OUGD504 - Design for Print - Screen printing final designs

Design for Print - Screen printing final designs

Friday 29th November 2013

This morning I went to the drop in digital print session to print off my positives for my screens. It came to £12 just for this part and so I'm beginning to doubt whether this is such a good idea.

Screens:

A1 both the rose lid box and the smaller butterfly box

A1 Exterior of the Octagon

A1 Swirls and lined border - Metallic ink

A1 illustrations and stars to be foiled in gold

A3 foiling and flocking for the inner card design

A1 interior words and border of the octagon 

I started to prepare my screens for printing on Monday. I started off with 6x A1 screens as I saw that they were free and so grabbed as many as possible. 
As you can see there is a hell of a lot of screens, and so I decided this morning to only prepare 3 to start with, and have a rethink about how many I would need realistically over the weekend, as 6 is a lot of money, time, effort and heightens the difficulty and therefore quality of the outcome and so there's more to go wrong, I was advised by the staff member supervising me.

I prioritised the 'foiling' screen, the  'swirls' screen and the 'boxes' screen design. This is because these are the screens that use the effects that can only be achieved using screen printing.  

I didn't realise how long just 3 screen would take me to clean and coat - 3 hours! They have to be left for at least an hour to dry the emulsion and I have to get a train in 20 mins so the exposing will have to wait until Monday!

Sunday 1st December 2013

I've decided to do the majority of the project digitally and add the finishing processes that can only be produced using screen printing in this way, otherwise, we're talking about 7 screens!!

I have finally become united with my chosen stock, and, combined with the disaster of the the inner card misprint, means I can take a good look at the colour of the turquoise card stock and try to match it with my on screen choices to get the colour scheme perfectly calibrated! 

Monday 2nd December 2013 

Because of the problems with stock this morning, I have gone back to just plain white A1 card stock. Irritating and time wasting, but at least I have a comprehensive solution! FINALLY!

OUGD504 - Design for print - laser cutting the boxes

Design for print - laser cutting the boxes

28th November 2013

I decided it would probably be best if I were to laser cut the black boxes BEFORE I print on them with screens/ hand print because it will be easier to register without pencilling onto the stock.

(The black boxes are the 'rose' boxes)

It took me around THREE hours to laser cut these as there were problems with the laser cutter - it kept freezing up and I couldn't figure out why. I resolved the problem by being patient with the machines and not rushing them!

One of the final cut out boxes:

I made about 6 (I want 4 in total) to leave room for errors with screen printing.

I need to decide whether I should laser cut the other designs before or after I screen print - there is no easy way of registering the artwork with the octagon since the design is complicated and the net is symmetrical so I would depend on registration marks around the artwork to align different layers. However the smallest box could probably be laser cut first.

OUGD504 - Design for print - Problems and resolutions with the inner card

Design for Print - Inner Card Design - Resolving Design Problems 

So, after digitally printing around 30 inner card final designs double sided, I come to realise upon assembly of one of them, that I HAVE DONE IT WRONG!

As opposed to going like this ....

...it goes like this...

!!!!!!!

...despite me doing it correctly on all of my previous mockups, and writing a little reminder to myself to make sure the panels were correctly arranged!
This is because in all of my mockups etc I have printed off 2 sheets of paper and stuck them together as opposed to printing double sided so I have cut it out and stuck it correctly.

This feels like a major setback as I don't feel like I have time to sort this out!

I know what I have to do - just change the panels around, but this moment of panic also gives me doubts about my design that I didn't even know I had problems with before.

Because it's double sided - this affects the finishing effects that I intended to apply - on the 'unveiling' page I wanted to have flocking on it but because of the calculations the page with the foil on it is the reverse, meaning 2 effects are on the same piece of paper. Because they require different temperatures and lengths of time under the heat press to develop, could this mean that they either burn/ melt or don't develop at all?

I sought the advice of Andy from the Blenheim print room, the main campus for foiling/ flocking. He said that he sees no problem in this but only compromise the temperature/ time to attend to both processes.

Danielle also told me that the thermochromatic ink design that I had created was not suitable for the thermochromatic ink that they provide at the Vernon St campus, as it did not act as a mask, how I had designed it to be. I could purchase thermo ink online, but I didn't know enough about each individual products/ brands to be confident to experiment and would rather use it under the guidance of the staff. I asked the staff at the Vernon Street campus, Neil and Sarah, what they think that my resolutions could be.

They said that to achieve the 'heat to reveal' effect, the thermo ink would have to be the negative space around the lettering and be EXACTLY the same shade and registered perfectly. This sounds super difficult, and now I'm racing against time. I can either do this option, just do a colour change ink effect instead, or not do it at all and put a different effect in the pass the parcel. 

