How a Screen Printer Spent Summer: Family, Posters, and Printing on a Shipping Container

WHAT I DID ON my summer vacation…

The concept of a summer vacation still is a thing we all can cling to in this ever-changing world. Kids mark their growth with the rings of summer adventures’ past, and people still travel, hit concerts, hit the beach, and hit the road.

Some screen printers (OK, me) take vacations like the proverbial busman’s holiday. The squeegee is to our summer as beer is to a cooler. Essential. And after a year of almost constant travel, I decided to stay home this summer. A staycation, as they say…

My granddaughter Camiyah helped me out this summer for a printer friend who has a gaming client in Canada and needed a for a poster for a convention of players. With Cam stepping up to help, we banged that sucker out in no time. Here’s some shots of the process.

TennoConcert: Posters Ain’t Dead Yet

To start my stay-at-home summer, I got a poster printing job that I honestly had no idea what it was about. But the customer needed a custom poster for a convention of WarFrame/TennoConcert gamers. It coincided with the annual summertime visit of my recently graduated-from-high school granddaughter who was looking to earn some money and hang with her gramps. So, we took it on.

Now there are a couple of cool things going on with this poster job. Camiyah, my granddaughter, used to follow me around like a shadow and did a lot of printing of her own art when she was a little one. I used to use a photoset to demonstrate the process when I would do workshops with adults — “Hey, if this kid can do it, you can too!” And then that kid grew up…so it was fun to see her come back into printing after a long break.

The other weird thing, and what I LOVE about this print world we inhabit is how the job came to me. The “ping ping ping” of random connections. Like I said, I have no idea about gaming. I played Zelda to the end in 1989 and hung up the controller after that. So, I get a note from Brandon Lennert down in New Orleans. He’s a T-shirt guy, with Inferno Merch and Mirror Image. I met him years ago in Seattle, we have mutual friends, see each other at trade shows, etc.

He has a gaming client in Canada who needed a for a poster for a convention of players. He asked if I could deliver on a tight deadline so they didn’t have to deal with the crapshoot that is cross-border shipping? We had paper, the press was available, and I had my trusty racker/helper. Yes, let’s do it!

At a local mural festival, community members of all kinds became artists and transformed a shipping container into an art project that involved screen printing. Cami and I and some reluctant volunteers covered the side of the container with four different frame designs. And boy did we find some thigs out that will help the process go much more smoothly next time.

When the art arrived, I was excited. It was cool, different, had a great color scheme, and some whack space dude with a small head and what appears to be a 10-string guitar. But I may be wrong. With Camiyah stepping up to help, we banged that sucker out in no time. We swapped out on the racking and printing, and Cami got a good feel for running the press.

By the last color, she was tearing down and cleaning up, could start up and shut down the ATMA, and had learned all the control functions. Useful skills? I guess if you want to start making Apple products in North America again. You should know how to run an ATMA, seeing as they have about 3,000 in the factory in China. But I digress…

Some of us get lucky and can work with our kids (or grandkids!). And that is some quality time spent doing a task in common, working together outside our traditional relationships and roles within the family structure, more as equals and doing a job together.

There was an NDA we had to sign, so we kept the project under wraps. But I did shoot some video of the printing and Digital Extremes, the parent company of TennoConcert, decided to give the fans a sneak peek. Viewership on Instagram and TikTok went crazy, and the poster was a hit. Here’s a link to a short video of Camiyah showing the final poster.

Let’s Print Vertical!

We had another week with Cam and it was time to move outside and into the sunshine. Our town was having its first Mural Festival, and the local brew pub had given me a shipping container to use for an art project that I proposed, which involved screen printing.

T-shirt and graphic printers print on the flat. Some specialized printers print round objects, or web-fed material, but the screen frame always is horizontal. This also assumes you can put the material or object to be printed in the press. Sometimes a shipping container won’t fit, so what to do? Screen print, of course.

