Success Stories Ep 87 - "Print Shirts That Deserve Hangers"

On today's Success Stories podcast, we'll chat with Joe Ortinau now with Ortinau Art in Pemberville, Ohio. 

Joe has a unique spin on running a t-shirt shop. From wearing flip-flops daily to his viewpoint on creativity. He has built a great business in his corner of Ohio. 

So how does he think about creating someone's new favorite shirt? You'll learn about that and more on today's show. 

So grab some coffee, get a pen and some paper and kick back as we dig into what makes Joe's shop a success.

Transcript

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Marshall Atkinson 
On today's Success Stories podcast, we'll chat with Joe Ortinau about ordinal art in Pemberville, Ohio. Joe has a unique spin on running a t-shirt shop. From wearing flip-flops daily to his viewpoint on creativity, He has built a great business in his corner of Ohio. So how does he think about creating someone's new favorite shirt? You'll learn about that and more on today's show. So grab some coffee, get a pen and some paper, and kick back as we dig into what makes Joe's shop a success.

Marshall Atkinson
So Joe, welcome to the Success Stories podcast.

Joe Ortinau
Thank you, Marshall. Happy to be here. Thanks for reaching out about this.

Marshall Atkinson
Yeah, it's going to be fun. And I love what you guys do up there. And I think it's going to be a really interesting kind of take on everything. So while you're ready to get started,.

Joe Ortinau
Yeah, definitely.

Marshall Atkinson
Okay, so, as usual, I like to start the first question with, really, it's, you know, the origin story, right? So that's kind of an ominous tone. But we all want to know how you got started in this crazy business, right? So inquiring minds want to know. So spill the beans.

Joe Ortinau 
Yeah, no problem. No problem. Though. My background before opening my print shop was that I was a graphic designer professionally for about 10 years. If you take a few steps back before that, and in my youth, no late high school in college, I had a very large random t-shirt collection. So when my wife and I moved from Charleston, South Carolina, to Ohio, my employer, where I got hired, was basically a paper printer, but they had a screen press. Also, that was the first time I'd ever seen, you know, apparel and T-shirts being printed. And at that point in time, that love of art and graphic design kind of melded with, you know, the random t-shirt collection. And ever since then, I was basically trying to pick up freelance projects that were focused on apparel. So I did that for a couple of years, where all my side hustle projects were, you know, screenprint-related. And I was continuing to work full time and just basically contracting all the printing to my at-that-point-in-time employer, and eventually I got to the point where I wanted to purchase my own equipment. When I did that, I actually came in a little backwards compared to how most people do it in the industry; we purchased a direct-to-garment printer first, not a screen press. So I actually went to a local vendor up in this neck of the woods to purchase a screen press, but they were displaying the DTG printer. And I was like, What's that doing? And you know, they printed one shirt, and I saw the full color. And I'd never seen that done on a screen. I know now that you can achieve things like that. But I saw that, you know, as a graphic designer, you could do way, you know, higher-level designs for

Marshall Atkinson 
color, color palette that

Joe Ortinau 
I saw it as kind of a competitive advantage against all the people in my area who were just doing simple one-and-two color things. So that's kind of how we got started. And eventually, I took the leap of faith and left my full-time job. And once you know that you spend all your time on your business, you really hit the ground running, and it can build pretty quickly. I think

Marshall Atkinson 
Did you run that out of your house? Did you have a little space? I mean, would you do?

Joe Ortinau 
Yeah, we had a finished room above our garage where we stuck the direct-to-garment printer in the heat press on my desk, and basically did that. I think it was May of 2014. We bought the printer. And then I quit my full-time job on April 18, the next year. And then we started looking for a retail location or a physical location. We opened that up in July of 2015. So it didn't take too long.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right, and then, when did you actually get your own space and then start adding to the equipment collection, as we'll say?

Joe Ortinau 
July of 2015 We opened our where up where our current current location is so

Marshall Atkinson 
Okay. And now you've got staff and screen printing and everything. Right?

