Vinyl Vision Edition 5 - 2024

13 Feb - Spandex Australia again teaming up with the legendary Jon Quantico from My Wrap Game to offer a range of vinyl application workshops across Australia.

07 Feb - Contra Vision, global specialists in perforated window film, has launched a revolutionary new product for bubble-free vehicle graphic application. This latest product, Contra Vision® AutoGraph™, debuts in North America following the success of this revolutionary new product in the UK and Europe.

01 Feb -  i2M, a trailblazer in the plastics industry and one of the top female-led plastics manufacturers in North America has unveiled its latest groundbreaking innovation - ReNew™ DigiFlex. This revolutionary product - a high-performance, digitally printable calendered vinyl film is made with 25% recycled content, marking a significant milestone as the first of its kind in the pressure-sensitive films industry.

01 Feb - The Board of Directors of Avery Dennison Corporation has declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.81 per share. The dividend is payable on March 20, 2024, to shareholders of record on March 6, 2024.

This edition of our hack comes from ShawnMosch.com via YouTube, and is another weeding hack. If you have ever been searching through the bin for that dot on the letter “i”, or the elusive full stop then you will love this tip. Using the offset feature of your software to cut a contour around the artwork to be weeded, will make for much finer control over weeding process, and will greatly reduct the amount of sticky “I want to remove something that you want to stay” waste vinyl in play.

Looking at TheShawnMosch website it looks like she has quite a lot of tips and tricks up for grabs, and I have subscribed to her newsletter (hope she subscribes to mine).

In the realm of AI collaboration, it is often necessary for one AI tool to feed inputs into another AI tool, this approach has increasingly become a staple for complex problem-solving and creative processing. This inter-AI collaboration is especially evident in tasks that require a synthesis of content generation and visual design. Finding great tools that can generate the prompts in this combination is always a big plus.

Enter stage left, GravityWrite.com. Stuffed with over eighty text-based AI templates, this prompt creation tool can craft a detailed, imaginative description of the desired logo, encapsulating the brand's ethos, preferred color schemes, and symbolic elements. This carefully composed prompt, rich in descriptive language and creative detail, then serves as the input for a visual AI tool like Microsoft Designer, tasked with the actual logo design.

Leveraging the strengths of both linguistic and visual AI capabilities, this layered approach enables a seamless transition from conceptualization to visual realization, exemplifying the dynamic and collaborative potential of AI tools working in concert. The best outcome is that GravityWrite is free for the first 2,000 words per month, as is the Canva like Microsoft Designer.

The team at Custom Laser Products Australia has just released a world-first heat press-safe t-shirt ruler. Tshirt rulers can be a great tool to help to line artwork up to the shirt before pressing, but until now forgetting to take the tshirt ruler away was a messy and expensive mistake. These two new t-shirt rulers are heat press safe up to 160⁰C or 320⁰F, so can be left in place with graphics attached to the back while pressing most heat-sensitive vinyl brands.

But why would you want to put the t-shirt ruler on the heat press? For some time the guys at CLPA have been trying to help you save wasted vinyl by the targeted placement of graphics only where they are needed. This allows for the graphics to be printed and cut with no waste, and then positioned exactly where they are needed on the shirt via the template. With the heat press safe template, this process is even simpler, as the template can be loaded and just placed in alignment on the shirt using their grid and multiple neckline options. CLPA recommends that you simply add five seconds to your normal heat press time to allow for the pressing grid.

There are very few HVT films out there that need to go over 160⁰C or 320⁰F; however, if needed Chrysti from CLPA tells me to simply position the graphics at 150⁰C or 300⁰F for ten seconds with the placement grid, and then press the shirt again later without the grid at the correct temperature and time. Given the massive savings in vinyl that are possible, this seems a small price to pay.

Congratulations to Gold Turtle Lina from T-Shirt Deisigners on Facebook who is this week’s winner.

The next shortlist is shown below and is brought to you by St Patrick. Don’t forget to submit your most fantastic designs, and then it's time for you to play judge! Cast your vote for the winner every week for the ultimate bragging rights.

The guys at CLPA are offering subscribed readers a 50% discount on their new heat press safe Prefect Pressing Grids. Just email them at [email protected] and tell the we sent you, and wherever you are they will work out how to get this unique tool to you.