Published by Alex 2 years, 8 months ago
in News.
We have just extended our promotional clothing range by offering organic cotton garments. These are supplied by London based Saf, who make clothing that is “made to exacting standards using quality organic cotton.”
We had a good look at their samples and I must say I’m extremely impressed by the quality. In fact, with the temperature hitting 32 degrees C in London today, I decided to ‘road-test’ a t-shirt, as I was starting to melt in a jacket and tie. What struck me was how soft and comfortable the ring-spun cotton was and a number of people commented on how nice they thought the t-shirt looked.
Indigo are committed to supporting etichally aware clothing manufacturers and we have always support the WRAP program, but Saf take things one step further with these fair trade, eco-friendly, tees and polo shirts. I think they will be popular with our private label clients as well as business who have CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) policies. The other reason why I enthusiastic about their range is they come in colours other than ecru (natural cotton colour) and they come in womens’ styles - both big plus points in my opinion. I would be interested to see if they produce a kids t-shirts, which I imagine may have a market in both the UK and Europe.
Some of the more observant vistors to our site may have noticed that we have a new featured site of the day at the bottom of the right hand column of the Indigo home page. This link is drawn from our new useful clothing sites page.
This collection of links is powered by the Indigo Del.icio.us site. Del.icio.us is piece of social software and allows us to share with you the useful clothing and t-shirt sites that we may stubble across in our daily travels on the web. We’ll try to keep it updated every day and help you navigate the world of t-shirt printing and customised clothing on the web. If you have any suggestions just email us or leave a comment below.
It has been a pleasant weekend, crammed full of exciting sport and it has been a pleasure to watch England play great cricket in the Ashes, Paula winning the Marathon at the World Championships in Helsinki and the All Blacks beating Australia in the Tri-Nations rugby. Come Monday morning though it will be all hands on deck at Indigo.
August is normally a quiet month in the promotional clothing industry, as more and more of the English take a cue from our continental cousins and depart the cities for more balmy climes. However, a colour process rush job for 500 t-shirts, another rush job for Aldi and a large intial order for a double glazing company means that come 8:30am on Monday morning it will be manic in the office.
I get a buzz out of being busy though and while rush jobs can be stressful, we excel in achieving the tight deadlines that clients and agencies now demand. I would hate it if we spent our days twiddling thumbs and maybe I’m odd, but I am quite looking forward to the haggling for production slots and the batering with wholesalers that tomorrow promises. Bring it on!
Published by Alex 2 years, 9 months ago
in News.
Indigo have a spare 2005 Pantone formula guide (solid uncoated) still in its plastic wrapping for sale on Ebay. Feel free to bid for it if you need one 
Pantone books are vital for colour matching when screen printing. The problem is the colours fade, and they get handled a lot, so it is imporant to get new ones, but sadly these vital tools (for those dealing with graphics) are quite expensive. We are however chuffed with our new Pantone book (solid coated) and hope the new owner of our other new one is equally delighted.
When friends in large corporate offices tell me they have a ‘clear desk policy’ I often shudder at the thought of my own desk; a slab of laminated MDF hidden under swatch cards, t-shirt samples, price-lists, job files, post-it-notes and the usual desk detritus. Don’t get me wrong, I can see why big companies try to force their staff to have clean desks, especially if they are client-facing, but surely an individual should organise his desk they way he/she wants. I remember my Latin teacher had a desk which literally over flowed with paper. An extremely bright man and his desk was perhaps just a reflection of his creative inner workings. It would be bizarre to think that he should have been made to keep his desk empty – it just wouldn’t have fit with his personality.
What made me think about this subject was a post on the excellent Signal vs. Noise blog by the web/interface design gurus of 37 Signals. Their web design is excellent and many components of their designs have inspired elements of the Indigo website. Their Defensive Design for the Web book is a regular read when I am in a web design mood. However, I have to disagree about this clear desk productivity thing. I even tried it this week but already 24 hours later most stuff is back. I don’t think it is a bad thing to have a messy desk - it is just the way I work and as long as the work is done, our clients are happy and there is more time to be had having fun rather than tidying up then long live an Indigo office without a clear desk policy!
