amanda is also a regular on eBay and her items can be found at: .