Printfresh…

Lately I’ve had a lot of people asking me what it is that I do during my days. And my answer to that is, I direct a textile swatch studio in Philadelphia called Printfresh. Many of you are probably not familiar with this aspect of the fashion industry. The gist of it is that when apparel companies need artwork for their garments and want a fresh look from outside their artwork department they turn to swatch studios who come and show their work. It’s a great way for apparel companies to look at artwork, select pieces that suit their needs, and send it off to their production facilities right away (cutting down on lengthy artwork development stages).

All of the artwork that we as well as other swatch studios create is one of kind a kind and only sold once, this ensures that no two apparel companies will have the same artwork on their garments.

The sales end of the business is in the form of on-site appointments and the several trade shows that happen a few times per year. The two most important shows are Direction in New York and Premier Vision (Indigo) in Paris. At these shows all of the major studios, primarily from Europe and America, come together to display their work and apparel companies send their designers to shop for inspiration/artwork. This is the origin of a good proportion of the artwork that you see in stores these days.

At Printfresh we have a great team of talented artists and designers who create our original artwork. We create prints through drawing in Photoshop/Illustrator or by hand. We then print them directly onto fabric on our huge digital printer (see below right, it’s just in front of the window) or we silk screen them (see below left). We also create intricate embroidery designs (see above right).

(Please note that we work only with major corporations. If you are interested in viewing our designs, please understand that you are on your own for production, we only sell the art.)

This entry was posted on Friday, March 9th, 2007 at 9:23 am and is filed under Philadelphia(t) , Art(t) , Prints(t) . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Printfresh…”

1. lyn Says:
   March 9th, 2007 at 1:31 pm

   that’s a really interesting job. how did you get into it?

2. emily Says:
   March 9th, 2007 at 3:45 pm

   What a cool, creative career!

3. Isara Says:
   March 12th, 2007 at 9:46 am

   Wow. That is a really cool job. Can you show some of the work?

4. lena Says:
   March 12th, 2007 at 12:43 pm

   hi amy
   i liked reading more about what you do… i’ve thought about starting a print studio over the years too. caitlin mociun was telling me about yours, and i wanted to hear more…

   i wear the tee i bought from you at the holiday sale so often! it has the best fit. i’m going to order another one very soon…

5. No One Special Says:
   March 21st, 2007 at 8:15 pm

   does it ever happen that they see one of your designs and then rip it off?

6. Amy Says:
   March 23rd, 2007 at 8:36 pm

   Hi Everyone,

   Thanks for all the comments!

   In response to the above:

   -I got into the field initially from shopping studios when I designed clothing at Urban Outfitters. I was amazed that there was a facet out in the apparel industry that was purely creative, so it seemed like a fun business to go into.

   -Nope, sorry I can’t show some of the work. We show our work through private appointments only, so that the design teams that buy our work can have it completely exclusively to themselves.

   -Maybe people will ‘rip us off’ in the future, but I’m not concerned about that, I’ve always found it’s important to make new innovative work each and every day!

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