Famous award winning Screen Printers

[Frog]

Get your programs! You can't tell your Andys apart without your programs!

Okay, just in case there is any confusion, Andy Anderson is the man behind Anderson Studios, an award winning shop in Nashville, TN

Andy Brizio, "The Rodfather" founded Andy's Tee Shirts, an award winning shop in Concord, California, and now run by his daughter Kim.

Your own Andy here, Frog, ain't won diddly, except hopefully the friendship of many of you!

[blue moon]

"it is probably not OCD but just a desire to improve unlike the OCD which is mostly about repetition."

Pierre,

I heard some study once that many CEOs have some level of OCD. OCD is not a bad thing at a small level. We could call it a lot of things, drive, perfectionist, very dedicated. I only said that to put the picture in peoples head of how some award winners view their work. (not talking only about screen printers)

"which is mostly about repetition"

I would guess if you keep printing a shirt and making very fine edits for hours on end that would cover the repetition part of the OCD. Again OCD is a serious disease and I am not taking that lightly here. I am just saying a little OCD is found in a lot of people that excel in their field.

Sorry for the derail.

I think we are on the same page here. There is a fine line between OCD and the strong drive to excel/improve. In the end, the point is, winning is not easy and it take so much more than ppl can imagine.

pierre

[blue moon]

Get your programs! You can't tell your Andys apart without your programs!

Okay, just in case there is any confusion, Andy Anderson is the man behind Anderson Studios, an award winning shop in Nashville, TN

Andy Brizio, "The Rodfather" founded Andy's Tee Shirts, an award winning shop in Concord, California, and now run by his daughter Kim.

Your own Andy here, Frog, ain't won diddly, except hopefully the friendship of many of you!

Andy I am sure I speak for most here if not all,

"You are our FAVORITE Andy!"

pierre

[killergraphics]

Get your programs! You can't tell your Andys apart without your programs!

Okay, just in case there is any confusion, Andy Anderson is the man behind Anderson Studios, an award winning shop in Nashville, TN

Andy Brizio, "The Rodfather" founded Andy's Tee Shirts, an award winning shop in Concord, California, and now run by his daughter Kim.

Your own Andy here, Frog, ain't won diddly, except hopefully the friendship of many of you!

Andy I am sure I speak for most here if not all,

"You are our FAVORITE Andy!"

pierre

Get a Room...

But I will say is one of the smartest people I know and have never met.

[JBLUE]

Get your programs! You can't tell your Andys apart without your programs!

Okay, just in case there is any confusion, Andy Anderson is the man behind Anderson Studios, an award winning shop in Nashville, TN

Andy Brizio, "The Rodfather" founded Andy's Tee Shirts, an award winning shop in Concord, California, and now run by his daughter Kim.

Your own Andy here, Frog, ain't won diddly, except hopefully the friendship of many of you!

At the end of the day this is all that matters anyways.

[Sbrem]

As long as we're analyzing this, who is (or should be) the actual "winner"?
The artist, the separator, the guy who made the screens (or the guy or cleaned them), the guy who set the job up on the press, the guy who actually loaded the shirts?
In the end, though I suppose that it would be the owner, even if he was on vacation at the time.
Of course, it's really the shop itself, with an extra nod to the production manager.

I go with the last person in line. As an analogy, in photography the negative is the master, but the print is what you look at; in music, the score is the road map, but the performance is sh!t...

Steve

[Screened Gear]

As long as we're analyzing this, who is (or should be) the actual "winner"?
The artist, the separator, the guy who made the screens (or the guy or cleaned them), the guy who set the job up on the press, the guy who actually loaded the shirts?
In the end, though I suppose that it would be the owner, even if he was on vacation at the time.
Of course, it's really the shop itself, with an extra nod to the production manager.

I go with the last person in line. As an analogy, in photography the negative is the master, but the print is what you look at; in music, the score is the road map, but the performance is sh!t...

Steve

When I was in the design world, as long as you took part in the project you could take credit for the award. I have worked with designers that have quite a few awards and couldn't do SH8t on their own. Many of them worked on a team to win the award. Some did very little but still feel they would have never won if they were not part of the it. (artists) There are a lot of people that work on an award winning design but the person that should get the award is the person that put the team together and made sure that team did the best work they could at ever step of the production.

 How do they judge these compatitions??? Anyone know?

[killergraphics]

I'm not sure it is even wise to try to rank them.

Many do awarding winning work every week/month/year and few if any are ever entered in a contest.

Some shops will do a job just for a contest.

How bout just saying in your opinion these are the top 5 or 10?

What do you think?

[Screened Gear]

In one of my classes at long beach they talked about a printer that does all his stuff at some insane line screen. I think it was 100 or maybe even over that. I can't remember the name of the printer. It was not just for an award they do it for all of their SimPro work. As Killer said there are guys out there doing better than award work every day. They most likely don't even care for the awards.

