Success Stories Ep 82 - “The O.G. of Color Separation”

One art term used for decades in the decorated apparel industry is simulated process. This technique separates an image into spot colors to build the correct colors and simulate the usual four-color separation process. 

On today's Success Stories podcast, we'll speak with Dave Gardner, who invented and perfected that technique. We'll go to art school today and chat about other ideas too!

Transcript

Marshall Atkinson 
what our term used for decades in the decorated apparel industry is simulated process. This technique separates an image into spot colors to build the correct colors to simulate the usual four-color process separation. On today's Success Stories podcast, we'll speak with Dave Gardner, who basically invented and perfected that technique. We'll be going to art school today, but we'll chat about other ideas too. So get ready for a great show. Dave, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

Dave Gardner
Good morning.

Marshall Atkinson
And you live were up in New York, right?

Dave Gardner 
Yeah, I'm sure many people know my connection was new buffalo back in the 90s. I'm originally buffalo guy. And of course I say buffalo. It's a real rural area outside of Buffalo, and kind of grew up here went to college in UB, which was a great dental school, lots of great arts and went to Texas for a while, where I started in the industry and my youngest son turned about five years old, it was time to come back to Buffalo to grow her own family. So yeah. All in all.

Marshall Atkinson 
That's great. Great. So what kind of led you into this crazy industry? How did you kind of like, you know what I want to do t-shirts.

Dave Gardner 
Well, most things, I guess, largely accidental, however, you know, when opportunities present themselves need, you need to be prepared to move on. So how I got into screen printing started, like, like 15 years old, I got for Christmas, I got a hot Speedball home screenprint kit. And I always had kind of a passion for art. Although I was really in school, I was in like advanced learner classes for like math and science. So I intended to in fact, actually started college as an engineering major. And two weeks into it, asked myself, this is what I really want to do the rest of my life I like I'm good at it. But it just doesn't do anything for me. So I decided to change my major to art and I wanted to be an illustrator. So that the four year program, and after two years to decide whether it'd be fine artist or graphic arts, and UB didn't have an illustration program, so I stuck with fine arts and is painting as a major because I figured that was the closest I would get to illustration from from there fast forward to just a my cousin who had lost his job and had relatives in Texas who moved to the Fort Worth area, you know, and this was back with 19.. 80.. Like at the beginning, beginning of about 82, I think was when you know, the rust belt area, all the jobs were leaving the kind of Rust Belt, Detroit, buffalo, Cleveland, everybody was moving Texas was the place to go. So on a whim, I kind of went down there and grinded it out looking for an art job and was kind of at the end of my rope looking to return. And then I mean, just oddly enough, like it's a simple ad in the paper help wanted ad for Harley Davidson t-shirt artists. And that was 3d emblem. Now, to be fair, they weren't they were the advertisers, Harley Davidson t-shirt artists, they didn't have a license to print Harley shirts, they were just printing Harley shirts. So I think it was like two weeks after I started, they got a cease and desist letter from Harley.

Marshall Atkinson 
And that must have made you feel really secure.

Dave Gardner 
While it did, as Jim light was the owner, and as he came in, and who's reading the letter to us, and then then it said, if you wish to continue printing, you must send us $10,000 As an advance against royalties and we will give you a license and he's like, yeah. What do you think that would cost now?

Marshall Atkinson 
Unbelievable amount of money.

Dave Gardner 
Yeah. And, and he didn't want to do it. And me and Steve McDonald's. Steve hired me and he'd been there. Maybe, I might say five years. 10 years maybe. And we're like, You're crazy. Now this was like, Well, I mean, we Nobody wanted to do this. And he was just upset about 10,000. And I'm like, it's a it was an advance against royalties. So it wasn't even money out of his pocket. Right. So we're, we convinced them convinced him that it was a good move. And we were one of five I think initial licenses 3d emblem was I think Hollaback was there. Because their proximity to the court date always record. Our case strap and, you know, in our case was was a biker, I mean, the everybody knew arcade. And then there was a couple other ones that I think fell out pretty quick. But so that's how I, that's how I got into the industry. It's just basically a series of I think most everything in your life is if you're open to the possibilities and willing to follow where your paths leading. There's a reason for that.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yes. I'm exactly the same way I kind of backed into it. Started a T-Shirt Company to pay for my grad school. I wanted to be an architect and was doing designing T-shirts for attorneys and sororities. And then I got I got the hook. Right. So you know, that's kind of an amazing thing. And so how did you, you so you, you, you did that and you wound up? How did you get to new Buffalo and start working for John?

