Run to the finish line
Printing tees for the CattleCon 2026 challenge
By Lon Winters
Images courtesy of Lon Winters
Nashville, Tennessee, home of honky-tonks and both kinds of music — country and western — hosted CattleCon in February, billed as the largest cattle event of the year.
Thousands of cattlepeople gathered to enjoy the sounds of the “Songwriting Capital of the World.” Every year, CattleCon brings together education, networking, business advocacy, and fun for the whole family with access to the best minds providing the latest, most innovative and valuable insights. CattleCon is a place to connect and form relationships from all over the country, and meet with industry leaders, experts, and suppliers. This National Cattle and Beef Association event showcases the latest and greatest products and services. Cutting edge technology, innovative equipment, and new ways to improve efficiency, productivity, and profitability.
CattleCon is not just about work, though. It’s also about fun with family and friends. The BeefIt Fun Run is a casual, family-friendly event sponsored by a long-time client and adds a little movement, as it were, to an otherwise full schedule. Traditionally, the merch stayed pretty simple: Basic type with limited colors. This year, BeefIt decided it to step it up. The quantity was 500 with the expectations changing. Something more graphic which also meant more expressive. We’ll take that. The concept revolved around bold mechanical sign-inspired type on the front reading “CattleCon,” paired with “BeefIt Fun Run” and an illustration on the back featuring a running cartoon cow. It was playful and energetic, appropriate for a run, but a departure from the usual.
As is the norm, the artwork arrived in a less-than-ideal format. It was an Adobe Illustrator file, but it was immediately clear it wasn’t built in Illustrator. It was created in something else and saved as an Illustrator file, bringing with it paths, masks, effects, and ultimately PNG files. Some elements were supposed to be vector and some not. The type was meant to look dimensional. It looked as though this had been created in some AI app. We could almost guess the prompts. It most certainly was not print ready.
We had to convert what we were given into something that could run on press. Considering the amount of tonal information inside the lettering, we ruled out traditional spot color. The challenge was retaining the sharpness of the vector elements while also building the tonal transitions. Despite its chaotic construction, the fact that it was a desired vector-based image gave us a starting point. We isolated those elements and deleted unnecessary background effects, particularly the horrible gray drop-shadow obviously concocted in AI. With no vector versions available, we knew a sim process separation of the PNGs would leave us with soft edges.
Instead of trying to redraw everything, including the raster areas, we opted for a hybrid approach. We placed the PNG into Illustrator at size and locked it on its own layer. On a new layer above it, we carefully rebuilt the white outline of the lettering as clean vector paths. This outline became the structural framework. Once the vector outline was complete, we used it as a clipping mask for the raster components, effectively removing the original outline from the image that would be separated. The interior textures would remain raster inside a precise vector boundary. Those raster interiors areas were separated in Photoshop, while the vector outline stayed clean and independent. Everything was ultimately brought back together in the master Illustrator file. Because the PSDs were generated from that same file, alignment was exact. That hybrid workflow gave us the best of both worlds. The white outline and center as well as the cartoon printed with the crispness of vector, while the interior of the letters retained the organic subtle transitions with halftones.
For screen making, the back print ran as a six color, starting with the white printer or base plate on a 166 TPI (threads per inch) mesh for adequate ink deposit to support the colors on top, but not so much that we’d lose detail or create a heavy hand. From there, colors were stacked on 272s wet on wet, building the cartoon and background. All screens were tensioned to 45 N/cm2. The sequence was red, brown, royal, and turquoise. A blending white mixed with clear to balance brightness and softness to finish. The front print followed the same logic, minus the red and brown, maintaining consistency between front and back.
Surface management had become a factor. Fabric texture immediately showed up. To combat this, multiple smoothing techniques were used. Early smoothing flattened the fabric before ink touched the shirt. Additional smoothing after flashes leveled the ink surface, ensuring that subsequent colors laid down smooth. The payoff was visible in the final prints.
Of course, there was a hiccup. There always is. After hours of cleanup, a stray drop shadow managed to emerge on a letter. It wasn’t noticed until screens were made. At that point, the solution wasn’t digital — it was physical. Some block out and a paintbrush took care of it. It’s the kind of fix we all have made, and it’s a reminder that no matter how much time we spend on the computer, creative problem solving is king.
When the shirts came down the dryer, everything clicked. The cow even had personality. The type was clean, bold, and dimensional. The front and back worked together. A few hundred shirts later, BeefIt had something different to offer at CattleCon, still rooted in tradition. CattleCon isn’t chasing trends and the BeefIt Fun Run isn’t about fashion. It’s about people participating in something familiar and fun. Taking AI generated artwork, low resolution, and overly complex files and making them printable is the real run — all the way to the finish line.
Lon Winters is founder and president of Colorado-based Graphic Elephants, an apparel decorating studio and international consulting firm. He was inducted into the Academy of Screen and Digital Printing Technologies in 2013 and is widely recognized for his contribution to the graphic printing industry. Learn more at graphicelephants.com.
