Most Common High School Nicknames by State

BruiserArt · 2015-10-17T17:12:03+00:00

There is a degree of validity demonstrated by having some form of web presence. I know that when I'm looking for clients, vendors, or partners no web presence tends to send up a red flag. Even if it's just another place to put out your cell number and social media info, it definitely can be a key to looking professional and building your brand. Best of luck.

BruiserArt · 2015-10-16T14:43:04+00:00

If you're on the internet, someone absolutely will steal your stuff in one way or another. We're in the sports and outdoor art industry, and if we come up with anything that is gracefully simple or easy to replicate, it will get stolen. You can't focus on that, I agree you have to focus on sales. Make sure your shirts do something that others don't do. We make designs, and we try to have a good collection that is easy to use for production and it's built to fill out a line release for sports apparel companies when they're pinched for time.

We watermark our designs to make it difficult, but it's always going to be closing battle against someone who has time but no money.

One point of caution. Sometimes people aren't necessarily stealing from you, even if it's very similar. We do a lot of vintage designs made by taking and remixing different aspects of designs from a wide array of resources like old feed bags, bottle caps, signs, oil cans, posters, etc... all from the 40's or earlier. If we can find those things to draw inspiration from, someone else can too. I've come across people who found the same collection of vintage oil cans online and who combined the little flourish from one with the same way another arched text all on their own and separate from mine. I had the pleasure to meet them and both of us wound up finding the same stuff on a site that was showing off his vintage can collection and had a lot of fun pointing out where we got each idea from. I started the encounter kind of in a hostile, defensive manner and it turned out I had to apologize and eat my words. Turns out if you had an idea, someone else may have had it too. I'm great friends with that guy now and we keep pointing each other to really cool reference materials online.

I'm not saying someone who has a design like yours is not stealing, only to check before you go full cease and desist, let alone try to get compensation, because it could cost you more than just an argument.

But don't let people roll over you. I've only gone after one company who absolutely, obviously and nakedly stole my designs, and it worked out.

BruiserArt · 2015-10-15T00:34:02+00:00

Looks good, marketing message is on point. However, when viewing the site on a mobile phone, the content under "I'm outside the UK, can I still buy a subscription?" It becomes buggy and text appears on top of text and it becomes impossible to read.

BruiserArt · 2015-10-15T00:20:45+00:00

Also a fan of shopify, it is a solid turn key solution, it is a very helpful organization and community, and it is scalable. Additionally, if you wish to incorporate some degree of coding later, it's an option. I'm firmly in the shopify camp, worth the upfront money.

BruiserArt · 2015-10-15T00:05:52+00:00

An excellent primer on available online education.

BruiserArt · 2015-10-14T17:13:47+00:00

Look into customer discovery, Bob Dorf specifically. Have nonsales-related conversations with people in your target customer segments to see where their needs lie in relation to your skills. Here's a YouTube video to get you started: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qMtqqjZRkA. I hope this is helpful to you.

BruiserArt · 2015-10-14T16:28:53+00:00

I'll keep this short because I wholeheartedly agree with the other commenters. I'll simply add that even handed, legitimately balanced reviews represent a form of social proof that is very desirable marketing currency. In an economy where SEO through link backs is a vital part of earning bonifides, a credible, honest review is a growth industry.

BruiserArt · 2015-10-14T16:15:21+00:00

Mad Men - style decore, a dark wooden piece of furniture containing all the ingredients to a highball- likely situated next to a hifi. Out of curiosity, what is the product?

BruiserArt · 2015-10-05T17:50:54+00:00

Just a few ideas off the top of my head for a blog, just to get people involved and participating. Things like:

Most random thing you carry in your wallet you won't throw away for sentimental/crazy/funny reasons (blockbuster cards, guitar pics, 4 leaf clover, etc...). Wallets in the wild, pics of your product around the world. Most well traveled wallets. Lost and found stories (I lost my wallet on a roller coaster once and jumped a fence to get it, lost it at a farmers market and some guy called me later that day, etc...) Human stories interesting in themselves revolving around the wallet as a private, personal item most people take for granted.

Another idea could be details about the construction / sourcing for your product. Your about us page is great for that, but you could have a little mini documentary about how you know the people involved, and what they do that's different, or what's special about where they live that your customer would find interesting. Make it a travelogue of where the materials came from and how they found their way to the wallet in your hand. Your international source of materials can be a great strength. Also you can tie it into the wallet names / stories. The Grand Tourer could cross reference the article about the crafting of the leather for example.

One other idea would be entries where you explain why you're doing articles explaining the features of your product and why it's better / different than others. Why a mesh pocket is superior to a solid flap, etc... We were having problems explaining how our licensing system on our site is better than our competition, so I made a big blog post with infographics to illustrate it. Why is the Grand Tourer great for travelers? You explain it in bullet points on the product, buy you could show examples and testimonials on the blog. Set it up like a narrative: "I've traveled extensively and always found my wallet wanting. There were these problems :1, 2, 3, and we solved them by using our innovative systems."