Dave Gardner 
Oh, wow, that's a big, personal never. Again, John and I were two different companies. It was garden graphics, and so worked with him. So I mean, that's a was quite a leap you just made there because like the the whole what was called later to be called the simulator process. That was all developed at my time in 3d. And like, you can see, you go on eBay and heels in heels, the back then I was signing the shirts, I actually would put like, Dave Gardner copyright 1983 on a Harley shirt. And I mean, the licensing thing was a was a wild wild west, back then. Right. And, in fact, with Harley, they had just bought it back for me, I'm out by the bond Beals, Willie G. Davidson, some of the original board that it sold to a MF got financing to buy it, to buy it back. And so at the time, like licensing was just new, I can't even like preprints that retail didn't really exist. Like I like op maybe was the first one that I'm aware of that, like you would walk into a store and see a pre printed shirt. So what some we've got a Harley license, and, and I'm an artist, and I got to create this artwork. But it's got to go on a t shirt, I have no experience in the industry and nobody to reach out to I mean, I think it was in retrospect, I don't know, like that would happen today. Because the first thing I would do is probably look for a video how to do separations. Right? But there was nothing there. There was no place I go, No, nobody to read, reach to so it was kind of trial and error. It was all like what if, what if? How come you know and so the rules I was told when I when I got there as well we print everything, because we're printing on black shirts, everything's 76 mash, and you leave eight things black line in between. So the colors don't touch and I think we can they flat are flashing like two colors. So we have a color machines. So one of the first things that I figured out was that if I wanted bright colors, a black T shirt that I needed to do something to stop the state from soaking into the shirt. And I as I said I played around with screen printing at home since I was 15. And one of the things I did when I got to board with printing one color designs, credit one color design, and then I would airbrush in the color. That was tedious. So transfers were a thing since the 70s. Right? That's right, we're going to go into like monkey rewards or steers are and they would have transfers on the ball and you'd buy a t shirt and they transferred on and then three, you know, free Washington be gone and fall off the shirt.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right. My one of my favorite T shirts when I was a kid was the kiss alive cover. I got it on a red shirt. And I wore that thing out and it was you couldn't even like hardly tell what it was.

Dave Gardner 
You know, I was that was it like was that like process back with a white.

Marshall Atkinson 
I don't know.

Dave Gardner 
That's what killed it so originally they were you know they were they were just it was all hand separated. And you know, the colors, the print and high mesh colors and then back. And then somebody got this great idea that you could print off that, and just back it with white, except the problem was you wash the shirt, and other would be as just a square there after the fall fell off. Right? You had. So my, the, what, again, what became recall simulated process was me just trying to figure out how I could get the most out of the limited research resources I had. And

Marshall Atkinson 
we're using it for ease and halftones at all. Then

Dave Gardner 
when I got there, when I got the 3d I'm there we're using hashtags, but but there was dip a toe if you want

Marshall Atkinson
The rubdown kinds?

Dave Gardner
Yeah, you caught them and cut them with a exacto knife and then tape them on. And there were 2030 percentage. And then they made one there was one sheet, you could buy the head of gradient that went from like black to white, or went from 90 to 10 to 90, there's different areas of gradient and those things were expensive. They're like 1520 bucks a sheet. So we started just contacting, making contacts along with a cut, cutting out film. So the early separations, were all hands on with a repetitive grafts and half tones, and stipple if we needed it. But the from printing from separations printing side, the thing I've figured out quickly, this goes back to printing transfers was that you didn't have everything didn't have to be on a thick mesh, if you put a color down and flashed it, then you ran higher meshes on the preceding colors. So you take a blue and put it on top of a base. There's a whole, you probably have, you've probably all heard the base versus under base story. But I can get a bright blue if I put it on top of a flat space. And if it sat on the t-shirt, it'd be a dark blue. Now I just doubled my color palette. So that was kind of the real big breakthrough for me was doing that and back. And again, you can find some of those stuff on an eBay, you'll see that all I use brown is a base. Two reasons for that. A brown flat lashes quick, a lot quicker than light. And the biggest reason is we were printing with wooden frames. So good luck getting anything in register and not having white poking out. Whether you're printing on a black shirt with a like a brown Underbase there's stuff was out of registration all over the place. But he didn't he didn't see it. Right. So. So that what what happened with that was I started, my design started selling well. And there's kind of two things happening once people in the industry, we're seeing what we're doing. And we're blown away and confused and not sure what I was doing. And to be fair, I wasn't sure what I was doing either. But I knew I was I knew what I wanted to do, I wanted to make an oil painting. Teacher, right. And so that's where the like the wet on wet process came from in my head. And there's no way to preview any of this, it's not like you can see it on screen, you just went into a dark room. And by then I had bought a 55 line screen. But of course that you're not going to burn a 55 line screen on a 76 mash that we're using for bass. So again, didn't have to be an engineer to figure this out, you just had to understand math was that I can't find anything between lower than a 55 line screen. But if I if I take a piece of art and shoot it at 50% on paper, that put the paper in the camera and blow it up to 100% Now I've got a 27 and a half like that. So that's what I wanted something to have line is what I worked with for probably six to eight years between comprised almost up right up till 1990 When I started working with in Buffalo, and the hilarious part is, you know, this stuff would be at shows or and, and, and people would be looking at it under a loop No, he's kind of using like 150 line spring because I don't see any halftone dots. I'm like it's the exact opposite right I was putting the halftone didn't matter because the screen was wet on wet it was it was mixing on the back of the screen halftone when disappear, really was you know creating an oil painting on a shirt and that's how I've always thought of it and continue to this this day.