I decide I'm just going to do a colour change, as it's still relevant and it's not nearly as difficult!

So, digital print is booked for Monday at 3.00pm to reprint all of the inner card designs, I have changed the panels and bought all of my materials!

Monday 2nd December 2013

Because of the problems with stock this morning, I have changed all of the colours of the inner card design and bought different stock to print it on at 3pm. Hopefully this print will be successful!

OUGD504 - Design for print and web - session 1 - rewritten brief

Design for Print and Web - Reconstruction of the brief - session 1

My 3 Chosen briefs from the selection from ISTD:

1. 2010 project 4
2. 2009 project 2
3. 2009 project 1

I highlighted all of the key words - including some of the vague ones - to really get a grasp on what the briefs were asking me to actually do!

And from this it became apparent which one was my favourite: 2010 project 4.

After highlighting all the key words from the 3 briefs from the selection from ISTD; we began to analyse and deconstruct them using a series of questions/ statements.

5 Problems that the brief proposes I solve:

1. How can you make reading relevant to the lives of people who don't usually take the opportunity to do so?
2. How can you install a typographics piece in a public space without it becoming a piece of graffiti or visual pollution?
3. How can you stimulate the thoughts of a really broad audience? IE 'Residents and visitors of all ages'
4. How can you incorporate narrative/ lyrics to the public space in which they're installed?
5. How can you turn typographic narratives into a spectacle?

5 Facts about the subject and content:

1. It must celebrate reading in the 21st century
2. Must engage 'residents and visitors of all ages'
3. Must not become visual pollution!
4. Must be incorporated into the surroundings/ space in which they're installed.
5. Must consider how the readers engage with the text.

5 Facts about the intended audience:

1. They may not have the opportunities to read on a regular basis.
2. Their age range is very broad.
3. They regularly travel around in public spaces as a pedestrian.
4. They are willing to 'be lead on a journey of discovery' - does this mean they aren't very busy?
5. They may own technology capable of processing apps such as augmented reality - iPhones / iPads - does this give them a certain financial status? Does this cancel out the idea of reading for all?

5 Things you want to communicate in this brief?:

1. That reading can be 'fun' for everyone of all ages.
2. That by utilising new technologies you can turn the street into an art space.
3. The marrying of the stories/ lyrics with the chosen location / surroundings.
4. The idea of typography as art for everyone.
5. The idea of performance art can be understood and appreciated by everyone.

Things I don't know about this brief that I need to find out:

1. How to design for Augmented Reality.
2. How I could project onto buildings?!
3. Where I would be able to place the installation in relation to the story and surroundings.
4. How to engage such a wide audience.
5. How much I am allowed to propose and how much I can actually execute successfully.
6. Whether an older audience with the interpretive technology would care to engage with the installation and whether a younger audience who would care to engage but not have the interpretive technology of Augmented Reality.
7. How am I going to realistically show my work/ ideas?

Ideas for products of this brief:

• Augmented Reality iPhone/ iPad App
• Light projection installations
• Chalk drawings
• Natural green moss graffiti
• Power washed dirt

Because we deconstructed and really thought about the brief and it's suitability to our limitations and new understandings we then decided to re-write our briefs:

BRIEF TITLE

City Canvas

THE BRIEF

Design and create a public typographic installation that will engage a large audience.

CONCEPT / PREPOSITION

A series of preposed light projected installations for around a street space with a GPS orientated Augmented Reality App that the audience can use

BACKGROUND / CONSIDERATIONS

It must not create visual pollution/ litter/ graffiti in the chosen area and so must not be permanent or damaging in any way. It must engage a broad audience in a visually stimulating, unusual manner. It must work with the surroundings not just ergonomically but also subjectively/ contextually.

TARGET AUDIENCE

Residents/ commuters/ visitors of the chosen area that don't have the opportunity to read on a regular basis. They often travel as pedestrians through public areas. They may own iPhones/ iPads and so have a certain financial and social background.

TONE OF VOICE

Friendly, fun and easy to understand as it will be read by a widespread audience of people of all ages whilst they pass by. 

MANDATORY REQUIREMENTS

Fully planned concepts mocked up so that they are fully understandable and that can be proposed further. Possibly even a working Augmented reality installation to demonstrate how the installation would work.

DELIVERABLES

A working Augmented Reality installation and a series of design boards showing all proposals.

OUGD504 - Design for Print - Preparing and Planning to Print and Sourcing stock

Design for Print - Preparing and Planning to Print

21st November 2013

Because this is such an ambitious project - the preparing of the printing has taken half a day in itself! 

Facilities breakdown in chronological order:

1.Digital Print

• Octagon design - Border, Turquoise Background, centre with words, and registration marks.
• Inner Card design - double sided complete design with registration marks.