Joe Ortinau 
Yes, team of four, we have a manual screen press and an auto 812. And then there was also a large-format printer and single-head embroidery. Right? In

Marshall Atkinson 
your customer bases who you serving,

Joe Ortinau 
about 50% of them are with webstore, apparel, fundraisers those either being the best ones are usually elementary PTOs. The other ones are typically high school athletics, right. And then on more the business to business side doing t shirt uniforms for restaurants is a pretty decent sized one. And then landscaping.

Marshall Atkinson 
And as a graphic designer, you know the importance of the image? And so do you think that translates well, with your customer base, where you're, they're seeing the images that really blow them away kind of thing?

Joe Ortinau 
Yeah, we were going with my thought process with the higher level designs. Once we got into screen printing, and you know, you do that cost savings analysis versus direct the current income prices, you try and figure out ways to get that into your screenprint designs too. So in terms of creating a higher-level design, I always like to have a conversation with the customer at the beginning of the process. So that conversation is usually just trying to gather information about their business, what makes them tick, why they love what they do, and anything else you know, like hidden little nuggets about how they conduct their business. And then, you know, you have the problem of trying to solve that with a creative visual image that represents it. So a lot of that is, you know, kind of branding one-on-one, I guess.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. Oh, you know, that's kind of why I got interested in it. You know, so way back when, you know, I was working on my master's degree in architecture, and I had a t-shirt business that was funding that graduate school. And what I really liked about both of those was that there was a problem that you had to creatively solve, whether that is a, you know, something or building or designing or whatever, or it's a, hey, we're doing something for a 5k race, and we want to use, I don't know, a pair of shoes in a palm tree or whatever. And so how are you designing that creatively? To me, it's the same process, right? It looks different, but it's drawing water from the same source. Well, if you will, you know, that's kind of how I've always thought about it. And that's kind of the appeal that I got sucked into a long time ago. Was that right? So, alright, so, you know, I think, you know, of the companies after his industry, you have one of the best taglines ever. Right. Okay. So then you share that; where did it come from? How do you use it? You know, like, all that kind of stuff. So let's start with what it is. And I think everybody is going to be blown away by it. So listen close, folks.

Joe Ortinau 
So the tagline is that we print shirts that deserve hangers. So I did create, when I came up with that, a little backstory that, you know, you use for marketing material. And that little story goes like this: So the thing that we love the most about what we do is seeing our work in everyday life. You know, there's no greater feeling than knowing that someone loves wearing a t-shirt you designed and printed for them. So we want every t-shirt that we print to be someone's new favorite t-shirt. And we want to be a shirt they love so much that they think it deserves a spot in their closet on a hanger. So I developed that after attending the inaugural Shirt Lab event, which took place in Columbus, Ohio, it was very yes. That was so close to home. So yeah, it kind of spawned off of JB's sales presentation at the event that he was doing. I don't remember the name of his presentation, but I remembered that after the event, he developed his design and style guide, which is the resource I used to create the new logo and come up with the tagline. At the time, I found myself explaining things to potential customers a lot, where I would tell them, you know, you want to print on softer shirts, so they'll fold it up and put it in a drawer and forget about it. You want them to put that thing in their closet? Because it's my new favorite shirt.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right, right. Yeah, all the shirts that you know your lawn with get balled up into a drawer somewhere. Right? That's great. And so how do your customers think about that?

Joe Ortinau 
You know, they like it, and I like to sneak it into every little bit of conversation where I can. You know, I've had customers tag me on social media, taunting me almost when they heard something about somebody getting hats printed, and they're like, hats that deserve hangers. And then, you know, I come back with a picture of a hat hanging on the hanger and things like that. So you know, you can see, like, the memes that go around and social media and make your own little influences. with it.  So...