Marshall Atkinson 
Always you know, I was our director for a long time and teaching people how to just think about color theory and how to like separate well how do you get the that image into six or eight colors that you People who were painters who knew how to paint, good understand, well, you just take a little bit of that, and a little bit of this and some of the t-shirt color and some of the flash and, you know, when you just separate that into 15% of that, and 25% of that, and 63% of that, you're going to get the color that you want. And, and because they knew how to mix paint, right, and that was always, just because they knew what the how to, you know, you want Brown, you know, just, you know, here are the different ways you can make brown, there's a million ways you can make brown, let's, let's figure this in. So I kind of love that whole idea of using a larger halftone dot and then having it print wet into wet and then the dot just disappears. Because you're it's actually kind of smear it around a little bit on the

Dave Gardner 
Yeah, so. So that was from the print side. But the truth was, none of this would have mattered if my work wasn't selling, right. So as an artist, I had to have clever ideas and good artwork, along with their print techniques. So the kind of the first thing that happened was was as like notoriety, my stuff started selling probably better than anybody's who's not. And that's Steve and I were probably selling at the same rate at 3d, but 3d Stop was considered the standard of whatever he was trying to do in Harley. So burn Hollaback the wise thing, if somebody's beating, you're cutting, get him to play for your team, right? So he kept calling and talk about and talked me into jumping to Hollaback. And I kept saying, No, I'm not interested, I'm not interested, you know, just moved to Texas and bought a house and settled in. And probably the sixth time, he called me. I told my wife at the time, I said, Well, if he you know, calls, again, I'm just going to throw something out there. Outrageous. Because I'm really not interested in what I what I had always hoped for. When I started and, and my work started getting popular was like, you know, I'd sit there like anybody else, I think I was making like six, I started $6 An hour and got a jump up to $8 When my when I think about my first design went over, like 200,000 pieces or whatever. But I sit there and go, Man, if I just had like a nickel for every shirt, you know, I I'd be happy. And so when when Burton called me, I agreed to go out and talk to him in Wisconsin, and he gave me a relative. And that was really smart on his part, and, and also probably the single most important move that I had made. Because now I had a stake in how successful myself was. Right. And that motivated me even more. So I think I did a two year agreement with Hollaback. And then another two year and in my at my third and started my 32 year agreement with them is when I started thinking a lot, you know, am I going to do hockey, just be the Harley artists the rest of my life. And that was one part of it. And the other part was, I'd loved being on the floor floor, like doing a piece of I don't understand any artists who doesn't go out to the floor and watch their their separations print. First of all, you don't learn anything from that. And secondly, it's your baby man, like, you don't want to you want to be there what is born, right? You want to see it? Right. And that so I missed that part. So I would do our and I do the separations and I'd send it to Wisconsin while I'm living in both Florida and Wisconsin and a couple of weeks later, they'd send a shirt back and I would just go ah, this, this is more of a you know, I would if I would have seen this, I would have told them to change that or whatever. So I wanted to get back, get my my fingers back into the air, you know, so I started calling calling around Buffalo and there were only a few people. I reached out to one of the distributors, I think for advance. Because those were the machines. We used that 3d. And I knew the sales rep to see who had automatic equipment in the area. And there were only a handful and maybe two or three trends was one of them. And he told me this place new buffalo just bought one like a month ago. And so I called up there and I introduced myself. I asked for the art director and they said well, we don't have one and was John Weiss and he said well, I'm kind of the art director as well. I'm David Gardner. He goes David Berger. They're Harley artists. They herder. Yeah, I said, I'm wearing one of your shirts right now. So he had as a printer, and you know, and a Harley enthusiast was was picking this stuff up from the local Buffalo Harley dealer. And I had that one time I was holding on Christmas break and went down there. So the guys that buffalo hardly knew I was filming. So it was kind of very, like serendipitous moment, you know, a lucky accident. And

