Editorial Insights: It Takes a Village

THIS COLUMN MARKS my 32nd anniversary with ST Media Group and Screen Printing. Among the advantages of doing something for a very long time are the relationships that you foster. In specialty printing and the other industries ST serves, I’ve been fortunate to know many extraordinary individuals, some of them as writers for this magazine. These authors have been an invaluable resource, to me and presumably you as well; whatever I may know about this business, they’ve taught me. A word of appreciation to those who lent us their time and expertise in 2018 is well-deserved.

First up are the frequent contributors, starting with our outstanding columnists, apparel decoration strategist Marshall Atkinson and Andy MacDougall, who has shared his adventures, wit, and keen perspective in Shop Talk for 14 years. Artist extraordinaire Thomas Trimingham added two more excellent pieces (on underbase printing and digital proofing) to his impressive body of work for the magazine. Two former colleagues, Eileen Fritsch and Kiersten Feuchter, addressed e-textiles, DTG inks, sustainability, and e-commerce. And Mark Coudray offered his wisdom with guidance on how to evaluate possible technology acquisitions and an overview of why understanding the new generation of buyers is critical for everyone reading these words. (More on Mark below. And to access any of this great content you may have missed, visit our searchable archive of digital editions at screenweb.com.)

Thanks also to three longtime friends whose distinctive contributions in 2018 could have come from no one else. Mike Young, who shared five screen making secrets for industrial printing; Debbie Thorp, who explained why robotics could change inkjet printing’s future; and Johnny Shell, who looked at why the erosion of print instruction in schools is exacerbating our current labor shortage.

I’d also like to welcome six first-time authors to the Screen Printing community:

• Lon Winters of Graphic Elephants, who shared his encyclopedic knowledge of special effects printing
• Dylan Gilligan of Upstate Merch, who offered great ideas on marketing your business through Instagram
• Dr. Sean Smyth of Smithers Pira, who explained the dynamics of the glass decoration market
• Kristen Klingensmith of Nonstop Signs and Graphics, who showed the business benefits of blogging
• Industry legend Rich Hoffman, the recently retired former CEO of M&R, who shares some of the automation principles from his career – and how you can apply them
• Skya Nelson of Fed By Threads, who conveyed his passion for sustainability

I love working with new authors because of the different perspectives they bring to our coverage. Drop me a line if you’d like to join the first-time contributor “class of 2019.”

Finally, congratulations to Mark Coudray, who at the SGIA Expo received the 2018 David R. Swormstedt Sr. Memorial Award, honoring the best technical article on screen or digital printing. “Optimizing Your Flash Curing,” was published in our August/September 2017 edition, and marks the second consecutive year he has received the award for an article in Screen Printing. Congratulations also to Johnny Shell, Debbie Thorp, and Eileen Fritsch, who received Best in Class awards for their work in Screen Printing.