This time the adventure was in my back yard, in the industrial area of North Hollywood. Visiting factories is fun, of course the Obscura society made it more so by having us acrTively involved
Tommy Galinas, the founder of this T-shirt printing company. American ingenuity at its best. What started as a way to make a few bucks without working too hard. Has become a large production enterprise that employs family and 60 other people as well
Son Shane is one of the graphic designers. Our project as to approve a design for a t shirt, we would follow it from inception to finished shirt. The front would have the Atlas Obscure logo, the back, the gps coordinates and the unique date of 16.6.16
Examples of shirts, from simple 3 screen, to 14 screen. Using half tones it is possible to achieve photo realism.
I am always impressed with the ingenuity of businessmen. Using a printer designed for the large banner industry, adapting it to screen printing purposes. Our first transparency is created.
Things moved along quickly, a screen is shot and cleaned.
Tommy is all about efficiency, colors are chosen with the Pantone color chart, so he has all the colors made up ready for immediate use. That takes a lot of time, but allows him to produce samples quickly.
Choosing the red.
Comparing reds
The actual printer
Watching another job. Printing a sleeve, since it’s a dark shirt, first they lay a white background
Adding the red
Printing done, it gets baked in a very hot oven and then is ready to be packed and shipped. This is a full service shop, once the shirts are done its up to Print Lab to see the order gets to its final destination.
The Obscura logo gets its first white underlay.
Red over white.
We were offered either black or grey shirts. On the right is the red over white underlay, we all agreed that the logo looks better without he white
It was necessary on the black shirt. The gold would have been lost otherwise.
Interesting day and I got a nice new t-shirt.