Do you have to pay to enter a shirt into some of these contests? I know in the logo design world they always had a entry fee.

[ebscreen]

Target Graphics works at 85 LPI I think, maybe higher. Too lazy to look up their webpage.

[blue moon]

Target Graphics works at 85 LPI I think, maybe higher. Too lazy to look up their webpage.

they claim to be over 100 for some stuff (125 IIRC). There is a little more to the story though as they do things unconventionally to get those results.

pierre

[blue moon]

In one of my classes at long beach they talked about a printer that does all his stuff at some insane line screen. I think it was 100 or maybe even over that. I can't remember the name of the printer. It was not just for an award they do it for all of their SimPro work. As Killer said there are guys out there doing better than award work every day. They most likely don't even care for the awards.

Do you have to pay to enter a shirt into some of these contests? I know in the logo design world they always had a entry fee.

ISS does not charge anything. SGIA allows one for free and then $30 for each additional entry.

[Screened Gear]

In one of my classes at long beach they talked about a printer that does all his stuff at some insane line screen. I think it was 100 or maybe even over that. I can't remember the name of the printer. It was not just for an award they do it for all of their SimPro work. As Killer said there are guys out there doing better than award work every day. They most likely don't even care for the awards.

Do you have to pay to enter a shirt into some of these contests? I know in the logo design world they always had a entry fee.

ISS does not charge anything. SGIA allows one for free and then $30 for each additional entry.

$30 is not that bad. When I was doing logo design some of them were as High as $150. It was all about the money.

[blue moon]

I'm not sure it is even wise to try to rank them.

Many do awarding winning work every week/month/year and few if any are ever entered in a contest.

Some shops will do a job just for a contest.

How bout just saying in your opinion these are the top 5 or 10?

What do you think?

for anybody still caring to follow this thread . . .

I would venture to guess that what is coming from a shop on everyday bases will not win anything. Not because the shops are not capable of it, but rather that the award level prints require a lot more work and not many customers are willing to pay for it. Also, in most cases, the shops are not willing to spend the time to do it at the higher level since it does not bring any extra money.

For winning entries, art is expensive, the seps are expensive and the sampling time is expensive. The prints we've entered had at least $1K worth of expenses before the first shirt came of the belt. So I will agree with Johnny that there are many shops out there capable of producing outstanding work, but not many will have an opportunity to print those designs, or will be willing to put in the extra time and money.

re: what it takes to win . . .
Of the winning entries and the shirts that I have seen, all of them seem to be on the same level which is not hard to obtain if pursued. Short of some esoteric special effects, there is only one printer (Andy Anderson) at the competitions that constantly produces results we could not replicate (and continue to baffle me). Any other shirt out there is at our skill level or very, very close. This means that in many cases the judging is subjective as the differences are very small and in the end it boils down to subjective opinions and in some cases organizer's instructions (which often value aesthetic factors higher than the technical achievement! Don't ask how I know that).

As far as the best shops, here is what I'm thinking right now:
on a 1 to 10 scale from what I have seen or heard
-(10) Andy is the man and so far I am yet to see anything, and I mean anything that can touch his prints!
-TonyP speaks highly of JSR. Zelko here works for them, maybe he can send a sample for inspection. I would love to see it. Based on what Tony says, they are better then we are, it would be nice to see how much longer we have to go to reach their level. 
-Lon Winters likes Liquid Blue. I did check out a couple of their shirts last weekend. They were good, but not exceptional. I'd say an 8, but again, I did not get a chance to look very closely.
-Andy's Tees. Got a chance to look at their stuff at the shows and they are a solid 8.
-New Buffalo, did not see any, but based on the pictures and conversations I would guess another 8.
-Rick Roth probably about 8.5. His strength is in the innovation and art rather then spectacular print quality. 
-Target Graphics. Yes they print 4CP at 125lpi and on black, but those belong in the esoteric category mentioned before. My guess, probably an 8.
-Blue Moon, just for reference, I would say we are a 7.5 on 10 scale.
-a very respected shop that is not winning awards is probably around 7. These are the guys you probably heard of somewhere for who knows what reason. These are the shops Johnny is thinking of.

While yes, there are bound to be shops at 7.5 or 8 level (possibly even 8.5) out there that none of us have ever heard of, there aren't as many as we imagine there would be.

For anybody no believing what I just said, send me a fedex shipping label and I'll send you a shirt the DID NOT place at ISS and SGIA.


pierre

[Screened Gear]

Good info Pierre. You obviously have spent some time researching this stuff. If Andy’s prints are that much better there has to be something we don't know. I like how this tread is going I am learning exactly what I was wanting. l would like to see one of his shirts in person if they are that much better. Does he use some insane LPI or is it just really smooth. Pierre where does he excel compared to you right now?