From Blueprint to Screen Print

Happy Hump Day! I hope your week has been as fun & exciting as mine has been so far. Today I’m going to let you know how I got started doing screen printing. Ever since I was a kid I would always enjoy drawing & coming up with creative pieces of artwork that I would get to show off to my family & friends. I got so good at it that some of my artwork was entered in local art shows here in Charlotte. My artwork was always showcased in school also. I wasn’t the greatest artist but my creativity was what caught the people’s attention. Not to toot my own horn but I had & still do have an extraordinary imagination. I love coming up with things that may be over your head at first but later it comes to you like a boomerang at high speed. I figure if you say it’s “over your head” then I can call it “Fly”. That’s just how I look at things from a creative perspective. Anyways, back to the subject at hand… I used to come up with the coolest sneaker designs also. Back when the early Jordans & Max’s started having the air bubbles in the soles believe it or not I was already drawing up sneakers like that. It was like the designers over at Nike & I was thinking on the same level at the same time. The only difference was that I had started drawing my sneakers with air bubbles inside the front, middle and back of the soles. Nike hadn’t even started coming out with those yet so when I used to show my designs to my buddies they would be like, “Wow, Nike should come out with sneakers like these too…” I used to say, “Yeah, I want to go show these to Nike so I can design sneakers for them”. I used to go to my parents with my new designs and ask them how can I get the opportunity to show them to Nike & they would tell me that they have no idea. I wish they would have known someone would could have helped me or tried to help me themselves. Even though I used to get discouraged because I had these amazing new designs that I was doing nothing with I still understood that my parents were busy working hard to raise six loving children & didn’t have the money or time to invest in my talents. As time passed I was still creating new designs but I stopped after I started seeing more & more sneakers very similar to my designs hitting the sneaker racks in the stores left & right. It was a total disappointment & had me feeling like all of my hard work was for nothing. I went to my mom & told her that all my designs were coming out in the stores & all my hard work was for nothing & she would give me that “disappointed but there’s nothing we could’ve done” type of look. I would get upset at times but I still loved my parents very much & was very thankful for everything they provided for me. That sneaker disappointment didn’t stop me from creating the latest greatest artwork I could come up with. I’ve always had a deep passion for creativity. I remember my mom always saying, “You’re a creator of things & that’s a blessing because God is the creator of all things”. That used to make me feel so good inside & motivate me to keep creating whatever I could come up with. Back in 6th grade up to about the middle of junior high I had decided I wanted to create my own comic strips so I created a character named “Casey the Crime Fighter”. I used be in class, on the bus & at home every day working on episode after episode. The “Casey” comics were about an ex-cop named Casey that had been fired from the squad because he had gotten framed while being undercover. Still having a passion for crime fighting, he decided to take matters in his own hands while having his younger brother “Rocky” as his sidekick/protégé. Together they conquered the rough streets of LA & beyond leaving no witnesses. Because of the amount of violence I used to put in these comics, they probably wouldn’t have been able to be published at the time but they were real & exciting to read. Every time I was finish an episode I used to give it to my buddies & they would each read & pass it around saying they couldn’t wait to read the following episode. I always ended each episode in a way that would make my buddies want to see what’s going to happen in the next episode. I never made copies of any of them to give out because I didn’t want anyone to steal my ideas. I had only created the comic strips for my buddies to read also. I had become more protective over my work after seeing all of my sneakers designs hit the stores. Even though I knew they hadn’t been stolen I just didn’t want to feel that type of disappointment ever again. Once I had gotten into high school “Casey” had been a thing of the past along with doing artwork period. I had started getting older & had a newfound interest in girls & being “cool”. I had a great high school life & graduated with honors then went to college in Greensboro, NC & then discovered a new passion in Hip Hop. I used to write rhymes sometime back in junior high & high school but never anything serious but this was different. I was actually going to a real recording studio or recording on “rigged up” stereos in dorm rooms. I had been inspired so much by how well my peers could flow. I would be in “aww” from some of the stuff they would say in their rhymes. I began to think & live hip hop day in & day out. It’s all I ever wanted to do at the time. I would be in class writing rhymes, in the cafeteria, outside at the fountain, in my dorm room, staying up late nights writing… it was like I was an addict to writing rhymes. I then became more & more vocal about my hip hop skills & used to love being part of freestyle ciphers. I had met so many more people that were into hip hop just as much as I was so I began collaborating with more & more MCs. By the time I was suppose to have been graduated with a degree I had hooked up with a group of