"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
Mark, I'm sure I speak for all here. You don't owe a dime. You might take some time and print stuff for yourself (or family) to learn your skills. Its tragic to have to replace shirts as often as you have indicated. Perhaps while you are learning your skills, you might consider getting orders and outsourcing them direct in the first place, but not to a local printer, unless the local is a "contract" printer. There are lots here if none local. That way you could make a buck while learning. If that direction worked out for you, you could even try to print the same jobs (for yourself as samples) on the weekends to get up to speed.P.S. I think that would have been a tuff job in the first place without an underbase. I think Red is a difficult shirt color unless your printing discharge. Just my 2c.
Mark, I don't even consider myself a good printer. The trick is to get the jobs you are comfortable doing and either outsource or pass on the jobs you are not. This seems like a pretty straight forward print and myself personally would have sent it off to 24 hour artwork or someplace like that and rocked and rolled on it. I made the mistake just this past week of taking a last minute job on with halftones on a dark shirt which I have never done before and the prints came out awful in my opinion but I had no time to adjust or change anything in the seps or screens and just ran it. Customer accepted them and was somewhat happy cause we turned the job in less than 24 hours but I wasn't happy with the outcome. Point is always look for jobs you are comfortable doing otherwise you will hate this job and practice on your own shirts.
I found those files very simple to fix in Illustrator, literally 3 keystrokes. I would think CD also has something to do the same. In Illy, it's "Flatten Transparency", then "Merge". All the colors joined correctly, and all the little pieces joined together. It has to be in there somewhere. Also, the .pdf causes the image to be cut off at the page edges, but if it's actually there, just clipped. In Illy, it's releasing the clipping path so the rest of the image shows up. Mark, don't be too discouraged; we'll all help out here. Just remember to ask a little sooner. Let me tell you though, that if you're really trying to start a business, you gotta work a million hours. You get out of your day job, go to the shop, and work until 10:00 or 11:00. Yes, it's hard, so what? Go for it man, be your own boss. Good luck.Steve
I wasn't happy with the outcome.
hold on, get down off the ledge, there's not enough room for you up here too haha...but really, like Wayne said, take on some small some jobs, ask questions here -only after you have read every post / topic /wise ass comment. . .get some vids, hit up you tube, and reread / trial and error. You have not done anything we haven't done, so welcome to the club. How bad do you want to do this? oh -and Wayne -Shut it, I want my 5 bucks!. . haha. .
Mark, what kind of problems are you having exactly? Just on the art side of things or is there something from coating-post press that we could help you with, perhaps just the grind of the business? I don't want to see someone fail because of a lack of understanding or knowledge of the technical aspects of screen printing, especially when there are many of us here that have everything you need to succeed. The business side of things just takes time, and if you're working another job, your at a disadvantage already. Only a select few can cram 40 hours worth of work into 20, and those people usually have a great team or resources that others don't have. I have tons of information that I could share with you if need it. Nobody that is just getting into this realizes how much goes into it, but like everything else, broken down into parts, the sum is much easier to accomplish when you control those parts correctly.If you don't mind, just let us know exactly where you are struggling most and I KNOW we can change your mind, if you really want it bad enough. There are likely 20 things we can change right off the bat that will make you much more efficient, have better quality and make things much easier. A 450 piece, 2/2 on a manual is a MF'er of a job, so maybe we could start with controlling expectations. Sure, you can do that job, but are you ready or set up properly, or do you have the time? All questions that controlling expectations could manage. We've accepted jobs that we shouldn't have, and paid the price. Luckily we are big enough, resilient enough to withstand a few mistakes here and there, but I know smaller operations could not afford such mistakes. I'm sure some of the guys here have never made any mistakes with their business, , or at least don't like to admit it, because if you do this long enough, you'll screw up. Knowing how to move forward and not make the same mistake again is the main goal.
Hey Mark,Didn't know you were in southern Louisiana. I'm in New Orleans. If you're that far south (or maybe you're even further south) and want to discuss anything (methods, et. al.), don't hesitate to shoot me a PM.
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Topic: want to hire someone asap for 2 color spot design sep with an underbase (Read 6247 times)
