Comic Books have been around for decades, but recent years have seen a resurgence in the art form. While Marvel is rolling out blockbusters based on beloved comic book heroes, comic book shops are popping up everywhere and collectors are rejoicing.
Cleveland is fortunate enough to have an incredibly talented comic artist drawing up a storm in our happy little city. John Greiner, more commonly known as John G., is the artist behind the Shiner Comics and the artwork for Melt Bar & Grilled, Cleveland Cinemas, Scene Magazine and much, much more. We hung out with John to find out if he prefers pizza to tacos and what goes into creating and printing an epic Comic Book adventure.
Embroidery has been one of the biggest fashion trends for a hot minute. From Dad Hats to Jackets, embroidery is everywhere. But a lot goes into making a quality piece of embroidered apparel. Designing for embroidery is a little different than designing for screen printing, so we’ve put together some tips to help get your graphic embroidery ready.
Enamel pins are everywhere these days. They’re taking over Instagram, Etsy and big retailers like Forever21 and Urban Outfitters. Everyone at Jakprints has at least a couple on their denim jackets, so we wanted to get the details on these mini accessories. We turned to the enamel pin master, Charlie Wagers of Lost Lust Supply, to find out what makes these tiny accessories some of the coolest around and talk design while we’re at it.
Halloween is a big deal at Jakprints. Tons of material for haunted houses and costume parties are rolling off the press, and we love the spooky vibes that come with it. Lucky for us, Thirteenth Floor keeps us busy with eerie prints and apparel all year. We sat down with the man behind the brand, Billy Ludwig, to discuss his newest collection and designing with the eerie crowd in mind.
Print projects come in all shapes and sizes. Custom Die Cuts are the perfect way to break out of the box and give your product that unique boost. Jakprints wants to make creating a beautiful, one-of-a-kind product as easy as possible, so we offer free die line creation. That’s one less thing for you to worry about when you’re looking to knock out a truly unique product.
We turned to Craig Winzer, a member of the File Creation Team and successful illustrator, to break down die lines and tell us about himself.
There’s a lot that goes into creating your own brand. Luckily, we know some incredible people in the scene that give great advice on starting your own label-like Byron McKoy of Hide & Seek Clothing.
Knowing what your target audience wants is a huge part of making a successful product, and Byron knows just how to do that. With introverts in mind, Hide & Seek offers apparel that lets those less social and more emotional wear their hearts on their shirts.
A lot of cool products roll through the shop here on a daily basis. Occasionally something that really catches our eye comes along-in this case; a t-shirt by Toledo, Ohio Based photographer and videographer, Nick Amrhein. Nick used his creativity and incredible skills behind the camera to make a killer t-shirt. Screen printing an insanely photo-realistic shirt that retains all of the detail of the original photo can be tricky, but our expert screen printing team knew exactly how to take care of business.
Seriously impressed, we sat down with Nick to hear his story and learn more about the idea behind his shirt.
Combined with colored paper stocks, white ink is one of the coolest ways to take your designs in a new direction. Use this fifth color to create truly unique designs and effects.
But, unless you’re used to using white ink, some of these techniques might seem a bit illusive. Fear not! We’ve got some great examples of white ink being used in designs and some insights about how to use it.
If you’ve already created a white ink design, pop over to our tutorial on how to set up your Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator files for printing.
To get a firsthand view into how designers are leveraging white ink, we sat down with designer and illustrator Nick Matej of downtimecollective.com.
White As A Fifth Color
Here at Jakprints we love looking at all the great ideas that our customers come up with. Check out these phenomenal Business Cards that have crossed over our desk recently.
1. We love the look of this 16 pt. Soft Touch Business Card. The sleek design pairs perfectly with our Soft Touch coating — it gives paper a satin finish and a touchable, rubbery feel. Their use of gold foil stamping keeps it both simple and elegant. Every detail is covered in this design, even the slight rounded corners to soften the look of the final piece. Marvelous!
2. Our friends over at Inked Glass really wanted to make their artwork pop. With the use of a custom die line and neon green painted edges they definitely have a card you won’t forget.
This post was published and formated for an old version of the blog.
We’ve got mad CLE pride! The Indians had an amazing season (Thank you Tribe!) and the Browns…are actually winning. With everyone bringing their “A” game, we thought we’d take a minute to give a shout out to a Jakprints customer with a brand new Women’s T-Shirt design that we’re giving an A+!