Marshall Atkinson 
it's a good thing to apply for a job. And the guy already knows your name.

Dave Gardner 
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And yeah, and again, like I was, I'm so picture picture this, I mean, I'm, I've got a Harley contract. I'm 20. So this is 26 years, I was put back 20, maybe 27 years old, and get a royalty check every month. And believe me, it's more more than you would think. I was doing pretty good. But the I was also had a foresight enough to see that like, this can't last forever, I need to do something else. So. So I was just looking for somebody to printer to work with. So Don, and I got together almost like the next day and sat down and said, Well, what can we can we do together. And we after talking briefly, we were both with, of course, we're both being both from Buffalo, we're huge Buffalo Bills, fans, and I came about that we take what I'm doing. And Harley I'm, you know, on black shirts, aggressive bracket is bright colors. You know, again, I just it still wasn't being called simulated process. At this time. It was just what I did. And there were a lot of people trying to imitate it. But, um, so that's what we did. And I mean, to the it's a whole long story, but basically just took all the things that I had learned pretty Harley in designing Harley and brought it into professional sports, and it kind of just caught on with the culture at the time. And, and

Marshall Atkinson 
I'll tell you, I so remember. So I got in the industry 93. And I remember the helmets and the championship rings. And everybody's just like, how, like, how are they doing that? What is the secret? And nobody knew? And, you know, it's some sort of Photoshop thing, and what are you do and and we actually found somebody who knew how to do similar process. And we brought them in as a consultant to teach me how to do it, and how to, you know, use Curves and like, you know, just look, look at all that look at all the this just the plates and how it mixes together and how you use the under the Underbase white and like you use the shirt color to modulate your stuff. And like it was just, it was it was just so eye opening because you're looking at a shirt and you're trying to figure it out. I'm not smart enough. I needed somebody to go, Hey, here's the chocolate cake recipe. This is how you do it. That's what I needed anything. And after that I was like, let's go to town, right? And but it was it was just so crazy looking at that stuff. And I remember going to a trade show class that Coudray was teaching about halftones. And of course, every shirt he was showing was yours. Like, like, look at this, of course, he showed his new Nicoma Bootstrap, but he's also showing your stuff. And it was just so like, how are they doing that? And

Dave Gardner 
it was just marking have any idea of what I was doing? That, you know, I appreciate mark, but we're from two different camps. Like, I don't think screen printing is an art as a science, right? And like to roll back from what you were saying from like 1993 I was probably I made the shift from the darkroom to like my first attempts at doing separations on a computer and it was on a Scitex workstation. Believe it or not, I didn't get into Photoshop till like 95 Maybe but everything before that was in it was me in a dark room with Ruby left and films and paper and creating it all plate at a time in my head. It was a piece I was making a piece of art. And the painting was being done in my head a plate at a time and I had to visualize it and at the end of the day only I knew What was going to look out? And even then it was my best guess. So I mean, I don't know that, that I could go back, I've asked myself a lot. Like, could I pull that off? Again? Could I take a photo and go into a dark room and create six or eight or 10 plates to reproduce that photo without being able to see it on my screen without knowing what the colors are? I was just, that's, that's about it. Like nobody could figure out what I was doing. Because there wasn't anything special about it. You know, I didn't have a secret I, maybe that's taking a halftone and blowing it up 200% To make 27.5 Maybe that was the missing secret. But everything else was just, you know, it's Ruby less than and exacto knives, and it's been PMT, paper and exposures and beyond. That was