The idea of creating a wall full of painted frames for community artists to come and fill in wasn’t new. I had coordinated a similar project for HGTV in Austin at SXSW where we hand-painted hundreds of frames on a wall. We then invited people to pick up a plate, some paint squirts, a brush, and tell them to go at it. But we didn’t have a week to hand paint frames. I remembered a cool picture in “A History of Screenprinting” where two screen printers were printing a window with an announcement about the first screen exhibition. So that gave us the idea to screen print the frames on the container. After all, how hard could it be?

We found out. Through trial and a few errors, Cami and I and some reluctant volunteers covered the side of the container with four different frame designs. What did we find out?

1. 110 mesh prints better than 157. It dried in quicker, and the 110 stayed open and covered well.
2.  It works in the shade. We used acrylic and wanted it to dry in the screen in the sun.
3. You need two people — one on each side of the frame, one person on the squeegee.
4. Tape off-contact shims to the bottom of the frames.
5.  A softer squeegee (60/90/60) worked better than a hard 80.
6. Only enough ink for a couple of flood and print cycles is needed. We printed up and we printed down. Down can be messy with too much ink.

All in all, it worked great, and it was so much fun watching people show up and create a painting. Parents and kids got involved, some semi-pro local artists, and even a family visiting from England who came for a pint at the pub, saw what we were doing, and came back over three days to finish their masterpiece.

I took Camiyah back to the ferry (we live on an island) and was really happy to get to spend part of the summer with her. She was off camping and then college, as I prepared for the invasion of Canaidia.

My friends Jared Connor and Mark Pedini visited me on Vancouver Island armed with two exclusive designs for the annual Market Days. We let kids and adults print paper, a patch, or anything. Some had never seen the process before and a steady stream of them ran to the local thrift store and bought T-shirts or dresses after our stash of shirts ran out.

Jared and Mark’s Excellent Road Trip

Summer holidays are not complete without a road trip. So, two of my longtime friends decided to meet up in Seattle then drive north to visit Vancouver Island and my little hacienda on the ocean. Jared Connor is from just outside Austin, where he works as a designer and artist. His dark geometric designs are recognizable, and he has the distinction of being the most prolific artist making posters for the iconic Austin City Limits live music broadcast.

His sidekick, Mark Pedini, is senior graphic designer at Pokemon Intl., based in Seattle. Just to keep us focused on something stupid, I had arranged for some live printing in front of the Comox Valley Art Gallery during the annual Market Days, where the town shuts down the main street to cars and the community comes out to play and shop. It was local artisans and food wagons, two stages of music, and the visiting Design Bros. with two exclusive images that we would print on anything people brought us.

It was a lot of fun. We let kids and adults print paper or a patch, many for the first time. Some had never seen the process before and a steady stream of them ran around the corner to the local thrift store and bought T-shirts or dresses after our stash of shirts ran out. While the merchants of Main Street sold their imported trinkets, we helped people make theirs. They got a super-limited custom print as a souvenir, while the boys had a blast meeting people and eating up a slice of Canadiana small town life. They even came back with poutine and some new shoes.

Some of my local design buddies and friends who wanted to meet Jared and Mark came to a hotdog BBQ with the guys, instead of us hosting an “artist talk.” It’s summer, who wants to sit in a room? This, in turn, led to many of their kids showing up with a zillion questions about Pokemon. Mark was great, although he sneaked a look at his phone while he was drawing a design in young Finn’s notebook.

The next day, they left, heading west across the island to go on a kayaking adventure, then down to Ye Olde Victoria. From there, the Black Ball ferry over to the Olympic peninsula and the USA, back to Seattle and Texas. We made some new “good old day” memories, which was a perfect summer vacation highpoint. I think they’ll be back.

What’s next? I have absolutely no idea. There’s still another month of summer to go! Have yourself a great summer vacation, do something different, and always pack a squeegee. Because you never know…

To hear me chat with these fine folks about working on these cool projects together, check out Episode 28.