Jeremy Picker’s T-Shirt Design Rocks for Third Year

FOR THE THIRD YEAR, Jeremy Picker, CEO and creative director, AMB3R Creative, designed the T-shirt graphics for the annual Women in Screen Printing Awards. The 2022 shirts were live printed before and after the awards ceremony at the MADE Lab booth at Printing United in Las Vegas. In 2020, Brandi Schieber, founder of Downtown Threads, and a previous Women in Screen Printing Award winner, printed and shipped the shirts. In 2021, MADE Lab live printed the shirts at their facility during their launch party at Impressions Expo Fort Worth.

“Since #WomenROQ [now U.N.I.T.E. Together], I wanted to celebrate the strong women in our industry through inspiration from the women who led the rock scenes in the past,” says Jeremy. “This year, I wanted to do something a little more edgy. Doing some market research, ’60s and ’70s vibes were woven throughout retail as well as classic rock replicas or refreshes. Add some screen printing equipment and a skull, we wanted to keep to the black/white vibes of punk rock tees of the past.”

Designing the shirt has been important to Jeremy as a male ally in the industry. “I love what Adrienne [and Screen Printing magazine] is doing for our industry and love that you’re highlighting female leaders who are going to be the rock stars for future female printers in our space,” he says. “I didn’t grow up around strong, independent females, so I love the entrepreneurial spirit that embodies all these ladies. In a white male-dominated space, I am all for bringing in some diversity to shake things up and bring different/fresh perspectives.”

Val Solomon, co-owner, Night Owls, and previous Women in Screen Printing Award winner, Alyson Collins, production manager, Parkway Printshop, and current Women in Screen Printing Award winner, and Nikki Bowen, co-owner, Machine Gun Graphics and founder of Print Girl Mafia, live printed the shirts at MADE Lab’s booth on a ROQ Eco automatic screen printing press with a ROQ Dry Evolution flash cure unit onto Allmade T-shirts, donated by Ryan Moor.

“We designed with tonal light and tonal dark in mind so they could use the same ink on all shirt types,” says Jeremy. “Soft hand and vintage print.”

“We accomplished the print with water-based ink this year,” says Val. “I got a lot of questions about the hand of the print and how we were able to accomplish such a soft print on the Allmade tees. It’ll only get softer the more it’s washed!”

The trio of printers used a custom Matsui formulation of their Soft Stretch and 301 Clear series with 5 percent of quick additive. “The setup, registration, and live printing of the two screens/colors were super easy because we did not use a base, and we had no issues with dry-in during the run,” says Val.

If you have suggestions for the 2023 Women in Screen Printing T-Shirt design, send them our way! editor@screenprintingmag.com.

PHOTO GALLERY (8 IMAGES)
📷 Photos courtesy of Seth Brewton, The Creative Situation. Video courtesy of Val Solomon, Night Owls.

Adrienne Palmer

Adrienne Palmer is the editor-in-chief of Big Picture and Screen Printing magazines. She joined Big Picture magazine in 2012 after graduating from Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism with a BA in magazine journalism. During her time with Big Picture, she has held the roles of assistant editor, associate editor, and managing editor; she added sister publication Screen Printing magazine to her resume in 2019. She is a 2019 Folio: Top Woman in Media; spearheads Big Picture's annual Women in Wide Format Awards and Best of Wide Format Awards as well as Screen Printing's annual Women in Screen Printing Awards; is on the board of Printing United Alliance's Women in Print Alliance and the U.N.I.T.E. Together diversity and inclusion program; hosts the Screen Saver podcast; and represents the Big Picture and Screen Printing teams at numerous industry events year-round as a speaker, moderator, and panelist.