Marshall Atkinson 
no, that's, that's crazy. You know, so like, back in the day, I was doing that same thing. And I lived back when I was in graduate school, I lived at the target copy place. Because I would build on my little pieces used proportionally and go, Okay, I need that 67 and a half percent larger, and like, blow it up on the thing. And then of course, I was tripping in with the wax onto the board, and, you know, all that stuff, and Allah build all my plates that way. But I wasn't like nearly doing like, real, it was all just flat. Yeah, really, it was. And then when the Mac came out, right, the first thing I got access to a Mac and early version of Photoshop, and the first thing I started doing was trying to recreate what I did before, because instead of thinking something new, just like let's build something already made, and see if I can do it, right. And it was, and that's how I taught myself Photoshop was just that, right and just and loved and using and then I got I got really started into using textures a lot where I would, because I had a flatbed scanner, remember those. And then I would take all kinds of crap, like macaroni and whatever. And I would stick like back and scan it to get that weird pattern. And then I would put it in some letters or stuff. So you like I can see the macaroni in that but everybody else it just looks funky. You know, you know, those are the old school tricks. You know, it's just like, playing around with stuff. And and, of course, that was always the fun part. You know, and I can really appreciate, you know, your journey through that. And so, so you made the leap, obviously to computers, right. And it's it's faster, right? And so how did you learn Photoshop? How did you learn, you know, curves and all that stuff, just by trial and error, just like everything else? Yeah,

Dave Gardner 
exactly. But you have to have a get, you have to have a foundation. And maybe that's what people miss. I want to say anything, learning to play guitar, and picking up a sport or whatever it is trying to skip the hard part. That's the bit. And that's building the fundamentals. Like don't go anywhere. That was, for me, that was the beauty of attending a four year school, which I didn't do on purpose, because again, I thought it was going to be an engineer. If I was an art school, I probably would have opted for two years because that's what most people did like, hit. But like a lot of the artists in Buffalo went the best part is through Pittsburgh or whatever was your borough. So our first two years, and as an art major, was like you had to take sculpture, you had to take photography, you had to take pipe layout you had to take and it was all just basic, I mean, color theory, I had a design class and basically they didn't they didn't let us work with anything but colored construction paper and cut cut it into shapes to do visual design with so learning how to make something impactful and all that like building all those those things and how do you make something look three dimensional and rendering and all that and that I'm really thankful for because that was then I took that and I applied it to painting and once I had that, that understanding of how to take paint and create a visual image with it, whether I wanted it to be abstract or whether I wanted to be photo real. I never lost that. And so anytime a new technology came out, I was like okay, how do I apply what I already know in this and I think too many people want to Jump into it and say, hey, you know, I'll use a perfect example of you. You might remember this. I'm sure you will. So at some point, I want to say around maybe around 93. No number was later than that. But now we're getting close to 2000 people started coming out with separation programs severely depressed the separation programs, right? And they were, I mean, I had like, 450 grand. I mean, I think it wasn't outrageous at the time they came out. And of course, I looked at one and when well, this works, if you use the piece of art that they used to do the demo, if not, you're screwed, and I could probably do it and make some adjustments but somebody who thinks they're going to they're going to shortcut this and step into it is going to be severely disappointed. And and I don't I don't know that necessarily did the industry any good? I think most of the people found out once they got it, it just didn't live up to what was promised. And, and again, you can't I can't blame the people who were selling the program because did what what they claimed it would do. It's just that every piece of art is different. And you need to know how to adjust that. And if you don't have that knowledge, then you've wasted a lot of money. Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, I learned. I took a week long Photoshop class in Boston, I think around 97 or 98. Called Seybold. It was a Seybold Photoshop class, and, like the original guys from Photoshop, or like teaching Photoshop, and it was and I saw this guy do a color correction thing where he took, he had a picture, I don't know, it was like a mountain landscape, something and he had somebody come up. And he did a color correction thing where just using the Info palette, he would have the person just met totally mess up the colors. And not he wouldn't use it was it was so crazy, he wouldn't use this monitor because he he says your monitors lie to you. He was all about the numbers. And just using the Info palette, he completely color corrected the image. And it was the most impressive thing I've ever seen. And so but then I became this Info palette guy just really looking at what are the numbers have everything. And that really helped me a lot with understanding the value of that color. Because previously, I had never really thought about it. And you know that that was a percentage of the halftone dot that was on the shirt. And then I was like, Okay, what is the smallest.we can keep right then still. So and this really kind of leads me to the question about working with your production team. Because if we can't keep a five percent.it Doesn't matter if it's even in the art because it's gonna get Gooten out of the screen room. So then I was always about okay, I need to keep this small got, where is the cliff, that's why I always was always talking about where's the cliff. And because if I could keep a 3% of 5% dot, something like that, then I can have a really great gradient that goes all the way down to the or to the t-shirt. And it's just, it's just going to look amazing, right? But if you can only keep a 12% You're gonna get like this, you're gonna have a halftone and then a cliff. And and then it's just gonna, it's gonna look like crap. Like once you hear so far, be sure to subscribe so you can get the latest from Success Stories. And now here's Zack shortly with the SMS spotlight on our blog,