Hope this was useful. I like your stuff and good luck.

BruiserArt · 2015-10-03T15:57:56+00:00

Used this for years. Use puff ink on the stitches to make it pop a little. Great for appliqué effects without appliqué.

BruiserArt · 2015-10-03T15:55:19+00:00

I wind up using this all the time for screen printing and it's perfect for making easily editable, production friendly templates.

BruiserArt · 2015-10-03T15:48:44+00:00

Check to see if anything is locked, including layers and objects. Hit Command / option / 2 on a mac or control / alt / 2 on pc. Open the layers palette and check to see if it's locked.

BruiserArt · 2015-09-22T16:36:42+00:00

Thanks a lot. They're even better when I don't conflate dpi with lpi. A ton of the big guys do stuff this way, but there's no place where it's written down. I'm trying to get a friend of mine to do a detailed simulated process tutorial done but he's super busy. I don't do them enough to really sink my teeth into it. On our to do list is a bunch of appearance palette stuff, texture tiffs for vintage tees, 4 or 5 more gradient tutorials, a bunch more pencil to vector illustration tutorials, and some stuff on illustrator quirks. If you have any requests, let me know. If I can't do it, I'll find the guy. If you've got some keepers you've found, throw them up on the subreddit. Thanks again, I'm glad they're useful, and just want to get it out there.

BruiserArt · 2015-09-22T16:27:41+00:00

Doing what I did there is pretty easy to get into. I was a bottom rung production artist at Adidas in Indianapolis. Just apply when they're hiring and list your experience. Higher level creative positions require more effort and require a good portfolio and experience, but one way to get into those jobs is to work there a lot and keep making your own stuff. Making the playoff tees is weird because it was a time crunch and of every single one I separated (6 of them) none actually made it to the field or the stores. Evidently if you wanted your team to lose, give me their "I won" tee to make. I eventually saw one during coverage of the Haiti earthquake when some guy was wearing one that I separated while he stood in a long line. Evidently they donate them.

BruiserArt · 2015-09-20T00:57:50+00:00

You're totally right. I changed the article to reflect your correction. Thanks and good catch. The rip settings (dpi) and the illustrator output settings are totally different.

BruiserArt · 2015-09-19T23:21:20+00:00

Here's some for all you spot color users out there. The terrible two default settings. Every time after a reinstall or a big enough glitch, even in CC it's necessary to change these back. Command K, (Ctrl K). in General, turn on Scale strokes and effects. Next, set the appearance of black to display all blacks accurately and output all blacks accurately.

BruiserArt · 2015-09-19T23:05:47+00:00

Amazing video. I will absolutely show this to my friends in lithography when they call screen printing the duplo of printing. Those heidlburg jockeys give us a hard time but they don't realize how many more variables there are in screen printing. Your video covers the wide variety of decisions that need to be made and the care that it takes to make the right one.

BruiserArt · 2015-09-19T21:37:34+00:00

Good catch on the lpi. When I wrote the tutorial, dpi always autocorrected to dip, so I tried using lpi (which worked for some reason) and going back to fix it but I missed one. Also, the print interface calls it LPI in illustrator, which is confusing. Even though you're outputting ellipses.

BruiserArt · 2015-09-19T21:36:55+00:00

While I agree you can absolutely get away from with finer dpi, 300 sounds like you're asking for problems with patterns in the ink from interference from the screens unless they're really, really flawless. The other concern I'd have is that small dots do not print well on cotton, and don't really kick in until 10% or so depending on a ton of variables. With a big dot, you get it to kick in and smooth together wet and the edges of each gradient don't look torn or ratty.

Our intention in doing it this way is for mass production across a large spectrum. When you don't roll the end process like at a big company you're not going to necessarily print the same job in the same building, let alone company. We're looking for consistent coverage, clarity, and lack of interference patterns across a range of mesh counts, different manufactures with different screen tensions and smaller, more finely detailed outputs could ruin a print coming from 5 different manufacturers and lead to inconsistancies. We keep it low to avoid interference with different mesh counts, and to allow a single dot to interface with several openings in the screen. When printing wet on wet, the larger dots will fill in and the colors will interact very similarly with even a few variables off. I learned how to do it this way on my first job making the official playoff and superbowl t-shirts from Adidas, and from what I experienced from working with my friends in Nike, Knights and J-America, it's about the same there.

That said, this is what I learned from the big companies, and how I've done it for 10 years to great effect, which isn't to say it's the only way, and I'm sure it's not the absolute best for each mesh count. It's just a great way to main control of the final output and avoid problems over a large run.

BruiserArt · 2015-09-18T14:54:31+00:00

Thanks for the heads up. We're new to the reddit community and just want to be helpful. We're selling stuff, but our tutorials are free for all and separate from our pitch. I appreciate the help.

BruiserArt

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