Marshall Atkinson 
And your logo has a hanger in it; you are just kind of everything. Yes. Right? In. So when you're thinking about this kind of tagline or motto, I don't know, whatever phrase you want to use. Why should a shop that's listening? Have you got that right? So maybe somebody listening doesn't have that? And of course, you certainly don't want them to use yours, but what should they do? Right? So when you're thinking about some little catchphrase, motto, tagline, or whatever, Why should somebody come up with something like that?

Joe Ortinau 
Um, I guess on the side of marketing, it's an easy way to repeatedly identify your shop, honestly. You know, for me, I guess my thought process thinking back five years ago was, you know, I was really getting into the higher quality garments at that point in time more ringspun and tri blend, because they were also cost effective. So I would play play that angle when I was trying to interact with customers, but definitely hitting soccer shirts. And, you know, just just finding a little creative way to get that point across. And I guess a few words.

Marshall Atkinson 
right.  Yeah, well, it's good, you know. Shirt Lab has actions that reveal priorities. And my consulting business has clarifying effective change; you know, those are, you know, so to me, boiling down what you do into some simple sentence or phrase can really help you differentiate yourself from other folks. And it also kind of illustrates what you're known for, or whatever. And, you know, shirts and desert hangers are really interesting because they're like, Hey, this is the level of excellence you're going to receive. Right, right. I think it's really future-forwarding, you know, and it's like, Hey,  this is how good of a job we do.

Joe Ortinau 
Right. It's memorable, and we actually laser-engrave on hangers and give them to people who want them. So

Marshall Atkinson 
Your client's logo on the hanger.?

Joe Ortinau 
We put our logo on the hanger. The thought process behind that is that they're hanging up in their classroom, and you get those impressions every time they grab their favorite shirt.

Marshall Atkinson 
Can you do a QR code?

Joe Ortinau 
You know, QR codes were really hot at the time when we started doing those bugs, and we probably could.
 
Marshall Atkinson 
Experiment!

Joe Ortinau 
Well, I just gained something from this conversation. Thank you, Marshall.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right. Let's just see if it works. Right? A QR code like the hanger could be like a lighter wood, right? And when you laser it, It turns dark; it seems like it would, you know?

Joe Ortinau 
Yeah, we're gonna try that later today. We added laser engraver last year. So yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
And like, I use it when I do QR codes all the time. And I use a thing called a QR code generator, which allows you to pick the style of the QR code. And I like the real fat ones that have like a little rounded edge kind of thing rather than the ones with the little micro dots, just because I think the big chunky ones that I think just look better, and they always remind me of a chocolate chip cookie. Maybe that's why I'm always thinking about it, you know? Yeah. So. All right. And so I think that would be a kind of interesting thing. So you'll have to report back, right? And we'll do it, yeah. All right. So have you ever thought about changing the tagline or updating it, or are you just completely happy?

Joe Ortinau 
I love it. The thing like the thought process behind whether or not I would change in the future kind of stems from whether one of my kids takes an interest in, you know, moving on with the business after I'm out of it and retired and things. So that's something that I'll find; they're both six right now. So I probably won't figure that out for another

Marshall Atkinson 
Happening next year.
 
Joe Ortinau 
No, no. But basically, the thought process is that right now, if they have an interest, we keep the company name the same. If they don't, I'll probably rebrand at some point in the future, because when I look to sell the business, if they don't want it, you know, I don't want to sell my name.

Marshall Atkinson 
Or you or your pool is limited. If you have to find somebody with your last name for it, Now, it's probably going to make me work harder.

Joe Ortinau 
The Asla more difficult. I've only ever heard of one other Joe or now too, so.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right? Okay. So all right, so let's, let's kind of shift gears a little bit to something more, more cerebral, right? So let's check. We're going to compare your thoughts on pricing when you started, you know, 10 years ago, right? And then let's think about how you do it now. Right? So because I think everybody, when they start off, does it whatever way they glom on to, and then as your business evolves, you kind of figure out how to do it. And you end up making the profit that you want to make, right? So I want to, like, take us back to when you started to hear we are now, and you're probably doing things with more purpose and intent, and especially on pricing. So I kind of want to, like, get into that a little bit. So kind of share your thoughts.

