Creative Partnerships

When Dixon Graphics added Direct-to-Garment t-shirt printing to our growing stable of services, we knew that one important ingredient would define our success: quality art. That’s why our very first creative partner became Mary Watt Yeadon of Bellflower Art, an automotive artist who captures the magic of vintage cars in her paintings.

We scanned a dozen of her paintings and created a style that translates well to t-shirt printing. Our result is a consistent design from piece to piece that’s vibrant, eye catching, with an element of movement that works well with the subjects – vintage muscle cars, motorcycles, and even a friendly looking VW Bus.

Mary is a great collaborator. She understands that you don’t simply want to print a painting on a shirt in the shape of a rectangle. While that might be exactly right for a hung piece of artwork in your home, that would look like someone slapped on a t-shirt transfer and ironed it on at home. She works closely with our designer as he clips out the vehicles. We try to keep enough of the background to give the image depth and add some graphic elements to give the vehicles a sense of motion as they pop out of the box we create.

It all starts with great artwork and a artist willing to work with the production team to create a kind of brand identity for their work. Once you find that partnership, the product will sell itself. At least, that’s what I’m hoping now that our web store is up and running! But at this point in time, I can definitely say that we have a quality product to sell. Next challenge? Marketing. Once we figure that out, we’ll have a blueprint for taking original artwork, making it t-shirt friendly, building the web store, and marketing the shirts. Then we plan on finding more quality local artists who are interested in partnering up with us.