Long before Graphic Elephants came to be, there was Graphic Elements, a large contract printing and embroidery facility built from the ground up, at zero to half a million impressions per month within five years. We had a partner in the biz at the time. The “guy with the money,” as it were. Long story short, though profitable to the end, Graphic Elements is no more and Graphic Elephants is what rose from the ashes more than five years ago, playing on that original name and on all that was good with the original company with a montage of new business directions.

 

As difficult as that transition was, it is certainly a part of who we are today. We have always kept an upbeat and positive attitude and refused to burn any bridges. While we have not heard from our old partner in more than half a decade, out of the blue came a totally unexpected referral. One of his good friends had been struggling for years to get her prints correct with multiple vendors and was at wit’s end… at which point our old business associate suggested these folks contact us. 

 

Beth from Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge reached out to us. Hoka Hey has a history all its own. It is obviously a motorcycle run, but it is much more than that. Every summer the most elite riders straddle the iron horses and set out together under the banner of the Hoka Hey Motorcycle Challenge—the world’s greatest long distance endurance motorcycle event. This year’s event begins in Phoenix and goes through all 48 contiguous states and on to Canada and Nova Scotia. The route encompasses 10,000-plus miles. Participants cannot win prizes unless the entire route is traveled within the rules, and Hoka Hey Challengers’ names are immortalized in the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee.

 

Some of the art was already in vector format in layers and some consisted simply of scans of other garments. The trick would be to make all of the logos look the same on all four colors.

The group had done T-shirts and sweats for years, but Beth was not yet pleased with the results and hoped we could finally come up with a solution that was suitable and stood up to the quality of what the Hoka Hey folks were all about. She sent us all the original files and garments with her comments on what she liked and what she did not like—wow. Talk about all-over-the-board quality. Some were okay; some not so good, even on the same garments. 

 

Upon original inspection of art, it seemed fairly straightforward, but certainly had its complications. Basic art: red, black, gold and white on black, red, white and gold Ts and sweats. There were short- and long-sleeve styles and prints would go on the front, back and both sleeves—typical Harley gear. Several years of dealing with this type of work, we think we have figured out the best way to handle this type of project.

 

Luckily, all four images were similar and were to be printed on the same garments with the same colors so they would all be handled the same. Some of the art was already in vector format in layers and some consisted simply of scans of other garments. The trick would be to make all of the logos look the same on all four colors. 

 

Using the trace tool in Illustrator to build the general shapes and layout, all the areas we cleaned up were changed to spot colors and all of the unwanted contamination in the images was knocked out. We added a background color to see what had to go and, using the direct selection tool, added anchor points to clean up the outer edges of all the shapes. We had to create an outline or highlight white using strokes so the image would look good on black and other colors.

 

Each area would need to be blown up so we could select the same fill, and fill and stroke colors to make each a spot color for output. The customer did not want to print gray, so the gray areas would need to be converted to a 20 percent halftone on the black plate. The white printer base plate would be built as a composite of all colors other than black with a small stroke or choke and gutters between the colors to keep the prints nice and clean.

 

After laying in our template with center and registration marks, we output our film on the inkjet and headed to the screen department. The print run consisted of two whites, a red, a gold and a black on the garments. The first white would be exposed on a 156 (tpi) mesh at a tension of 35 N/cm2. This film would get an eighth-point overall choke and gutters to compensate for any gain we may get on press. 

 

This screen would be first, followed by a flash and cool station (or open head). The next screens would be the gold, red, highlight white and black which were prepared on 230 screens at the same tension. The higher mesh count would only print a very thin layer of ink and, since we have no opacity issues with black, it would be sufficient. 

 

The wet-on-wet spot white was placed directly on top of the first white to make the white areas really pop. These tensions were important in minimizing off-contact distances and squeegee pressures to transition from Ts to sweats and from white to black garments. We used our central off-contact adjustment to move up and down. 

 

Our inks were non-phthalate plastisols, very primary and were not modified to maintain maximum opacity. To minimize hand, we dropped the red on red, the gold on gold, the whites on white and the black on black. Of course the white under base plate was modified in each case.

 

From the very beginning, by her own admission, Beth would be a high-maintenance account and she did require some babysitting throughout the process. After the shirts were shipped, however, we haven’t heard a word. We are quite sure we would have been talking had there been a problem. No news is good news.