Joe Ortinau 
Yeah, so the old style of pricing, basically, is exactly what you described. So I mentioned that my former employer had screen printing; I basically took their pricing model and adopted it because I assumed they knew what they were doing. They've been in business for X number of years, right? So that was, you know, the arbitrary; you have a set rate for, you know, this much per screen, you divide that out by hover, make sure it's, and then you charge x per color, whatever that number ends up being. And, you know, I would basically check that at the end of every year and see how I did once I knew, you know, how much money I had earned, and then make adjustments. So that, versus the way we do it now, is completely different. Yeah. So Joe, for the new pricing structure, I tried to base it off of time and percentages, basically. And, you know, gathered inspiration over the years from several different factors. Actually, Marshall, you played a big part in it with the free resources you put out that are either free or I paid for with, you know, ebooks or whatever, listening to Mark Dre from time to time, when you get the opportunity to hear him speak, or when he's interacting in a social setting. Things he says, or, you know, there's usually golden nuggets in there. The Profit First Book got me thinking about percentages, and, you know, ultimately, you're looking at your profit percentage at the end of the year. So that hit pretty hard with me. And then I've always kind of thought time was maybe the key factor that people should hone in on because, you know, it's the one resource that's limited for everyone. And then there will be new tweaks after having the Shirt Lab mastermind discussion at the dinner and Long Beach. So those are yet to be determined. But

Marshall Atkinson 
That's really good. And so you're more outcome-based, we'll say, right, right. Right, instead of just what you get, you know, what you take is what you get, or whatever that acronym is, right? Now, you're more than I want to make this amount of money, and we're going to back the math into it and figure out where I need to be and who I need to sell to. And then also, I think a key thing is that minimums play such a huge role in this right, and because it's all about time, if you spend, if you do a lot of little orders, you spend a lot of time setting up and not much time printing that we make money when we're printing something right. So that's why I'm so happy you said that. I think that's more important than anything, right? And so, if we're measuring our downtime, we're measuring what we're doing. We kind of have an idea about how much money we want to make per hour. You know, you can figure out exactly where you need to be and base your pricing model on the outcome that you want for the profit that you want to make. And it's so important, right? And, and I'm also a big believer in, you know, if when you quote a job, your customer goes, Oh, thanks. And if you had paid it, you probably could have gotten more. Right, probably some of your customers, if you're not getting pushed back every once in a while, it's time to raise your pricing. Right. And you know, the value that you bring to the table is what people will pay for. Right? Have you ever heard my hamburger story? I don't know. Right? So I would guess within a mile of you, there's a McDonald's, right?

Joe Ortinau 
Might be a few miles, maybe.

Marshall Atkinson 
There's a McDonald's, right? Yeah. So if you go to McDonald's, you can buy a hamburger for 99 cents. Right. Okay. Also, within, you know, close distance, you know, there's a sports bar. Right? Where you go, and then hamburgers. $14.

Joe Ortinau 
Right.

Marshall Atkinson 
Why? Why would somebody ever go to the sports bar and pay 14 times more?

Joe Ortinau 
Love probably tastes better.

Marshall Atkinson 
They're not going; they're not well. Experience is what they're paying for. Right? So one of the things that I was kind of like, throw out there, right is your pricing, your value to your market is the experience that you're delivering? You know, and, of course, this all has to do with the customers that you serve. So the people who don't care about that are commodity-driven. Right now, they're just tire kicker prices; you know, I can get that cheap; I can get that a quarter cheaper down the street. The people who really want a better experience want people to take care of them; they want your creativity; they want it delivered on time; or, you know, whatever, right? You want. They want you to solve their problems. For me. That's all the value that should be embedded in that price. And that isn't necessarily a percentage markup.