Marshall Atkinson 
So talk to me about because you're not printing in a vacuum by yourself. You've got a team of people, you guys Screen Room, guys, you've got guys out on the press. And I think this is something that really needs to be talked about more the relationship between the art department and the guys out back. You got to have good communication. You got to really tell people like explain what's going on. This is why I need this right. We're talking about that a little bit. So

Dave Gardner 
no, thanks for bringing that up. Because that's I think that's the biggest kind of hurdle to get over and every shop that I've been in working with new buffalo because you know, I want to take that I want to take the time to kind of I've always had this this misnomer, this simulated process. I'm not 100% sure where that came from, I have a feeling that it was an interview with John Weiss around 1990. And John called me and says, Hey, I'm talking somebody from like impressions or whatever. And they asked me, what do you call what, what you do? What's the process? And I said, Well, I don't know, I'd never thought about it's just what I do. And he says, Well, they're asking is that process? There's a four color process? And I said, No. So John goes back and goes, well, it's kind of a simulated process. So then they got put into print, this is my understanding. And then like, within a year, it became a category at the time of impression ship. Now, the reason I want to say that is because it was never my attempt to emulate anything from stimulus from four color process and offset printing, there was there's no connection there. The only connection is that it uses half tones. That's the old the new buffalo stuff, we're running like, an 18 color machines using, you know, 14 to 16 colors. I mean, early on it at 3d, I had eight color presses. So yes, I was stuck with primary colors. And if I wanted to automate green I had, you know, hy 800, gold and whatever. 299 Blue, right, whatever green that made is what I was stuck with. So and the reason I say that is because, again, Michael, I always thought of my stuff, stuff as creating an oil or an oil painting on a shirt. So for me, it was how do my my relationship with the printer is, I've got some guys who are really good. And I've got some guys who don't, are just there for a paycheck, right? And you don't know which, especially in a large shop, which job is going to go somewhere. And this even goes back to 3d emblem, I mean, you're going to see that on any floor, you're gonna have your guys who really into the craft and want to do a good job and the other people who just want to set it up and put the egg in. And so what I had to come to grips with was that we have to separate for the guy who just wants to put things in and, and tell them what they need. The here's the print order. Here's the mash, there's a squeegees go. And I see many shops where nobody in the pediatric department just do the separations then it goes to the floor. And there's like a developer or somebody in production, who picks the rotation who picks the meshes. And I'm like, you're going to the PERT, that person didn't do the separations. So he's just interpreting them and what you're going to end up with this endless circle of Yeah. Doesn't understand how to print. So yeah, the relationship between that is, it's the most crucial part if you want to be successful with a screen screen purposes, because I don't have to tell you, I don't want to tell any printer, something gets to the floor, and they got to change it, you're not making any money on their job. Yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
So the the kind of the way I've always positioned it was the art department is like the architect. And production is like the general contractor. We're doing the plans, they're just executing what we do, right. And so what we need to do is we need the training and the education to know, squeegee barometer and mesh, tension and off contact and current order and cool down and like they're all this stuff, right? We need to know all that stuff. Because that's how we're going to build and like an architect, if we have that knowledge in our head, then we can get the outcome that we want. And so part of I think any good art directors, leadership has to get the staff to have that knowledge, which means they need to be they need to work on our press for a week, right just to set jobs up and understand print order and what to do. And you know what happens if you switch the squeegee out from a hard or soft or use a triple or whatever, these are the results you're gonna get. So when you're thinking about separating a file or designing something, you already kind of know what you want, because you've got you, you know, what happens when you put those things into place? Yeah,

