Meet Tom + Kat Vaughan-Johnson | Owners + Print Masters at Split Arrow Print House

We had the good fortune of connecting with Tom + Kat Vaughan-Johnson and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Tom + Kat, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
While we don’t think of our print house as a “we made it” level of success. And we are currently in a huge growth spirt in our shop & lives. We do recognize that are successful in many ways. We are coming up on our 11th year anniversary, so we must be doing something right.

We think the most important factor has been connection. Since we are a print house dedicated to helping artists create retail-ready products for their art. We recognized early that we need to be their cheerleader. Helping boost, coach, and reach out to encourage them to be and become a successful business selling their work.

For the duration of our shop we have felt that ‘we are your friends who print’. We really mean that too! We never wanted to be a faceless online company where you order the cheapest and fastest prints. We knew we were good at printing but we needed to be great at turning everybody we can into our friends and form a meaningful long term connection. That’s one of our measures of success. When we get a thank you or feed back about how we keep tabs on people, pushing their ideas, or even just being there, it makes it all worth it. How we see it is, if you do well, we do well. And if we can be the leader in helping boost your artist friends, all the better. We hope others follow our lead.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
We are Split Arrow Print House a print shop for creative people. We focus on printing for creatives and artists to ensure they have easy access to professional quality printed products. We want to be there to lend a helping hand for artists new and seasoned to live their dream of being a full time creative and have a successful art fueled business. What sets us apart from other shops is we are truly artist owned & operated, ensuring we take the same care printing your work the same as we would with our own. We also make it a point to be engaged in each person who prints with us to be there to encourage and help out where we can. Being your friend with a print house.

Like any business we have changed over time, some changes quicker than others. We are currently making some huge and fast changes to our shop and how we operate. After passing a decade we decided to take a deep dive into everything we make and broke out the microscope to see where each product can be improved or tweaked to better serve today’s creatives. We are currently still making some changes in the background that we are super excited about and can’t announce yet. One thing we have been pushing our focus on community and part of that is we are building a free-to-all online ‘Print Camp’ to teach and give insight on how to build and get the most out of every thing we print and how to combine products to provide better value to their purchasers. This project is a huge one that we can’t wait to debut [summer 2026]

Recently, we have been tuning our Risograph and Giclée printing process to bring in new things and push our capabilities. We are the first [and we think only still] print house with Risograph printing available for 24/7 online ordering! This means all the products, features, prices and info are available for all to see without the need to wait for email replies. This alone took years of dedication and work to see what it is and what it could be.

And in our Giclée department we recently got the honor of becoming a Certified Print Lab through Canson®, who make excellent papers out of France for over 15o years. Being certified shows that we are truly printing at the highest museum archival level with accurate colors, a precise workflow, and excellent craftsmanship. We couldn’t be prouder to receive this accolade, and print with them on our side.

Our ability to stay relevant and stay printing has been thanks to our ability to be flexible and learn fast. We wear a ton of hats for two people with a few art degrees. We often find ourselves writing custom automations, additive manufacturing algorithms, writing code, coming up with new print ideas before they trend, predicting artist economies, and focusing on community building and social media. Without being able to wear a ton of hats and be curious enough to learn skills or ask people who know better than us, we wouldn’t be printing as long as we have.

We have learned through the years there’s a lot more needed to print for others than controlling machines and hitting “print”. We need to be peoples’ friend, but also showcase our authority in print. We often get thought of either as this huge print company but in reality it’s just two people with an unhealthy obsession to be great at everything we do.

We came from just two people in an apartment making prints of their own art and merging cutting room floor work together to form a side project to being a leader in printing for creatives. We keep on pushing and growing what our shop can be. Our original goal of simply creating great prints for others is now the foundation of something so much larger. It certainly wasn’t easy getting to where we are today and it’s not going to be an easy road where we see ourselves next. But we know we can do it. We have some ambitious goals when it comes to what is possible with a small print house and we hope people jump on board now to follow along with what we have planned next.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
First and foremost, we are doing at least two days of breakfasts at Homegrown. Everything on their menu is incredible, warm, and comforting. There are too many good options for us to do just one meal there. With weather permitting, we are hitting parts of the beltline for a short bar crawl and lunch at Breaker Breaker. The aquarium is a must see for all first time visitors, we know it’s a little cliche but you can’t beat the incredible array of marine life they have there. Evening time calls for a pop in at Virginia Highland Books before martinis and prime rib at Highland Tap. Followed by a night cap in Little 5 at the Porter and hopefully catching a show at Variety Playhouse.
The rest of the week we are doing lunches along Buford Highway (Bahn mis at Lee’s are a requirement), before hitting some of the many state parks Metro Atlanta has to offer. We love going to various trails and nature preserves that aren’t too far from the shop or home for a walk, and you usually get to see some really interesting wildlife. Atlanta is truly a city in a forest, and it is worth taking the time to enjoy what is living with us. After a long day of walking, we are cleaning up and headed to Wisteria for dinner on the patio. Wisteria has an incredible wine list, and every single menu item is an absolute hit. Over indulging there is a MUST, at least three appetizers and two desserts on top of entrees for everyone.

Atlanta is full of little pockets of different people, lifestyles, dining experiences. It is hard to condense it all to a short visit, since each pocket is unique and interesting in its own way.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Being around for as long as we have we can thank our success to a ton of people, from each artist who trusts us to print their work with the care and attention of our own art. From countless small companies that what to work with two creative printmakers to give their shop a fun and unique edge. and a ton of teachers, family, and friends

But, most importantly our print house wouldn’t survive without the encouragement and ideas from each other. Being in business together and being together for 16 years has allowed us to feed off of each other ideas and help push what we love to do to new levels. Each having a different point of view and fire inside of us that we use to balance each other out.

We have given our print shop and our lives everything we can to still be here having fun and loving what we do. We couldn’t do it without the other and the blending of both of our idea.

Outside of the two of us we more than likely wouldn’t be here still printing without the help and encouragement of Gary Stanton of Odditees Screen Printing. We share the same warehouse space with them and without them working hard in a similar creative career we wouldn’t be as inspired to show up and give it our all every day.

Website: https://Splitarrowprints.com

Instagram: @splitarrowprints

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@splitarrowprints

Other: TikTok: @splitarrowprints
Reddit: @splitarrowprints

Image Credits
Tom & Kat Vaughan-Johnson