Screen Printing - December 2017/January 2018 - 40

SHOP TALK

'BAD SANTA' MAKES HIS
LIST AND CHECKS IT TWICE
2017 has seen its fair share of naughty and nice.
ANDY MACDOUGALL, ASDPT

'd been waiting about half an hour just outside international
arrivals in the Mexico City airport. The usual hustle and
bustle was going on, emotional reunions erupting all around
me, half a dozen drivers with signs picking people up - none
with my name on them. I admit I was starting to wonder if
maybe they forgo...
"Are you Andy?" A smiling young man introduced himself
as Fernando and apologized for being late - traffic was brutal.
"They told us to watch for a gringo
who looks like Santa Claus!" he said.
They thought it was pretty funny. I
didn't tell them it was true. For the last
few years I've been playing Santa at the
Wachiay Friendship Centre's annual
Christmas party in mid-December.
I guess if I'm Santa, I get to review
the list. You know the one I mean:
people who were good as well as the
ones who were acting bad. Who's
been naughty, who's been nice.
We should get the bad and the
good out of the way first. Anybody
who knows me or has read this column through the years knows I am a screen printer. They also
know I decried the name change of SGIA back in 2003 as well
as its makeover from a screen printing organization to one
with a more digital focus. I still don't like it, but I've learned
to live with it; let's call that one a lingering bad.
Now, with the next big shift announced at the recent show
in New Orleans - with the Expo to become "Print United" in
2019 - I was left wondering if SGIA was getting further away
from the old core, giving up the ghost on screen printing
completely and picking up offset around the corner and running off to Vegas (or, more correctly, Dallas). Or if they were
clutching at life preservers to maintain the viability of the
annual tradeshow and convention format, their main focus.
Turns out, it's neither.
It took reading a review of the recent show in the Canadian Graphic Arts Magazine - an offset-focused journal - to
get an outside perspective on what was happening. While
screen printing lost a sector - graphic advertising - to digital, offset got crushed over the last 20 years. The reviewer
in the magazine had never been to the SGIA show, and the
takeaway from the article was disbelief over how big and
vibrant the show was compared to the dwindling efforts of
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SCREENPRINTING

traditional print and graphic shows in North America. They
were genuinely excited about Print United.
So I'm making the call: Ford Bowers and the management team at SGIA get on my good list this year. We'll see
how it shakes down, but I think print - all print - needs to
get together and tell governments, business groups and other
industry sectors, the education system from preschool to
university research labs, and the general population that we
are still here. We're in your phones and on your buildings
and buses, as well as your books and magazines. We are not
just some old guy with arm cuffs, an apron, and an A.B. Dick
press making business cards (though we all know him).
Print in all forms, including screen printing, is still a major
employer as a sector, and we are growing, not fading away.
Let's move on to naughty. This is probably the biggest
part of my list, but once we remove politicians, it becomes
way more manageable. The list is still long, but filled mainly
with people who think it is fine to
steal an artist's work and reproduce
it and sell it online. My rock artist
friends are robbed daily; my indigenous artist friends get ripped off all
the time; and they join a parade of
brands that are counterfeited. This
theft is aided and enabled by online
retailers and social media platforms
that let anyone sell things for pennies
per click. The rampant theft is also
facilitated by digital printing. This
Santa hopes that in 2018, all their
printheads dry up, and some enterprising lawyer catches the attention
of Facebook, Amazon, eBay, et al. with some class action
suits that make it a crime to allow the sale of stolen art
products on their various web platforms.
Onto nice, the best part of the Santa job. I need you to
indulge me here. My Vancouver Canucks have a new coach
and a group of young players who play the game at a high
speed, as well as a potential rookie of the year in Brock
Boeser, a young American from Minnesota who played at
the University of North Dakota. After finishing near the
bottom the past few years, the Canuckleheads are in the
hunt for a playoff spot and playing well. They recently
knocked off Philly and the Pittsburgh Flightless Birds,
which probably made my friend Art Dobie of Ikonics upset,
so that's nice, too.
Speaking of the New Year, I'll take this opportunity to wish
all Screen Printing readers a great holiday with family and
friends. Looking forward to new adventures in 2018.
Andy MacDougall is a screen printing trainer and consultant based on
Vancouver Island in Canada and a member of the Academy of Screen
& Digital Printing Technology. If you have production problems you'd
like to see him address in "Shop Talk," email your comments and
questions to andy@squeegeeville.com.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Screen Printing - December 2017/January 2018