talented MCs & we had formed “The Network Coalition”. In that group I had became one of the lyrical favorites & I had also started producing a bit. We worked together & ran “The Network” like a business. We did local performances, had songs played on the radio & in the clubs (mainly the strip clubs my old roommate used to DJ in), we recorded lots of songs, mixed & arranged our own album & created our own CD covers. We were a real independent label. Everything was going so fast & so much was going on in each group member’s lives that as time past the group began falling apart more & more. I think some of the guys started their own smaller groups & duos but I had decided to move back to Charlotte due to things moving so fast & getting so crazy in Greensboro. I needed to come back to Charlotte to get my head straight & start all over. Fast forward to a few years back around 2003, I had played a prank on my niece buy putting a hand drawn sign on her bedroom door that had a hand pointing (kinda like the uncle sam pointing hand) calling her a funny name so she would see it as she went to her room. When she saw it posted up on her door she laughed & laughed & that moment right there gave me an idea of making designs for funny signs kids could post on doors. I didn’t want to create the typical “Keep Out!” type of signs, I wanted to create some that would be funny & like nothing else you’ve ever seen in stores. From that point, I started created different designs no computer. I didn’t have much experience with any graphic software but I know how to use MS Word & Paint. So one day as I was on the computer working on a design for a sign, a friend had came over to visit & he saw what I was working on & asked me if it was a design for a t-shirt or something. I told him no but it could be… at that moment my mind was working again & thinking, “Wow, that’s a great idea… I could start creating these designs for t-shirts instead of door signs”. Even though I had no idea how & where to start to get something printed on a t-shirt, I still thought the concept was a great idea. I figured people probably would buy a t-shirt quicker than a door sign. Then again I thought, “Well I could do both…” I remembered the hand drawn sign that I had posted on my niece’s door & I told her that I wanted to get it back so I could use it for an idea & she was cool with it. Once I got it back, I scanned it and put it into MS Paint & cleaned it up as well as I could leaving nothing but the pointing hand. I then imported it into MS Word and put the words, “Stay On Point” around the pointing hand. I then made it lots of different colors to see how it would look on different color t-shirts. For a while after that, I continued creating lots of different t-shirt designs. I had been introduced to Adobe photo deluxe where I could do much more editing and add cool effects to my designs. I had also started back doing the music but I was mainly making beats & I had came up with a name for my productions company as well as a logo. I wanted the logo printed on t-shirts so I did some research on what steps I’d have to take to get the ball rolling & I had found out the process was called “screen printing”. I think looked in the local phonebook & started calling around local screen printing shops searching for the lowest price quote I could find. While I was doing all of this I was learning more & more about how the pricing worked & even a little bit about how the process was done. The first company I had decided to have print my tees was cool on the first order but then had me waiting for about 3 weeks for my second order & kept giving me different lame excuses on why they couldn’t print them yet so I decided to cancel my order & take my business elsewhere. I then found a company who seemed to have there stuff together & the owners were really cool. I remember walking into their shop like it was yesterday. The owner had invited me back into his office instead of having me go to one of the sales offices. He asked me what I wanted to have printed, how many & what colors & sizes. He was so cool & down to earth that I couldn’t believe he was the owner. Anyways, we got my order completed & he told me when the tees should be ready & I left. They did such a good job on the first order that I continued getting t-shirts printed by them after that. The owner always told me to just go straight to his office instead of the sales office. One day I was in there placing an order & the owner just simply said, “Hey man, why don’t you just buy a screen printing machine & start printing t-shirts yourself? That way you can cut out the middle man & make more off of the t-shirts. Screen printing is not that hard to do”. From that day on he had me thinking & I decided that was exactly what I was going to do so I saved up enough money & bought my first screen printing machine along with all the initial supplies I needed to get the job done. (Do your research on screen printing machines before deciding what type you want to buy and make sure you have enough space to fit it if you do not have a shop yet.) I didn’t know anything about screen printing & I had acquired a few customers who were friends & family members. I basically learned how to screen print through trial & error & once I got the hang of it I was in business. I started Shirtgame, took a few screen printing classes & I’ve never looked back since. If you’re interested in getting into the screen printing industry, let this real life story be an inspiration to you & understand success will not happen over night. You’ll have to learn how to print & then market your business to build clientele. I’ll show you what it may be like from that point by letting you see some of the things I had to go through to get where I am today so stay tuned…