DJ Clothing or Lifestyle Brand. The Concept and Production Behind The Dbmlabs Brand.

Friday, February 11, 2011

When we first started Dbmlabs, we wanted to create a brand that represented djs, producers and remixers, similar to how Nike represents top tier athletes, or how DC Shoes represents top tier skateboarders. We set on creating a lifestyle brand that captured the essence and talent behind the making, mixing, and remixing of music. Dbmlabs is more than just a Dj clothing and dj shirt company, it’s much much more than that. We actually hate the term dj clothing, but unfortunately it’s naturally what people have ended up calling us. You’ll notice that we put a lot of time and effort into the design and selection of our shirts. The Dbmlabs vision, which is constantly updated expresses our feelings towards the brand and what we expect of it. Our commitment to making Dbmlabs a global brand is the same commitment you have put into mixing, remixing and producing your music.

The Process Behind Dbmlabs

Many of our fans have asked us how our shirts and apparel are designed and put into print. It’s quite a complicated process, not because printing shirts is difficult, but ensuring the quality of shirts, designs, labels, and stickers (the whole package) is the difficult part. While most of our customers will vouch that the quality of our shits are top notch, we’ve upped ourselves again by recently using even better shirts (ringspun combed cotton) to make the shirts softer, smoother to the touch. For those curious about our process, here goes!

Step 1 – The Design: Getting the design done. Before we work with a designer, or if we have worked with the designer, we will have a theme or have them come up with some good ideas for our designs. We remind them that this is not a cheesy, novelty type of clothing brand, but rather a brand that we envision to be seen as the one and only apparel brand for dj’s and those who make music. You’ll notice that many of the designs are multi-layered and multi-dimensional, making them more interesting, unique and dynamic. We leverage some of the best designers in the world to create designs for us that push the envelope of visual imagery. In fact, our creative director Pat is from the Art Center in Pasadena, known as one of the top design schools in the world. We’ve even paid many different designers for Dbmlabs designs that we have never even used because it didn’t live up to our expectation. That doesn’t mean it will never be used, it just means it’s not ripe and ready for consumption. You’ll see below is the first draft, and you’ll notice that none of these made it to the final round. We make it absolutely clear that we stress quality over quantity.

Step 2: After the designs are completed, we send them over to our printers where the artist creates transparent sheets called films. These films are used to make the screens which are used for screenprinting.

Step 3: After the films are produced, the screens are made and the screen-printing process is started. All our shirts are screen-printed with high quality ink and dried so that they will last forever. Some of the shirts that are not screen-printed properly will fade quickly or will not look bold like its supposed to. There are so many different methods of getting printing on shirts, whether it is heat press, iron on, and even printing the ink with a printer onto the shirt. In my experience, by far, the best quality comes from the screen printing process. We have tried all of the other methods but the best is still screen printing with plastisol ink, which lasts forever. We take pantone color books and choose the perfect color so that it comes out exactly how we wanted it. You’ll notice that colors different depending on computer screen, monitor, television screen etc so pantone color books are used to standardize the exact color you mean when you say “blue” for example. They give it a color code for it.

IMG00058 20100114 1949 DJ Clothing or Lifestyle Brand. The Concept and Production Behind The Dbmlabs Brand.

Step 4: Woven labels are sewn on the bottom. Again with labels, there are many different variations of how labels can be placed but this seemed to provide the most “umph”. This label, to me, is like someone kicking you in the face without it hurting too much. You see it, but it’s not overwhelming and distracting.

Front of label

Back of Label

Step 5: Stickers are attached. We used the best stickers, printed on vinyl, full color process. These stickers sometimes cost up to 25 cents a piece but we know you put them in the most awesome places so it’s worth it for us to ensure that your sticker lasts longer than you do!

Most of you who are familiar with designing and creating shirts can appreciate the complexity and effort needed to really ensure the quality of both the shirts and the design.

That’s it..peace out and play on!

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