The Design Monkey
home
marketing & design
screen printing
what's new
about us

In the end there were 26 colors of shirts ranging in youth to adult sizes.

Making a client look good across 26 colors
A few months ago I was stopped in a hallway at Auburndale Elementary by one of my favorite gym teachers, Jamie Jestadt. She mentioned that she was working on something really fun for the kids, and asked if I could put some pricing together for her. Sure, what's the fun idea and some of the parameters, I asked? At the end of the school year she wanted to have a kind of Olympic style event in honor of the Olympic year and to get the kids moving around outside for the day. She would divide the kids into teams and needed someway to help identify individual teams. She thought the best, and easiest, way was for them to get a "team" shirt, sponsored in part by our great PTO.

She had an idea of what she would like for artwork, a kind of "survivor series" style. Through some examples that she had, we were able to nail down something perfect. Now the trick was to make that artwork work across 26 colors, plus a tie-dye shirt that the faculty would wear for the day. Through some ingenious color separating, and a little bit of planning up front we were able to make all the shirts work together without having to do any on press changes to the inks. We could have lain down a solid white behind everything and taken the easy way out. Unfortunately that would have made for a shirt that had a solid piece of rubber on the front. The shirt is then unable to breathe and becomes heavy and hot. Not too many people like that combination on a sunny day. We chose to instead let the shirt colors work for us and help unify everyone.
To help Jamie out further we took all the forms that she had that contained the kid's sizes on, and compiled them into a master list for her. This helped in the inventory count and when she was handing out the shirts to the teams. In all we printed over 500 shirts for the "Field Day" event. The weather turned out fantastic and all the kids looked great in their shirts.
Do you have a big event or a special occasion that seems like a daunting task coming up? Contact us today by email or phone 715.652.6887, and we would be glad to help you with your apparel challenge.

Do you have a big event or a special occasion that seems like a daunting task coming up? Contact us today by email or phone 715.652.6887, and we would be glad to help you with your apparel challenge.

Return to the article archives.

 
 
 
 
 

715.652.6887

©2008 The Design Monkey, LLC