If you love jazzy vibes and cool music, then you’ve gotta listen to Ivan Mazuze.

About Mazuze:

Ivan Mazuze, Mozambican, Cape Town based saxophonist, has an extensively musical experience with South African internationally acclaimed artists such as Jonathan Butler, Jimmy Dludlu, Hotep Galeta as well as top bands such as Dondo, Tucan Tucan and Loading Zone to name but a few. Ivan Mazuze’s debut album entitled Maganda (2008) has diverse styles with strong influence on African music.

taken from ivanmazuzemusic.com

Check out these funky slim-fit tees that we did for Mr. Mazuze.

(more…)

2 colours, screen printed on the front

2 colours, screen printed on the back

Recipe for these great, 100 % customised t shirts

• Excellent ingredients
• Good preparation
• Perfect timing
• Garnish to perfection

(more…)

We didn’t help put Humpty together again… but we gave him stitches and printing.

Humpty Dumpty embroidered golf shirt

(more…)

These 160 gram t shirts for Touch Lezinto are light, soft and fitted. It has a single colour screen print on the front of the tee and a single colour on the rear.

Straight from the LavaLab, these 230 gram ladies tops are creatively fresh and make a bold statement with its shocking pink trims. Loudgear (our client) designed these tops to ensure  that the Queens of  Tugwell Hall at UCT are hip and happening – but this was a task intensive process that had us biting our nails right up to the last minute because of its extremely tight deadline.

Here’s a summarized version of what happened:

1. We developed patterns from scratch according to the client’s specification and size curve
2. sourced 230 gram ribbed fabric (black) at a price that was good enough to maintain the client’s budget
3. dyed the pink fabric according to clients specification
4. supplied fit samples
5. processed artwork for screen printing
6. processed artwork for digitizing
7. cut and soabarred the garment panels to ensure that all panels and sizes were easily identifiable
8. pre-planned printing and embroidery to ensure consistency in  colours for printed and embroidered finishes i.e. the print colours had to match the embroidered colours.
9. also ensuring that the sizing of the print and embroidered logos were suitable for all the garment sizes (small to 3 Xlarge)
10. sent the appropriate panels for printing (2 colours sleeve, 2 colours back)
11. sent the panels for embroidery
12. assembled the garments
13. quality checked and removed rejects
14. ironed and flat-packed
15. re-did  all rejects.

All of this in 16 days.

The result is a beautifully mass produced garment that could be mistaken for something that was bought from a designer store like YDE or Lacoste.

PS. Apologies for the low quality images

Sometimes making people happy in the world of business can result in wonderful personal gains . And no, I’m not referring  to an “arms-deal-type” happiness, which may be terminal (in business and in life) like in the case of  Mr. Shaik (aka Shaba). No, I’m talking about good, prompt, hassle-free delivery of service and product.

I was afforded some happiness last week when I received two VIP tickets to yesterday’s Rugby Festival which was held at the new Cape Town Stadium in Green Point.It was an experience of “goosebumpular” emotions which resulted in a great victory for the Stormers over the Boland invitational team (43-17). And in the curtain-raiser the South African Legends 10s team beat the International Legends 27-5. So…. all-round victories for the locals.

The greatest victory however goes to a happy people; the famous Capetonian sea-breeze; a beautiful mountain and the organisers (some wearing Lava Ink promo t shirts) . Even with a crowd of 40 000 people, it was  smooth sailing from beginning to end.

The organisers of the event SAIL Stadefrance, made sure that help was available at all times and that the assistants were easily visible, wearing Lava Ink’s VB 145 gram t shirts in bright yellow. This is an excellent cost effective promotional product which is 100% South African (and cheaper than the Chinese imports nogal). It’s not very “feshenable” but rather functional as it serves its basic purpose.

People can moan and groan about the state of the world……….and all that is, is talk. Then there are those who do. Those who do are the ones who change world. Organisations like The ManKind Project (MKP). I love their vision, which is partly described by this inset taken from the MKP website :

Men have been warriors since the beginning of time and every man has his warrior side. But social forces pressure many to repress this part of themselves. They unconsciously substitute a distorted shadow for the healthy warrior energy so essential to sustaining individual and communal balance.

The New Warrior is a man who has confronted this destructive “shadow” form and has achieved hard-won ownership of the highly focused, aggressive energy that empowers and shapes the inner masculine self. Sustained by this new energy, the New Warrior is at once tough and loving, wild and gentle, fierce and tolerant. He lives passionately and compassionately, because he has learned to live his mission with integrity, and without apology.

continue reading

We were asked to print some 200 gram t shirts for MKP and initially I wanted to do a Direct To Garment (DTG) print. I was then handed this strike-off  and informed that the guys got this result with a screen print - we decided to run with it because it looks amazing!

Strike-off (pre-production approval)

What’s great is that the actual t shirts even looks better than the strike off (see below). Well done guys, I must say that your skills are unmatched and you have restored my faith in CMYK screen printing.

Actual printed t shirts

We are currently working on this 3 colour screen print for Sasko and here is the artwork compared to the actual print.