Dane and me in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, where GroupeSTAHL is headquartered.
If you know Dane Clement, the first thing that might come to mind is the bright, colorful shirts he wears at trade shows. I wish I had a picture of him in the one he wore at the last SGIA show, it was fantastic. If you don’t know his shirts, you might be familiar with his art and his company, Great Dane Graphics. Dane started Great Dane Graphics in 1991 and today it is one of the digital and screen printing industries’ best known art departments. Dane’s art talent puts him in a category that is not populated with a lot of other people. I am honored and thrilled that he is currently working with GroupeSTAHL to develop highly detailed full color artwork to populate our Cadworxlive.com state-of-the-art CAD-PRINT® Designer. This module of CadworxLive.com allows you to create full color digital transfers online for FREE. Dane is still working hard creating great art and lots of it. It’s not all available online yet but we’ll let you know when it is. We are very excited about this opportunity to work with Dane. I am a man who appreciates great graphic art and Dane is one of the best in the business.
During a recent conversation with Dane about the future of art in our industry, Dane shared his thoughts with me and I think you will appreciate them as well. Here are his predictions on the future of art for 2011 and I must say, I agree with him!
Dane’s Thoughts: With the direct to garment (DTG) market finally starting to mature, folks that own the machines and equipment are realizing that they need more sophisticated full color artwork. The way we have traditionally created artwork for screen printing, in one or two colors, isn’t the most ideal way to print with a DTG printer. Many DTG owners are used to printing very simple vector, flat color artwork. However, with DTG printers, this type of artwork tends to accentuate the imperfections of the DTG printer, resulting in streaking and banding. With more detailed, complicated full color artwork, you don’t notice the imperfections as much. With other methods, such as full color digital transfers like CAD-Printz® from Stahls’ or Transfer Express or using ExactPrint™ paper to make your own instant transfers, the more colors and details the better. There are no artwork limits in the new age of full color digital transfer production and the demand for full color artwork will continue to grow and develop.