Hello and welcome to our studio! We’re happy that you’re here. We thought it only made sense to start off with a blog post that says a little bit about who we are and what we do.
We are a print studio that creates factory-ready artwork for apparel and home brands worldwide. We sell to many of the brands that you would see while strolling through the mall. So it’s a pretty cool thing we’ve got going here! Our studio was founded in Philadelphia in 2012 with a vision to design and sell prints that are high-quality and easy to work with.
What does all of that mean exactly? A few things really. It means that we like to make less work for our clients by minimizing the “back and forth” that can occur between brand and vendor. (Who doesn’t like saving time and money??) It also means that while we’re scanning the trend universe for updated styles and looks, we’re also keeping our clients’ markets in mind so that our prints are appropriate for their customers. And last but not least, it means that we are ready to jump in and go the extra mile. We’re real, live humans that answer phone calls and emails so that we can help out when a quick color edit or a total overhaul is needed.
A lot goes into the process of creating these top-notch, easy-to-use prints. Our mission is to create on-trend and consumer-friendly artwork, and it all starts with trend research. Imagine lots of scrolling through runway photos and squinting at inspiration imagery to see what’s new and in vogue. All of that info is then used to create trend boards and design briefs. Art direction is key to achieving the looks we want. So details about scale, color, material, and style are incredibly important. Our art director meets with our artists to go over everything that’s needed for the print. Then it’s motif making time!
Artists choose their materials, such as watercolor, pens, markers, gouache - whichever suits the inspiration on the design brief. Using their chosen medium, they draw and/or paint out individual motifs in a style or hand that honors that trend. Maybe it’s loose and painterly; maybe it’s tight and rendered; maybe it’s gestural and textured - whichever it is, it makes a big difference in the look of the print.
Once the motifs are finished and scanned in, it’s time for indexing and putting the motifs into repeat! And this is where we like to talk about how unique we are. *Flips hair over shoulder* We put extra effort into our prints to make them a breeze to work with. Brands don’t want to deal with a messy file when they’re applying a print to a product! So our designers take the time to separate color and motifs into their own layers, and then finalize the print into a high resolution PSD file. This makes a huge difference to our clients. And we love seeing their faces light up when they hear that we’ve done this for them!
There are many tiny details that go into the print-making process, and tons of fun and interesting things about working at a print studio. Did you enjoy learning more about our studio? Leave us a comment below! We’ll be sharing more content here about what we do, so make sure to check back! And in the meantime, follow us on instagram @surfaceprintsource, and sign up for our emails by shooting us a message at [email protected]. Thanks for tuning in!
