FROM BURNED FILM TO FABWORKS
David Cruey did not enter the screen-printing industry through a classroom.
He entered it through a fire.
In 1993, David was hired as Art Director for Shirtique Screenprint in Walnut Creek, California. He had almost no screen-printing experience, and the person who was supposed to train him left after only two days.
Then, at the end of his first week, the shop burned to the ground.
When everyone returned after the fire, the people who stayed and helped clean up kept their jobs.
David stayed.
Among the remains of the shop were old pieces of separation film, many of them burned around the edges. David began pulling them apart, studying the individual layers and figuring out how completed separations had been constructed.
That became his education.
Before digital layers and automated separation software became standard, David learned production art with Amberlith, Rubylith, camera-ready artwork, photostat equipment, knives, film, and hands-on trial and error.
He wasn’t simply learning how artwork looked.
He was learning how artwork became ink.
As the company rebuilt and evolved into Event Screen Print, David remained Art Director and moved deeper into event merchandise and commercial screen printing.
The work included projects connected with the Blue Angels, Thunderbirds, Fleet Week, AMA dirt-bike racing, classic-car events, and the Hollister Independence Rally.
He worked with former world champion motocross racer Brad Lackey and became a principal designer of merchandise associated with the Hollister Independence Rally.
From there, David moved to the Sacramento area and became Art Director for Wildman Custom Screen Printing.
This was a transitional moment in the graphics industry.
Traditional hand-production methods were still common, but computers were beginning to move into art departments.
David continued cutting separations by hand while teaching himself the emerging digital tools of the trade early versions of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, along with the lettering and graphics software available at the time.
One foot was in the analog world.
The other was stepping into digital production.
That combination shaped the way David would approach artwork for the rest of his career:
Understand the production first. Use the tool second.
During the Sacramento years, much of his work moved into custom motorcycles, motorcycle culture, racing, apparel, and event merchandise.
He created production artwork for builders, businesses, clubs, and events throughout Northern California while still traveling back to the Bay Area for additional event-screen-printing work.
David later returned to the Bay Area and eventually became Art Director for BYOG, Build Your Own Garment in Dublin, California.
By day, he was running an art department.
At night, he was still producing screen-print artwork.
The workload grew enough that David brought his brother in to help.
Eventually, David and his business partner Tony created DNA Design and Printing.
THE DOT-COM YEARS
DNA operated during one of the most unusual periods in the technology industry: the 1999–2000 dot-com boom, when technology companies were expanding rapidly and Y2K was creating its own wave of promotion, marketing, corporate events, and merchandise.
DNA was not a massive operation.
It was David, Tony, four employees, and Tony’s wife handling the books.
But the production volume could be enormous.
DNA became a contract screen printer for companies including Adobe and Capcom, handling high-volume apparel orders that could reach approximately 180,000 shirts.
For a shop that small, jobs of that size demanded efficiency.
A production mistake did not affect ten shirts.
It could affect thousands.
Artwork had to work.
Separations had to work.
Production had to move.
And problems had to be solved before they reached the press or immediately once they did.
David was not sitting in an isolated design department during those years.
He was involved in artwork, separations, preparation, printing, troubleshooting, and the daily reality of moving large quantities of garments through a small production operation.
That experience permanently changed the way he thought about artwork.
Because something can look perfect on a monitor and still be completely wrong for production.
A color that doesn’t need to be there matters.
A weak separation matters.
Registration matters.
Garment color matters.
An underbase matters.
Every unnecessary production problem becomes much larger when the order reaches tens of thousands of shirts.
During these years, David also continued working throughout the motorcycle, event, apparel, and independent clothing industries.
Eventually, the DNA partnership ended and David relocated to Florida.
He was ready to leave screen printing altogether.
Then came Florida and one of the first reminders that the work he created could have a life far beyond the job itself.
WORK THAT LASTS
One of David’s first Florida projects was artwork for Lou’s Blues, at a time when the upstairs operation was also known as the Dragon Lady.
