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Mirror Image Inc, a Pawtucket, Rhode Island based company that screenprints on garments and tote bags. The company's innovative screenprinting techniques have won every major award in the printing industry involving difficult photographic reproduction and special effects printing. In addition to the awards for exceptional productivity and talent, the company (as well as its owner, Rick Roth) have also gained national attention and accolades for their charitable work and community involvement. == History == Mirror Image was founded in 1989, by Rick Roth, a self-taught screen printer. He majored in philosophy and religion and graduated with honors from Colgate University, and later continued his studies at Harvard Divinity School. Roth's first commercial job was helping a friend print a yellow shirt with green ink that said “Fed on Zinke’s Corn.” Roth went on to print thousands of shirts with homemade equipment, primarily the designs of his friend Ken Brown. His first popular print were caricatures by Brown. One was called "Ike and Tina" but it was Eisenhower and Tina Turner and another was "Steve and Idi" Steve Lawrence and not Edie Gorme, but rather Idi Amin. He hand stretched screens, made an exposure unit from a light bulb and pie plate, and printed by eye without the benefit of even a handpress. He eventually went to work at the Somerville Media Action Project (SMAP), a youth program that also did simple screenprinting. Roth went on to work with Mel King as Project Manager of the Youth Entrepreneurial Development Project (YEDP). At night he would still print shirts on the simple equipment at SMAP. Eventually he left YEDP and when SMAP closed its doors they eventually sold him its screen printing equipment. Upon buying the equipment, Roth formed the company Mirror Image with one employee. When it grew to three workers the workers, with encouragement from Roth, signed a contract with the United Auto Workers and remain unionized to this day. The name of the company Mirror Image was actually chosen by the first employee. After 11 months their landlord sold the building they occupied in Somerville, MA and they moved to an old steel warehouse in Cambridge. In the 1980s Mirror Image's screen printing expertise grew, particularly reproducing photographs. Roth and his part-time employee Colin Cheer did something that was innovative at the time – they used four screens to print a black-and-white photograph. They also began to do primitive multichannel color separations, going beyond the usual CMYK to using two cyan screens and two magenta screens to control the full color prints. These separations were done using a stat camera and contact frame and using actual "screens". They then took advantage of advancing technology and using the earliest Apple computers and earliest versions of Photoshop they created "simulated" process separations. These were photographic reproductions using halftones but using colors chosen from each printed piece, not the usual CMYK. During the 90s, the company, despite having a clientele with mostly small print runs of difficult prints, was turning out nearly a million shirts a year (with only a single eight-hour shift per day) and won numerous awards despite being a relatively small business. Because of their growing reputation and expertise, Mirror Image was invited by the manufacturer of the press they used, MHM Screen Printing, to do testimonial ads and represent the company at domestic and international trade shows. At these shows, Mirror Image would create a technically difficult design, which was printed by Mirror Image staff in the MHM booth during the show. At this time MHM was having marketing issues having been seen by many as selling a press that was not supposed to be good at printing on dark shirts (which is more technically difficult than printing on white shirts). Mirror Image deliberately engineered designs that then would then, right on the trade show floor, be printed on dark shirts. This was so impressive that at the international printing exposition FESPA in 1996 at Lyons, France more than 100 people would be standing in the booth at a time watching the press print. By 1999 Mirror Image was forced to move due to escalating rents in the Greater Boston Area. Mirror Image and 18 of 23 employees then moved to RI to a space in Pawtucket where the shop still resides today. With Mirror Image's reputation for doing photographs on t-shirts firmly established, Mirror Image began expanding to a new area of technical expertise, branching out into special effects printing, including stunning work using high-density jobs. Examples of some of his more innovative pieces were printing brand-name beer bottles that looked like photographs with water droplets that looked real. Mirror Image working closely with designer/printer KC Hruby also developed a technique to screen print what looked exactly like masking tape. In fact, people would try to peel the tape off the shirt it looked so real. This led to Mirror Image printing fashion work for companies such as Burton, Akademiks, Rocawear, Wrangler and Subware in addition to custom work for museums; big-name clients like Boston Beer Company (makers of Sam Adams Beer),; and hot-market printing for events like the Super Bowl that garnered Mirror Image local TV coverage. Mirror Image also began doing contract work for promotional products distributors, under the name Monkey Fish Printing. Mirror Image’s reputation as a union shop that treats its employees well also has earned it jobs doing non-profit and political work. Mirror Image has done work for Oxfam America, the Green Party, Amnesty International, Students for a Free Tibet, Music Makers Foundation, New Orleans Musicians Clinic, and Farm Aid.〔D. Sexton, "http://screenprinters.net/articles.php?art=335," ((online )).〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mirror Image Inc.」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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