Joe Ortinau 
No, I mean, you can add, you know, we've had situations where I've had people tell me and email that our prices literally double what they've just quoted from another local vendor. And you know, they're still thinking about it. So

Marshall Atkinson 
yeah, right.  Once you hear so much, be sure to subscribe so you can get the latest from Success Stories. And now here's Zach shortly with the SMS spotlight.

Marshall Atkinson 
So people buy value; people pay for higher-priced things all the time. You know, think about the blue jeans; you wear the car; you drive the cell phone that you use with ice cream; you know, my favorite is ice cream. And so there's always, you know, the cheaper option, right? So why would anybody buy the more expensive one if the cheaper one is available? It just depends on their tastes and what they want. Right? And so what you have to show in your marketing and everything in your pricing is that you're worth the money. Right? And it's not that you don't even think about it. Right? How do you get to that level? You know, that's kind of the thing, so and so now, right? You're doing different things than when your business started. And I think and I love the fact that you're taking what you're learning out there in the industry from, you know, Shirt Lab or Mark or you know, McCalla wits, his books, and conversations with other printers that you've had. And you're injecting those thoughts into your business, and how much do you think that has helped your business over the years? Just that kind of, I'm not doing it the same way I started with

Joe Ortinau 
AWS noticed it the most this past year when I started using this pricing formula. I had developed it in the previous year and just kind of watched it and compared it to the way I had been pricing things. And, you know, the beginning of 2023 came up as like, It's time to figure out if this thing works. And I was just like, no matter what we use it for, And I kind of set my goal of a profit percentage at the end of the year at 20%. And that's

Marshall Atkinson 
profit.

Joe Ortinau 
Yes, good. And we ended up at 20, between 21 and 22, I think

Marshall Atkinson 
good. So you're over your goal. That's awesome. Right? And how did you do that?

Joe Ortinau 
So basically, it is like a Frankenstein formula of all the things that I read, you know, your resources, marks, and then profit first. And all those other things I mentioned earlier and created my own version of the formula work in a Google pricing sheet, basically. So there's kind of five key numbers that, you know, we track that lead us to have the ability to figure it out. So

Marshall Atkinson 
the KPIs are we?

Joe Ortinau 
Well, yeah. Real fast. I tried to keep everything super simple. You know, it's a system for me now; it's simple for me because I've been doing it for a year, and it just makes sense. But

Marshall Atkinson 
what are you tracking Joe? Alright, so the

Joe Ortinau 
The first one that's really important is, you know, your past 12 months of expenses. So the second one that I use in the formula is the number of hours that my team has worked. And like you use those two to figure out basically what your cost per hour is. Right? And then the next one. I know you're big on this one downtime percentage.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. What is your

Joe Ortinau 
we actually only print about 20% of the time.

Marshall Atkinson 
Really? Yeah.

Joe Ortinau 
Small challenge.

Marshall Atkinson 
Is that just because your people are doing other things? Yes. Right. So, something you might think about is tracking the downtime when you're supposed to be working. You're supposed to be printing—excuse me, put it that way, right? So if you're repositioning your printers, and you know, half the day, they're checking inventory and burning screens, you're not printing, right? So that's not really. So it is in the overall scheme of things because we should be printing all day, right? But, you know, downtime to me is when we're not printing in, right? So I love the fact that you know what it is for the day, right? But I just want to kind of throw that out there. So what are the

Joe Ortinau 
I think I should probably re-label that term, then call it downtime precision; I'm using a different context. I'm basically using that. So I know the percentage of time that we're printing, so I could take that cost per hour. And you know, flip the percentage on it to realize, you know, how much does a print hour cost US per hour? Right. Okay. All right. And then I take the print cost per hour and add my profit margin percentage markup to that. And that's what we charge per print because we only make money; you know, we're selling what we're printing. So, you know, you have to have what you're charging based on when you're actually manufacturing the thing you're selling. Yeah,

Marshall Atkinson 
right.  Okay, good. And so this is your new system that you've used for a full year. And you're over your goal, so it must be working. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I love it. I love it. And I'll tell you, how, what would you know? I say this all the time: you can't manage what you don't measure. Right, right. Do you think that's true, Joe?

