Jun 30, 2017

Lending Our Artistic Talents to Our Beloved Community

Icebox Gives Back: Bringing Our Colorful Spirit to Emory Hospital

Hey there! It’s Ping. I’m going to be honest with you—business is booming at The Icebox. We’re slinging swag for some of the best brands in the world, and we couldn’t be prouder. But not for the reasons you might think.

Sure, it’s great to be the mascot for a successful company, and we’re thrilled to keep growing our customer base. But do you want to know what the best part of our success has been? Giving back. We’re so humbled and honored by the opportunities we have to give back to the community that built us—the community we love with all our hearts.

Our customers know us well—we’re a colorful bunch at The Icebox, and a huge part of what makes us special is our creativity and artistic talent. So when we came across the opportunity to work with The Foundation for Hospital Art and its annual PaintFest, we jumped at it and sent a team to Winshipcancer.emory.edu- Emory Hospital.

Visiting a hospital can a very stressful experience. It’s a sterile, often cold environment where you typically see white walls, illuminated by harsh fluorescent lighting. But in 1975, a volunteer at Northside Hospital named John Freight had a vision to give patients, visitors, and hospital staff a more comforting, meaningful experience by adorning the hospital walls with beautiful artwork. By 1984, The Foundation for Hospital Art was born.

This organization gets patients, staff, and volunteers around the world together to create paintings for hospitals. These works of art warm the cold atmosphere to bring some peace and comfort in an otherwise tense setting. John Feight’s son Scott now carries on his father’s legacy as Executive Director, and more than one million volunteers have created upwards of 44,000 paintings for more than 4,000 hospitals.

Scott believes in the power of art to heal and soothe. “If you have been recently diagnosed with cancer, it’s a significant moment in your life,” he says. “Art allows you to express what you’re going through in a helpful and impactful way.” It was Scott’s idea to hold PaintFest—a campaign to paint murals in 50 states over 50 Days. That’s one mural a day! The Icebox Team participated earlier this year at the local event, held at Winshipcancer.emory.edu-Emory Hospital.

We were honored to join this worthy cause and lend our creative abilities to the community in such a meaningful way. We encourage all our friends to learn more about The Foundation for Hospital Art and its mission.

Jun 25, 2017

The Art and Science of Sublimation

Turning Branding into Trend-Setting Design

If there’s one way to get your employees and customers excited about representing your brand, it’s providing them with trendy apparel that looks more like it came from the mall than from a company swag catalog. That’s what the team at UPS learned a few years ago when they added a custom brown and yellow plaid lining to a branded brown hoodie. The pop of color from under the hood quickly made it the most popular item in the company catalog.

That colorful printed lining is what’s known in the promotional space as a sublimated accent. Sublimation printing is a process that combines science with art. By using special sublimation ink, heat, and pressure, color is applied to a garment when the solid ink instantly becomes gas, skipping the liquid form altogether and bonding the color with synthetic fibers at the molecular level. (It’s important to note that sublimation won’t work well on natural fibers, like cotton.) The result is beautiful and colorful. And when combining the science of sublimation with the talent of the art team at The Icebox, your options for trend-setting branded apparel become limitless.

Because the color is bonded with the fabric at a molecular level, the printed design is permanent—no amount of washing will fade or otherwise damage the artwork. This enables apparel retailers to greatly increase the perceived value of a garment by incorporating beautiful design. Sublimated accents take everything from the sides of tank tops to the sleeves of baseball shirts to an entirely new level of cool.

One of the best applications for sublimation is for performance apparel, which is mostly made from synthetic materials. These blends are notoriously stubborn when it comes to adding decoration that lasts, but sublimation dyes are meant to bond to these fibers.

Garments are not the only pieces that can be transformed by sublimation printing. The process can also be used to decorate hard goods, given the surfaces are pre-treated with a special coating. And because sublimation allows for all-over printing, the creative results are often bold, exciting, and retail-worthy. All-over printing is a trend that's very popular right now for drinkware, as an example. Everything from your casual coffee mug to a high-end stainless steel water bottle can be decorated using sublimation.

If you’re looking to take your branding to a creative new height and offer your employees and customers some gorgeous swag that will turn heads, talk to the creative experts at The Icebox about sublimation!

Sources:
https://www.asicentral.com/news/magazines/stitches/july-2015/the-digital-decision/ https://www.bestblanks.com/aboutsublimation.html