If you’ve ever gotten a T-shirt from an American Red Cross event or Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) gathering, you are familiar with Eric Orn’s work.
Orn owns 1010 Graphx Screen Printing and Design in Silverdale and has designed thousands of shirts for numerous groups throughout the county and even the state. An experienced illustrator, Orn began creating shirts at a young age and has owned 1010 Graphx Screen Printing and Design for 11 years.
The fishing enthusiast recently invited us into 1010 Graphx to discuss the art of screen printing, his family and love of fishing.
Question: How does it feel to be nominated for Community Spotlight?
Answer: It’s kind of neat. It’s exciting.
Q: What is your favorite aspect of Silverdale?
A: Probably all the fishing to be honest. It makes it kind of fun. We just need more rivers — that’s the only thing it lacks. I’ve been here 16 years, I was born and raised in Renton.
Q: Family?
A: My wife, Margaret, and our two boys, Kevin, 22, is a senior at Eastern Washington University, and Derek, 18, is a senior at Oly. Derek actually works for me. He’s probably worked here since he was 8, but he’s going to be going off to college soon, so I’m going to lose him.
Q: How did you get involved in screen printing?
A: I’m actually an illustrator by trade, I went to college for that. I grew up with it. My dad’s a chemist in plastics and we’d do shirts at home. We made shirts at home on cookie sheets in the oven. I didn’t really plan on doing this for a living. It just started in a garage and went from there.
Q: What did you do before screen printing?
A: I’ve worked for other screen printers before and I worked as an illustrator in Seattle for “Fishing & Hunting News.” That was a great job because I love to fish — it was like my dream job, I came right out of college doing that.
Q: What do you like the most about your job? The least?
A: Being the owner and having your own company, you get to pick and choose the things you want to do and who you want to support. If I want to do stuff for the American Red Cross or MADD, I can. Being the owner you get to make those decisions of who and what you want to do stuff for. We’ve gotten to know a lot of people in the community. I can’t go anywhere without running into someone I know. That’s fun. Least — The tight deadlines. We get hit with tight deadlines. It’s still a printing industry and you need it by a certain day and it has to get done. We have to work 12- to 14-hour days sometimes.
Q: What types of items do you print on?
A: Anything you can wear just about — shirts, sweatshirts, jackets and stuff.
Q: Do you do most of the designs yourself?
A: Yes, I can draw anything so that helps. We don’t have to pay anyone to do it, it’s been real nice.
Q: Is it difficult to come up with designs?
A: The longer I’ve done it, the harder it gets. I have to think of stuff I haven’t done before. The custom ones I get to do are the funnest.
Q: How many designs do you typically do in a year?
A: I’ve hit close to 2,000 designs in a year before. By the end of the year, I’m fried. We take time off around Christmas and New Year’s so we get a break.
Q: Do you have a favorite hobby?
A: Probably fishing. I don’t get to fish as much as I used to anymore, but I enjoy it when I do though.
Q: Are you involved in any community organizations?
A: Only my church, Keyport Bible Church. Most of my off time is spent doing that. If I wasn’t doing this, I’d go into the ministry. That’s my passion, that’s where my heart is, but this is what pays the bills. My youngest son is going into pastoral studies at Concordia University in Oregon. I was like ‘wow, that’s what I want to do.’”
Q:How many local businesses and organizations do you design shirts for?
A: On average, in a year about 600 like the Red Cross, MADD, CRISTA Ministries. We do a ton of stuff for the Navy and community-wise, a bunch of churches and schools keep us hopping.
Q: What’s the largest order you’ve completed?
A: I know MADD had one for 2,000 shirts one time.
Q: How long did it take to do that order?
A: Oh, we can knock it out in a week. We’ve done two-day turnarounds before. That’s not normal though. A normal order is always two weeks from start to finish, but I don’t think we’ve ever hit two weeks. We always finish early.
Q: What is one thing you want to try in your lifetime?
A: I haven’t really thought about that. In February, my wife and I are going to the Bahamas. We thought “it’s our 20th wedding anniversary, so let’s do something.” So probably I want to do more traveling.
Q: If you could change one thing about Silverdale, what would it be?
A: Except for the mall, there’s no big draw to come here. There’s no resorts, no nothing to draw tourists and people here. We have Dyes Inlet and other things here, but no one comes to check it out.
Q: Are there any memorable sayings you’ve printed on shirts?
A: Not really. Every once in a while we’ll get a memorable shirt because it gets banned from school or something. We had a shirt banned because it said “party” and the school said it was a bad word.
Q: Do you have a whole closet of shirts you’ve made at home?
A: Yep, they kind of cycle through and we go through them. I hold on to the ones that mean something to me. Having access to all of the garments, I have way too many coats. Being in this line, you have access to a lot of cool stuff. I can’t pay for stuff at the store because I know how much the shirts cost.
Q: Do you anticipate being in the screen printing business for many more years?
A: I’m not a worrying type of person. Because I have so much faith, I never worry about that kind of stuff. If it rolls under, then I wasn’t meant to do this. Life’s too short to hate your job and be unhappy.