Dave Gardner 
and that's, I mean, it's experience right? I don't know. You know, there's you could teach somebody, you know, how to throw a football but it's not the same as as playing the game the experiences and playing the game, right. So yeah, so, like the I'm a stickler for that. Like I if I see somebody did a separation and they're sitting at the desk and I walk out and I see their job Bretton on the floor? And I'm like, I want to go. But did you know they're printing your design out there? Do you like do you care? Because that's how you do it. And you see the results. And you go, Okay, I thought I made, I made some assumptions here. These ones were right, these ones are wrong next time, I'll change this right. And even even like, like I've been doing this 1980s. Since 1983, it's, I still keep keep an eye on everything, because it's like, it's a series of corrections. Very good. Again, I don't I don't, I think screen printing is a mixture of art and science. I mean, there's definitely science that underlies everything. And that we know and can perceive, right, but there's also just kind of that feel the same as a musician has or an athlete has or whatever, that can't be explained just simply by, you know, the physics of it. And if, if you put all these processes into place, and follow all these rules, it's like getting in a car and thinking you can hold just hold the wheel straight and drive eventually drive into a ditch, right? Because it just can't be done. It's a series of corrections left, right, you know, like sailing a ship or wherever you move this way, you move it that way. And a production floor is like that. And and it's just kind of back Well, I guess life, is that right? You can't, you got a plan and you think you're going straight forward. And this is how we do it. And then something doesn't fit that you got to correct for that. So you know, still this day, I just, oh, a week ago, I'm working with a shop in Central America that had never printed simulated process before and what to do like player photographs, and I let them set the first job, I'll watch what they're doing. And I saw them where I had like a mixing boy, somebody put a flash there, because you know, they thought I wanted the white. Right? And then they use white because when they see the, when I see white in a rotation, they think they're so used to athletic printing needs to be white, white. So I let them do all the things that they were going to do. And looked at the print. I said, Okay, now, here's what we're going to do. And I walked him through and explain to him why I do this, why we're not why we don't flash here, why we don't. And then then set up the next job. I went, I sat down and I had QC there I had I had the production printer there, I had the sample printer there, I had some artists who was like, Okay, we're gonna preview this job before it goes up. And it went through color by color. What I was expecting this, to see what the important point was. And was that is that everybody's on the same page. And I tell people, like even though I've been doing this for years, you may have a different opinion. Speak up, you know, if you think this should this blue should be on a 230. And it should be later do it. We'll all come to an agreement on it. But yeah, that it's so it's so important. And I see it lacking in so many shops. And frankly, I don't know how you solve it. Because to

Marshall Atkinson 
me, it's a it's a leadership challenge. Right? So it goes back to how they're training their employees, how they're thinking ahead. And a lot of people you know, it's time, right, we don't have time for it. Right? And it's to me, it's like, well, is training your employees or priority or not? If it's a priority you'll be doing and if it's not a priority, you're just cramming workout and you're struggling with all this stuff all the time, because you're not ever learning how to do it properly. And I think and that's the reason why some shops just kick kick everybody's button other shops don't right, it's yeah, it's what separates everybody from different categories of printers, I think is right, willingness to learn and that investment in training.

Dave Gardner 
Yeah, yeah, good. Good. No, that was a that was a, as I said, I, when I said, I'm not sure there's, you know, you and I were at the age where the dinosaurs now right, we're the were the guys who had to figure it out, right? We didn't have you figured it out. And then Photoshop came along, and, you know, whatever else you want to throw into the mix and digital printing and stuff. We know the basics. That's That's what I was saying is that my fear is that that there's just so much urgency for people to get to where they need to be without, without dope within putting the work in and you find yourself you know, afloat and drifting above the ocean with no real anchor because you never learned the basics. So right I would anybody who wants to get in and do separation just become an become an artist first. Understand And are you doing? Okay, sorry, we move on.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, we could talk about this all day. But I want to get the last question in here, which is really about the future. Right. So like, you know, like, we've been talking about your career in the past, but I'm really interested in here. What do you see? Like you like you've been around for a long time, like I have. And, you know, are you excited about technology about AI by digital squeegees about how we're dealing with, you know, transfers? I mean, what do you Oh, what, what do you, what do you see from your chair? What are you interested in?