More than two decades later, through ownership changes and the evolution of the business, that identity remains in use.
And it is not the only example.
Across the local area, there are businesses still using logos and artwork David created years and in some cases decades ago.
That longevity became another part of the lesson.
Good production art does more than survive the press.
Sometimes it survives the company’s next chapter.
Not long after arriving in Florida, David was considering leaving the industry entirely when an opportunity came from Tropical Design.
Bill and Bill offered him a place in the company.
He accepted.
That decision became approximately 24 years of his career.
At Tropical Design, David continued creating and preparing artwork intended for real-world garment production.
The environment changed.
The technology changed.
The software changed.
But the central responsibility remained the same:
Build artwork that can actually be printed.
At the same time, David continued working independently and supporting other printers throughout Florida.
Over the years, he created artwork for or worked alongside local print and apparel operations including:
- JJ Screenprint
- Sandpiper
- Florida Boy
- Barefoot Designs
- Good Vibes Screen Printing
- Clark’s Custom Screen Printing
- Sunray Tees
- jbon clothing
- Private Label Systems
Some were individual jobs.
Others became years-long relationships.
Some became the kind of printer-to-artist relationships where the call usually meant one thing:
We’ve got a problem file.
One of those relationships became jbon clothing, an urban underground apparel line for which David created much of the artwork during its T-shirt-production years.
He has also continued developing original apparel and production artwork for independent brands and customers, including ongoing work with Sea Thug and other marine, fishing, music, event, and commercial clients.
David maintained a long-running production relationship with printer Ralph, working together at different points over many years.
Around 2017–2018, David stepped away from Tropical Design for a period and worked more directly with Ralph in an effort to build an independent printing operation.
The timing was difficult.
Hurricanes hit.
Pricing was too low.
The business struggled.
David eventually returned to Tropical Design around 2019.
Tropical had never fully replaced the role he had filled.
He remained there until the company closed in 2026.
POLISHING TURDS
For years, David had a joke about one of the less glamorous parts of production art:
He polished turds.
The customer brings in a fuzzy JPEG.
A screenshot.
Artwork copied from an old business card.
A logo with no original file.
Missing fonts.
Poor resolution.
Too many colors.
A complicated illustration that was never built for screen printing.
Something that looked fine on somebody’s computer but became a nightmare once production tried to use it.
The job was to make it work.
Clean it.
Rebuild it.
Redraw it.
Reduce it.
Separate it.
Fix whatever needed fixing so the printer could actually do something with it.
The phrase was a joke.
The skill behind it was not.
Today, FABWORKS calls that Artwork Rescue.
By the time Tropical Design closed, David had watched nearly every part of production art change.
Hand-cut film became digital separations.
Photostat equipment disappeared.
Illustrator and Photoshop became industry standards.
Film-output systems evolved.
Direct-to-film production arrived.
Computers became faster.
Software became smarter.
But one thing never changed.
Somebody still hands you artwork that isn’t ready.
And somebody still has to know how to fix it.
That is where FABWORKS comes from.
Not from a branding exercise.
Not from a software preset.
Not from somebody deciding overnight to become a production artist.
FABWORKS comes from more than three decades spent between the art department and the pressroom.
From burned separation film in 1993.
From hand-cut color layers.
From the earliest days of digital production.
From high-volume contract printing during the dot-com boom.
From motorcycle culture, motorsports, surf, apparel, clothing lines, local printers, businesses, brands, events, and commercial production.
From owning a print shop.
From working inside print shops.
From supporting other printers.
From rescuing bad artwork.
From creating identities that businesses still use decades later.
And from learning that a file is not finished simply because it looks good on a screen.
It is finished when it is ready for production.
Today, David continues working with longtime customers, developing new relationships, collaborating with printers, and building the next chapter of that career through FABWORKS.
The tools have changed.
The experience behind them has not.
FABWORKS
ARTWORK ENGINEERED FOR PRINT.
The work didn’t start with FABWORKS.
FABWORKS is simply the name it finally has.