Joe Ortinau 
Absolutely. I think one of the number one reasons why it works so well is because I've created the habit of logging the sales from the previous day and the expensesevery single morning so that I can calculate my current profit percentage. So every morning I write that in this rocket book, you know, I got my sales for the month, where our profit percentages are, and I scan it.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. Are you graphing that? So you see the squeal go up and down and

Joe Ortinau 
up I haven't grafted at this point yet. No, but it was just

Marshall Atkinson 
graph.  Artists of my brain, my math brain only works when visually right, so I liked the squiggle, right? So, squiggle going up means Oh, that's awesome; squiggle going down means something's going on; squiggle flat means no change is good and bad at the same time. Right? So

Joe Ortinau 
depending on which direction you're trying to go, right, yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
So I'll have a good squiggly graph, right, and the longer that your dataset, you know, for the whole year, you know, we start the year, there's not a lot of data. But as you move through the year, you'll see a lot of changes, right? And those changes correlate to what's going on in the shop based on how busy you are, your labor dollars, or, you know, whatever, right? factors.  So that's great. And what I love is, you know, you started off with copying somebody's priceless method, which is how a lot of people do it. Okay. And I realized that it's not really tuned to what you're doing.

Joe Ortinau 
Right? There was a science behind it, you know?

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah. Well, the problem with doing that is, how do you know that the other shop knows what they're doing? Or does it make money, or is it their math? That's not applicable to your math?

Joe Ortinau 
So Right.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right, good stuff. Good stuff, right. So now, when you build your priceless, I think one of these things are really important. How are you training other people to quote,

Joe Ortinau 
we have basically on our Google Sheet, there's a simple, I've created a simple like, where you plug in the numbers, and it just pops up the price. It's nice and easy. They don't have to think about it; they just have to pop in the correct number of garments, what the blank costs, and then how many colors are being printed on the front or back.

Marshall Atkinson 
Is everybody using the same tool? Yes. Okay. But you're not using any of the shop software that the industry provides.

Joe Ortinau 
I am not the reason why sending out quotes is incredibly slow. So you're shooting and sending emails way faster.

Marshall Atkinson 
Good. Oh, good. Right. That's great. Okay, so let's end today, and let's talk about my favorite subject, art. So you have a degree in graphic design; you know, my degree is in fine arts; I have a degree in watercolor painting, which means you can make money doing that, maybe. So, but your thinking is designed forward, kind of like mine is right. So how do you emphasize the art part of your business? And what are you doing to learn how to take things to the next level with new techniques, ideas, and all that stuff?

Joe Ortinau 
Yeah, so I dug into this a little bit earlier, also getting that it got ahead of the curve. But yeah, that I mentioned, you know, having that in-depth conversation with your customer to learn about their business and the little subtleties of what makes them tick and what separates them from their competition. And then solving the problem, as we mentioned earlier, visually, and you know, things I love are when logos and designs have little hidden meanings in them, so you may be familiar with some of these, but like the FedEx logo, there's a hidden arrow in it. And then there's one out there that's one of my all-time favorite logos. I think it's for a company called Spartan Golf, and there's a graphic that looks like a Spartan head with, you know, the main. I'm calling him a no-no on the helmet, but then it also kind of looks like a character that swings a golf club at the same time, so yeah.

Marshall Atkinson 
like when these logo underneath the girls collars so spills mom.

Joe Ortinau 
Oh, I want to live it through some of that, like in my own logo. I'm taking my hat off. I know this is audio, but you know obviously the hidden t-shirt, but if you cover up this part of the A, it kind of looks like the manuals, printing squeegee.