Dave Gardner 
I think I can put it, I can put it into a broader context. You know, I'm excited about the future. This. I think that's the biggest question, right? Since the Industrial Revolution, everything we've done to make our life easier hasn't made her life better, you know? And that's a real philosophical question. And then, you know, I'm 62. Now, it's one that I don't think I need to wrestle with anymore. I don't have to worry about what the next 50 years looks like. But, like, at this point, in my life, I'm really not doing anything that doesn't make human beings more human, you know, by one of my goofy catchphrases, because I'm a master Pons was if you take the human, human out of human being all its left as being right, and kind of like loses meaning. So when I see what's happening in the industry, yeah, good is becoming commoditized. If you want to talk about digital printing, well, you got a brother printer, guy down the street, he's got a brother printer, who wants to print for less, you know, if that's where this is headed, then it's a sad demise for the industry. Now, if people are doing creative things, and the technology just becomes the way to support that, then, you know, then great, I think I've used this example before, but I just when cameras came out, right, like as an art student, you go through this, the history of art and in the development of the camera force, the artists who were traditionally like painting portraits, I mean, think of guys like DaVinci. And like that whole history up until that once the camera came about artists, like while we're out of a job, except the good ones who said, No, because we can do stuff that a camera can you know, that recall, Impressionism, expressionism, abstract, you're in the past, so that it just changed what it meant to be an artist anymore, you're not just reproducing what a real life thing because nobody can do that. And another one I thought of this morning was player pianos, like, like the late 1850s, right? It's like, hey, we don't need to pay some guy to pay to play the piano, we got this player piano, when he can't listen to one for 10 minutes without wanting to shoot the piano. You know. So it's like, this is this whole idea that we're going to tear tear and all the things that make us human and the work that goes into it, we're just going to hand it off, and we're going to live wonderful lives. It's, you know, that's, there's an element of sadness. And, and that to me, and, you know, I don't want to leave it there. Because I haven't, I'm excited about some of the technologies and probably the, the one that interests me the most right now is DTF, or DTF. Hybrid. And the reason it does is I think there's a there's a challenge there and it opens a window that nobody's really thinking of, because you can the t-shirt can be anywhere and you can deliver the print to it. Right. So as things again, we look at, you know, commoditizing an industry and working you say, You know what insurance is around, there's a lot of money, right? But if you can create the print and put it to where the t-shirt is, and it in its looks just as good as any other digital print or whatever. You know, think of like Mom and Pop Sue, all they need is a heat press right? And we're gonna we'll do the design for you and it'll be awesome and then fade to the shirt and won't feel like garbage. Yeah, that's, that's probably the one thing that really excites me now.

Marshall Atkinson 
But now you can do the Harley print and the Harley dealership can have the shirts and then they can pick which design goes on it based on who's walking in the door. Yeah. And so that kind of brings us back full circle to go into the mall and pick it out. Yeah, I want that kiss alive photo album cover because that's my favorite band.

Dave Gardner 
That now we know what we're doing. 50 years later, right? Yeah. I bring that up because the story of like, burnout when burned haulback called me up probably want to answer except I knew who he was. And when I was in high school, there was a champion outlet for champion was originally buffalo company. And they had an outlet where they if they so deceived wrong or something on one of their ringers, you know, BB stock, and they throw it in a bin, and we've all been rifle through. And in order to add value to that they had a big wall of transfers and Roach, I remember the road. Yeah, right. And Hollaback I think there was a third one I can't remember. But it was all burned. holodeck was the little green guy within the finger. I remember that being a holodeck design that was maybe one of their most famous, famous designs. And so, when Burton called me that reputation preceded me, and it was just talking to you now that I realized what I'm talking about is coming full circle and closing that circle to where, what? What drew me towards this industry in the beginning, because for me, it was a cheap way to do something cool on a shirt. And then I would, I saw, I'd go to the champion outline I got and then it worked the shirt to school, and then people would comment on it. Because you know, that's the like the idea of wearing a shirt. If you're saying Look at me, I have something to say it's either funny. It's you know, it's off color back. But yeah, I in the scoop back to the school prophecy is Dave Gardner will have his own T Shirt Company one day, it's just because I got that's what I got known for. It was like every week coming in with a different shirt, because I go to the champion outline, but, but this art that I thought was great. I'm sure so yeah, that would be that would be kind of fitting and for end game for me bring it full circle. So thanks. I just got even more excited now. Thanks for helping me. pieces together. Well, good. Well, good.

Marshall Atkinson 
Well, hey, Dave, thanks so much for sharing your story of success with us today. What's the best way to contact you as someone who wants to learn more about what you do? Or maybe how you can help them?

Dave Gardner 
You can? You can look, just buy Gildan shirts, first of all, and then you can you can contact me at D Gardner field and because what I what I do feel that is support their products with prejudice, right. So I'm here to give advice to help anybody who wants it. So D Gardner gilder.com.

Marshall Atkinson
Right. All right. Hey, thanks for being on the show today. We appreciate you, buddy.

Dave Gardner
All right.

Marshall Atkinson
Well, that's our show today. Thanks for listening. And don't forget to subscribe, so you can stay up to date on the latest Success Stories episodes. have any suggestions for future guests or topics? send them my way and Marshall and Marshall atkinson.com And we'll see you next time.