Bad Prints Gallery

[Parker 1]

We as printers and/or artists tend to over analys our product.  This is a good thing, but the everyday consumer does not notice most of what we recongnize as poor to shotty work. 

Example, I used to work on plastic molding machines that produced the bottle caps for soft-drinks.  I would open a 20oz  Sprite and could pick it apart on things that where wrong.  Safety band coming off too easy or to hard bad liners, bubbles in the liners ect....  I would do this and it drove friends and family crazy. 

[Shawn (EIP)]

We as printers and/or artists tend to over analys our product.  This is a good thing, but the everyday consumer does not notice most of what we recongnize as poor to shotty work. 

Example, I used to work on plastic molding machines that produced the bottle caps for soft-drinks.  I would open a 20oz  Sprite and could pick it apart on things that where wrong.  Safety band coming off too easy or to hard bad liners, bubbles in the liners ect....  I would do this and it drove friends and family crazy.

Exactly!

[Prosperi-Tees]

I have to agree there. I have a neighbor next to my shop who is a cabinet guy and we shoot the breeze once in a while. while in his shop he shows me things other cabinet guys have done that is crap and I just dont see it. He will come over and I will show him what a customer brought me in that was a crappy print and he cant see it. So yes we do overanalyze but I believe it is a good thing.

[3Deep]

Keeps us all on out toes...never know when another printer might point your bad print to that customer he is trying to get from ya.

Darryl

[alan802]

Keeps us all on out toes...never know when another printer might point your bad print to that customer he is trying to get from ya.

Darryl

One of my goals when it comes to print quality is to have other printers look at something we printed and think it was a great print or better yet, have them think that it is better than anything that they can do.  I love getting a shirt that I think is better than we can do, it's motivational.  I usually bring them to the shop and look them over with my loupe and then I'll do some measurements.  Most good shirts I buy today are toddler shirts.  There aren't many adult prints worth a damn.

[Parker 1]

Keeps us all on out toes...never know when another printer might point your bad print to that customer he is trying to get from ya.

Darryl

One of my goals when it comes to print quality is to have other printers look at something we printed and think it was a great print or better yet, have them think that it is better than anything that they can do.  I love getting a shirt that I think is better than we can do, it's motivational.  I usually bring them to the shop and look them over with my loupe and then I'll do some measurements.  Most good shirts I buy today are toddler shirts.  There aren't many adult prints worth a dam.

Alan, I agree.  This is one of the many reasons I frequent this forum.  This place will challenge you as a printer.

[alan802]

Next time any of you are in the mall, go to the Disney store or a Carters, then cruise through the kids clothing section at Target and look at the print quality.  I think that I might be one of the only one's who has really noticed the print quality difference since I've got a 2 year old but I am begging for some of you to do this and tell me what you think.

[Dottonedan]

One reaso I would guess as to why youth prints look better to some is that thry have a smaller area for mistakes. Imagine having to monitor and maintain quality for only a 4" area versus a 12" area.  Mechanically, a smaller area on a smaller shirt is easier to control.  On the other hand, smaller areas on large shirts are horrible to control. How many people love trying to run a job efficiently with a 2" center Chest print? Very hard to center correctly and do it fast.

2ndly, not many youth and toddler prints are difficult 8-10-12 color sim process jobs. Sure, we have some but not a large portion. Mostly vector art. Solid but with an occasional special affect ink or application combination.

Just a guess at that.

[ScreenFoo]

You can't pay me enough to get a 2 year old.     

Dan's got a great point though--considering just about everyone runs 23x31 screens, 15x18 is more than four times harder to keep under control than 7x9 IMHO....

[RICK STEFANICK]

I have never really had a good response from a prospective customer pointing out the bad printing of another printer. usually they jumped ship for other reasons and kind of take those comments personal ..after all its the shirts they have been proud of and wearing since the last order. I find it best to never say anything negative about the competition.Regardless of the situation and that seems to gain respect from professional buyers.

[mk162]

I try not to either, but I had a customer that wanted me to match another printer in town.  I told him I won't match his prices but my quality is a ton better....still got me the job.  Their shirts were awful.  Just terrible.  And not cured either.

[Parker 1]

Alot if not most of the children/ infant clothing is done off-shore, and is printed on cut goods prior to sewing.  This will improve quallity standards simply because there are more eyes on it prior to delivery.  I have a 1 year old with another on the way so I've noticed theese prints as really good especialy when it comes to Disney.   

[Tagless Threads]

I took a stroll through Target yesterday and thought the same damn thing. Out of the thirty or so graphics I checked every single one was out of reg. Crazy how the quality is just crap. Yesterday we also went to a kids party at one of those rock crawling gyms. Their shirts had the texture of the concrete that we were climbing on. I talked to the owner and he just did not know any better. He saw my company shirt I was wearing and I now have a new customer.

I agree, Target needs to work on their quality control. Congrats on getting the new customer!

[3Deep]

Thats something I will never do is bad mouth another printer even if I know they bad mouthed me, its just not good business IMHO, but I do tell them what my strong points are and asure them I will take care of them in every way possible.

  I look at prints all the time in stores I see things that I would try not to do, but them I say hey they must be doing something right they got the big biz and I don't so who am I I to tell them how to print...I make pennies a year they make 1000ings a week.

Darryl

[alan802]

There has been a long history around this town of badmouthing the competition, especially on the embroidery side.  It's amazing to hear some of the stuff that is said about your shop, some of our customers have been open to us about other shops trying to put the hard sell on them and they tell us what is said about us, it's down right untrue.

We had a potential customer come in this morning and ask if we could fix something that they had gotten done somewhere (pretty sure it was not local), but I erased most of the print to just show you what someone put in a box.  Out of 80 vests, 50 of them were damaged like this, this is a good example of the average, some were worse, some better.  We are going to fix them I guess, hit them with the zim gun, and hopefully gain a new customer at the same time.  These are really cheap mesh safety vests.



Does this constitute as a bad day in the QC department or what?  I don't know what's worse, the pics I posted earlier or this, I'll let y'all decide.