OnDesign: Sunny D(esign)

SCREEN PRINTING

October 02, 2009

PXP ran this water-based, discharge design at 440 pieces per hour, and the job took seven hours to complete.

Business partners Jeff Henderson and Adam Walterscheid — who met several years ago playing football for Southern Methodist University — have made a name for their six-year-old company, Pony Xpress Printing (PXP), in specialty screen printing. The Dallas-based shop is flying high with the allover, retail looks it can offer to the many corporate clients and brands that want to give apparel to their employees to wear, or that they sell for marketing purposes. One client, Sunny D (part of the Dr. Pepper Bottling Co.), came to PXP with just the brand’s logo, and asked the company to create a fashion-forward design.

“During our meeting, the client brought the basic logo and also a sample of the product,” Henderson says. “We needed to keep the corporate logo in tact but also make it fashionable, so we added design elements of a sunburst around the Sunny D logo. We then printed it with a water-based, discharge ink. This kind of printing — which is a huge trend right now — allows for the design to have a minimal hand and the entire shirt remains soft and wearable.”

PXP’s designer also was inspired by the water droplets accumulating on the bottle of Sunny D the client brought to the meeting, and wanted to incorporate the look of droplets with the company logo and sunburst design. The team accomplished this by adding highlights and shadows of water droplets within the design, and also by accenting them by using a high-density gel, says Kevin Tsukahara, the company’s head of research and development.

“Although this design did not pose any particular challenges, water-based inks and high-density gels can be tricky to work with,” he adds. “[If you are new to working with these inks] it takes some trial and error. For example, hitting PMS colors with discharge can be difficult, but we have a well-trained ink staff and mix all of our inks in-house. Also, we ran the press a bit slower to control the gel, and the dryer speed was crucial to getting the proper cure and right shimmer to it. You have to be careful to control the gel’s temperature — it can’t get too hot.”
— Marcia Derryberry

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