Marshall Atkinson 
Right, do you know I think that's all important, right? And I love little things like that. And that's, to me, the fun part of designing it. I don't know about you, but when I create stuff, I have to create something that pleases me first. If it doesn't please me, then I know I'm going to do a crappy job, right? And so I'm always looking for a way that I can put my little take and flair into it. Anything I do, and I call that singing in your own voice, right? So I think any good designer has their own little style. And you have to, if you don't have one yet, because he needs to develop you, you know, because that's what you're going to be known for. Right. And, you know, kind of my way of doing things was always big and bold; I like thick, chunky stuff. And also, one of my favorite things, even in my fine art, is juxta, posing around something with a point, or things that barely touch that look like they should be touching but they don't, because I just like that tension, you know, and I'm always doing that. And what I'm doing with asymmetrical balance is another thing I love to do, which is things that are like, perfectly, you know, you've got it all based on the mass of something. And that way, I don't have to; I don't have to put stuff in a square circle to make it look right. I've got it all, kind of crazy. But it works, you know, and those are always harder to do because it's kind of like a chess game. You know, you do this, you got to do this, you know, kind of a thing. And then it works out. Rather than talk about how you do it, What are the kind of what are your thoughts?

Joe Ortinau 
Oh, any given design? I mean, step one, for me, is a little bit of research online, just to make sure I'm not going to be creating something that's similar to whatever's out there already. So there's definitely a Google search first, one for inspiration, and two for making sure. Like I just said, you're not repeating something that's already out there. I have also started using vid journey to help with that process. So punching in some requests into that to see what it spits out for inspiration.

Marshall Atkinson 
Your listeners will note that I didn't mention that first. So Right. So, have you used Pinterest? Pinterest is awesome for inspiration.

Joe Ortinau 
You know, I should, it should and I'm big proponent of how Jeremy picker, you know,

Marshall Atkinson 
so Pinterest.  Really cool. You can look up, you know, I don't know, surfboards or floral patterns or whatever. And then they've got a little search, like search glass; would he call it Spyglass? What's the magnifying glass, right? So for the magnet, there's a little magnifying glass little button tool. And it draws like a little square around something that you like in the image. And if you hit go, it'll find a whole bunch of images that are just like that, whatever it was, like if it's a color or a pattern or an outline, or a word or a font, it finds everything like that and returns it to. And so, that's really neat. If you're trying to do something with, I don't know, a skull or a bird or a certain whatever, right? It's an easy way of developing a mood board that you can look at things with. This is something that Jeremy Picker talked about, and he did a little Shirt Lab workshop a couple of years ago. So that's how I learned about it. So thanks, Jeremy. Anyway,

Joe Ortinau 
I just wrote down everything Marshall just said.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, thanks. So yeah, and do you do a thumbnail I'm big on thumbnails.

Joe Ortinau 
I'm not typically every now and then; you know, if it's like a larger, larger customer, I'll sketch out a couple ideas before hopping on the computer. I'm more of a work-and-field type of designer, where I throw some things off to the side of the artboard. In Illustrator, I typically design and kind of throw parts of pieces together. And honestly, if you're a neat freak or whatever, as a designer, seeing my files would probably drive you insane with how things are all over the place. But you know, when you just want to display them, whatever's on the artboard is the only thing the customer can see. So everybody

Marshall Atkinson 
has a process, right? I love a square; post a note. And I do a thumbnail and about 10 seconds with a sharpie, just a circle could be that could be that could be a whole scene and circle. Right, right, and then a squiggle, squiggle on the top. That's a headline, and then a circle, a circle, at the bottom. Those are three logos. And then, like, what I'm looking for is the kind of idea of balance. And I'm going to pick colors, fonts, and all that stuff out later. But I'm trying to figure out the layout first. And once I have it kind of locked in, then it's free. Really easy to like and build. Right? And that's how I work. And everybody works differently. I'm not saying my way is correct or anything, but it's just that that's how I've been doing it since forever. And it gets me there; I think faster because if I don't start with that, I end up, you know, like playing around, adding, and just never like working out right. And

