Trust Newsletter — February 2017
Nachos and Ice Cream Cones
This month’s Long Lunch Friday was a very special Fort Worth friends edition. We started at Spiral Diner for some excellent vegan meals and then walked over to Melt for some of the best dessert in Fort Worth. It’s great to go out and eat as a team and it’s even better when we get to hit up a couple of our favorite establishments. Our family atmosphere is really boosted when we get out and go somewhere together.
A Focused Philosophy
I’d like to take a moment to introduce an idea that we have started to think about the last few weeks. The concept is “Making People’s Favorite Shirts”. This may seem obvious, but it’s easy to get caught up in dollars and cents and lose sight of the fact that a shirt’s value is directly proportional to how often it is worn in public. A shirt is an extremely effective promotional item because it acts as a personal recommendation of the person wearing it. Wearing a band’s shirt is the closest thing to telling everyone you meet “you should check out this band”. However, that impact only happens when the shirt is worn. This is the genesis of our Favorite Shirt philosophy, striving for each shirt we print to hang proudly at the front of someone’s closet, not stuffed in a drawer.
So what makes someone’s favorite t-shirt? It’s a combination of four main things: the garment, the design, the messaging, and the print. In the next couple months we will be digging into those areas and giving you tips and ideas to improve your brand, but for now let’s think big picture. Our goal is to help you bring those first three areas together, match up with our printing knowledge, and consistently produce people’s favorite shirts.
Our Favorite Shirt
While we were thinking about this concept of making people’s favorite shirts, we started thinking about our favorite shirt: our classic Trust Printshop logo tee on a Canvas 3001. If you know someone who works at Trust you know that we are constantly wearing our shirts. Over the years my wardrobe has slowly shifted into 95% Trust shirts. They are my favorites because they are high quality, comfortable garments with a great simple design and they represent a brand that I’m proud of.
To show you what we’re talking about, we have decided to share our favorite shirt with our friends! We have printed Trust shirts in white, black, and grey and we would love to send you one. We’ve got a simple form set up at the link below. Just give us your contact info, your size, and pick a shirt color and we will send you your new favorite t-shirt for free. We hope you wear it often and the next time you order with us ask how we can help you print your customers’ new favorite shirt.
Request Your New Favorite Shirt
Print of the Month
Merchline | Fullbleed — Out of Reach
3 Color HSA – Tultex 0202 Navy
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This month our print is for Fullbleed. Fullbleed is an art and clothing line that produces and sells shirts with the art of Rob Dobi. Fullbleed comes to Trust through our very good friends at Merchline, a great company that manages brands, merchandise, and online stores.
I love this design for several reasons. The concept is great and the layout is very well considered for the shirt that it’s going on. The jagged bottom edge of the chairs and the stars around the edges allow it to blend perfectly into the shirt without creating hard edges or an obvious frame. This allows the design to work together with the shirt to form a cohesive product, instead of feeling like a decal that was stuck onto it. The illustration itself is well done and the subtle blue color looks great on the navy fabric. Our HSA ink is a perfect match for the flat shapes, and the minimal halftones in the moon give it a great touch of dimensionality.
