SquidSlurp Blog

Hey, I’m Crystelle. Part-time visual artist, part-time graphic designer. I learned a few printing techniques at University (silkscreen, lithography, van dyke brown, cyanotype…) and silkscreen printing is definitely something i want to improve. I was lucky enough to find David and Dominic who are ready to build a small business around it. That being said, I’m motivated and happy.

This morning I did a little shopping. I went to that fish market called Waldman on Roy street - did we ever mention we’re based in Montreal? - which is the closest place where I could find some fresh squids. So yeah, i bought one for 97 cents, it looks pretty cr… cool!  The cashier thought buying just one  squid was funny, so I had to tell him it was for a photo shoot, not Valentine’s day.

I think it might be a good help to design our logo. Maybe. Maybe not. What’s the worst thing that can happen anyway? Oh yeah, it could end up in my dinner plate.

For now I must say it’s pretty smelly.

More squidy news to come.

Squidslurp. Cool name for a t-shirt design business, no? It took us a good couple of weeks to agree on a name. We were toying with the word “panda” for a while. Because they have stain-like spots, because they’re easy and fun to design into a cool mascot logo, and because Crystelle already has some really nice prints featuring some weird pandas. Dominic thought they were too cute. He likes attitude, not cute. We were agreeing on “Burning Cloud” for a while, but the name was taken, and it didn’t really mean anything anyway.

Then “squid” came up. It’s cool, it’s gross, and it produces ink clouds, which we think is a nice reference to the printing process. But we needed a second word. We must have come up with about a dozen thousand of them. When you start brainstorming for a name, you mind soon sinks into this weird state where anything goes. “Adam and Squid”, “Squid Fur” and “Suid The Grudge 2″ were some of our awesome ideas. Then Squidslurp happened, and it just made sense to all of us. Basically, the slurp is what we do to t-shirts when we print them. We hope you like it.

d.

We’re shopping for our gear. We need silkscreens, printing press, flash dryer, inks, emulsion, filtered sink, etc. We have a 5000$ psychological budget, first batch of t-shirts included. Yesterday we met with the Cosmex guy. In Montreal, Cosmex is the big expensive company that has everything you need. While we watched the sales rep drive his quotation total just passed our budget line item by item, I wondered if he realized how much he was helping us with our upcoming negotiations for used equipment with his competitors.

I’ve got 3 contacts on the line with machines that may fit our needs. Since we don’t have a lot of space right now, the ideal for us would be a press with 4 colors and 2-4 stations which we could remove or simply not use until we move. Oh yeah, we plan to move in a year or two. We’re that ambitious.

We tried to rush our first round of shopping, trying to make it on time for some contract that are already coming in. We’ve decided to take our time. We really don’t want to make a mistake here, and it’s not like we’ll have any trouble finding other contracts. What we really need to be ready for is the spring. That’s the high season for printing posters and t-shirts. Because our one-liner business plan, by the way, is to profit off the local contracts while our web site gets built and gains cred.

And that’s what this blogging thing is at least partly about.

That’s transparency for ya.

d.

Dominic tells me we need to get some content on this page pronto, so here I am. I’m not a blogger, but I guess I should be; writing straightens up thoughts.

So, I’m in this t-shirt business too. Dominic is our web guru, fellow marketing dabbler and future serigraph expert. Crystelle, who I’m sure will write you a couple of lines soon, is our graphics artist and silkscreen printing teacher. I’m uh… well, I’m the guy who keeps the ball rolling, makes phone calls and generally talks and worries too much. I’ll be printing your t-shirts in no time.

And hey, I’m a blogger now : )

d.

We actually had to go back to Home Depot today because 2 of our lamps were defective and we finally decided to put 6 lamps in the exposure table instead of 5. We took pictures all the way we were doing it and I can say it’s looking pretty good right now. I can’t wait to make the tutorial about it.

Do you know how to spend too much time in an Home Depot; we do. We went there yesterday and spent more than 3 hours there. Our initial goal was to buy what is necessary to build our own silkscreen printing exposure unit. We actually ended up buying much more, here is the list:

• 5 fluorescent lamps
• 10 fluorescent tubes
• an exacto knife with blades
• 25$ worth of wood already cut
• a garden hose
• a water duct splitter
• a measuring tape
• a 1800 electric pressure washer
• a pack of Juicy Fruit

We spent most of our time thinking about how we should build the UV exposure unit and we finally decided that the dimensions would be 53 inches by 37 inches based upon the fact that our biggest silk frame was 40 inches by 30 inches and the length off the lamps was 48 inches.

We are going to document how we made our UV screen print exposure unit and we will make a tutorial about it.