Context, an Introduction

We are a do-it-yourself screen printing company, Deaths Head Designs. There are two of us, JayJay and Freddy. JayJay does the writing and draws the designs and Freddy does the screen printing and poses for the photos. Division of labor. But they overlap. Freddy kibitzes on the creative and JayJay helps with the production. And takes the photos.

We started doing this in 2007 in Freddy's basement, but that story is told elsewhere. You can read about it on the Deaths Head Designs blog. I would even encourage you to, here:
The Hard Way
And here:
Our New Studio

We've had so much trouble. Good lord, this has been ridiculously hard in so many ways. The combination of our low budget, work space problems, time constraints and nightmares with the most basic materials has been almost crushing. I remember back in 2007 when I was posting on my favorite informative artists' and screen printers' forum, gigposters.com, about our decision to start up a screen printing business, one of the oldest members and most expert screen printers said "Welcome to Hell." Yep. Man knew whereof he spoke. But I wouldn't give it up for the world! Even after all we've been through I'm still glad we do this. Maybe you will be too if you try it.

I'll try to explain the stuff we've learned in the hope that it might make things easier for you, if you are crazy enough to want to try screen printing. We do things our own way and that might not be the way most screen printers do things, but I like to think we do a few things right.