Joe Ortinau 
Yeah, I'll say I go back to that type of process when I get a little bit stuck. Honestly, that's what I'll resort to sketching things out. Where's all right? We gotta get some fast creativity, or so we can actually start moving forward on it. Yeah,

Marshall Atkinson 
before, before the internet. Yes, kids, I'm not old before the internet. I had a three-inch notebook that I used to write magazines, ads, and all types of printed stuff. And now there is a jam. And in that notebook for inspiration, it was like my inspiration file. And then, and then, you know, the Internet came out. And like, you don't need that because you can just search, right? And, but I'm always interested in how people kind of think and design where that tweaky idea comes from. And, and what I think is interesting is, like, you can tell sometimes designers have like a little, like moves they make or they always look, it looks like they designed it, you know? So, that's always kind of fun, just to kind of think about that. Right? And but what do you think your kind of flavor is? How would you describe it?

Joe Ortinau 
You know, I would probably honestly say that I haven't fully found it. You know, if I'm being honest, I'm sure that the majority of my designs have a similar look to them. I'm not. It's not registered with me at the moment. I know when it came to, like, fine arts, I was on the photorealistic side. So when I was drawing and painting, I wanted it to look exactly like it did in real life. So that's, yeah. Okay,

Marshall Atkinson 
cool.  And how are you incorporating AI into your work, with Midjourney or other AI platforms? What are you doing?

Joe Ortinau 
Yeah, so I'm only using Midjourney at the moment. But after attending Long Beach last week, we'll be using it for some other things, too; we just haven't gotten into the weeds with it yet. But Midjourney, we use it, and I essentially use it as a replacement for that Google search for the type of graphics. Because you've shared this, you know that Midjourney is creating an image that doesn't exist yet. It wasn't created by humans, so it can't have a copyright attached to it. At this point in time, I'll throw that disclaimer in there.

Marshall Atkinson 
Humans didn't create it. So right, you're right; you can only copyright things if a human made them. Right.

Joe Ortinau 
So I basically use it to build pieces of art that I'm going to incorporate into my design. So let's say I need a cartoony-looking caterpillar. And it's going to be on a leaf and have some text that, you know, spans over the top of it. So I'll use Midjourney to make the cartoon character that would take me half an hour to an hour to draw. And it does four options in 60 seconds or less. As long as I am good with the way I describe it. A turban I use a lot for that is cartoon-style and gets you the kids. You know, like drawing book kind of look where they kind of have big eyes and

Marshall Atkinson 
great a great prompt for this CLI. Yeah. Okay, AWS a ICWAI.

Joe Ortinau 
So that's the majority of how I'm using it is, you know, just to build the graphics or be incorporated into the design, and then you just import it into Illustrator Photoshop, whichever one you went to, and finish the layout.

Marshall Atkinson 
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so, do your customers care that it's aI driven? Or do they even know or?

Joe Ortinau 
I'm pretty open with everybody. So I just tell him what it was most of the time because I'm kind of John stuff and excited about it. And no one's voiced an opinion that they weren't in support of it. You know, if they had, I would just explain, Hey, it's a tool. It makes me faster. It allows me to get more shirts out there on hangers.

Marshall Atkinson 
Good Exactly. The way I explained it is, you know, you can cut down a tree with a saw, right-hand side bricks, or a chainsaw? Yeah, right. We used to tree still cut down right. What are you using? Right? All right, well, cool. So, thanks, Joe; I appreciate you sharing your story as successfully as today. What's the best way to contact you if someone wants to learn more about what you do? Or maybe you can personally help them.

Joe Ortinau 
I would say email is definitely the best way. That's the way I communicate best. So my email address is Joe for now. rt.com.  And that's spelled o r t i n a U? A R t.com.

Marshall Atkinson 
Awesome. Hey, thanks a lot. I appreciate your time, and we'll talk to you later.

Joe Ortinau 
Welcome. Thank you.