2.Screen Print

Paper Screens

• Rose box complete design & butterfly box complete design A1
• Octagon - gold swirls A1

Fabric Screens

• Foil and Flock inner card A3
• Illustrations and stars Octagon A1

3.Laser Cutter

• Octagon - Cut through stars and registration marks, score through folds.
• Rose box - cut through stars and around design and score
• Butterfly - cut around design and score

ADD REGISTRATION MARKS TO EVERYTHING!

***AMENDED : CANNOT PRINT DOUBLE SIDED A1 IN DIGITAL PRINT!***

I totally forgot that you can't print double sided a1 in digital print!

My peers say that I should screen print the whole thing. This sounds like a lot of work, but will the outcome be worth it? 

This would mean :

• 4 x a1 Paper screens
• 1 x a1 fabric screen
• 1 x a3 fabric screen

Sourcing stock

Stock needed (doing 4 complete Posh Pass the Parcels in total)

4x A1 Antique white stock - at least 330 - 400 gsm

2x A1 black card stock around 330 gsm

1xA1 (turquoise maybe?) or antique white stock

25th November 2013

***AMENDED : CANNOT BUY A1 ANTIQUE WHITE CARD IN THE LIBRARY!***

Further research reveals that it's not a very common item - but bleach white is. If I can get antique white / off white/ ivory / cream stock then I will go with that because bleach white doesn't really suit the 'posh' theme of the pack. 

I phoned my Dad, who works at a large scale printing company to see if he could help me out, as because it's such an uncommon item I would have to order it - at least 25 sheets from the likes of GF Smith that I can't afford and don't need that many!

Success! He managed to get me 10 sheets of a1 cream/ ivory card stock around 330 gsm and 3 sheets of turquoise. This is so useful but I won't be able to get it off him until the weekend which delays my printing plans for nearly a whole week.

Because of my trouble with stock I'm getting on with the things I am able to do. I printed off the inner card design on cream stock as it's only a3, and I've booked a laser cutter session for Thursday to cut out the Rose box design.

Because the Rose Box design is on card stock, I thought it would be easier having it cut out first to be able to register with my screen design. 

You can see the laser cutting of the boxes here.

OUGD504 - Creative Suite Session 3 - InDesign

Creative Suite Session 3

Like in Adobe Illustrator, InDesign can work with global swatches. This means that they are linked to whatever artwork they fill. 

We can even have a number of tint filled artwork and when the original colour is changed, all the tints change accordingly.

Preparing image for InDesign in Photoshop - the rules

• Colour mode - save for CMYK for InDesign because it's a print program.
• Image size - prepare the image at actual size of use in InDesign. Too big, file size is unnecessarily large therefore is a burden when saving and takes longer to print, especially digitally. Too small becomes pixelated when stretched to size.
• Resolution - set to 300 dpi
• File format - save as either a TIFF file or a .psd. If you need transparency in your image, DO NOT SAVE AS TIFF but .psd instead as it preserves the transparent elements of your image.

Preparing image for InDesign in Illustrator - the rules

• Colour mode - work in CMYK mode or spot colour modes.
• File format - save as an .ai document
• Resolution - There is no such resolution for .ai documents because it's vector based and recalculates according to size.

OUGD504 - Design for web session 3

 Design for web session 3

Creating the rest of the buttons and making them link to each other and work:

'h ref' is the reference of the number that leads nowhere.

By replacing the hashtags with the name of the pages the buttons will be linking to, we can make the buttons link to each of the other pages.

By writing, for example 'this is the home page' we can determine whether the links are working properly and legitimately linking to each of the four pages. I replace 'hello there!' with 'this is the home page' and I click save. 

I then replace 'this is the home page' with 'this is the about page' and instead of clicking save, I click save as. I then rename 'index.html' to 'about.html'. I do this for all the pages! All the pages are basically the same except for the name of the page and the one line of text. But in this way we can test the buttons and check they all work.

The CSS box model

By creating a wire frame design; IE a quick sketch and working out all of the margins, padding and borders you can then work out all the requirements for your CSS coding before you jump on the computer. 

<p> means paragraph break for bodycopy.

<br /> means title break for bodycopy.

selecting the font size.

it makes the font size smaller.

selecting the font colour

it changed the font colour.

Determining the title from the rest of the text:

in CSS, write 'h1' to determine the specs for the title/ heading. I type in the font size and colour like in the previous font determining sequence.

Then, in the html code, to determine or 'call' the text that you want as a heading, put <h1> </h1> either side. I save and then refresh my website:

The heading is determined as a separate part of the text.

Inserting an image:

After working out your wireframe design, you'll be able to know what size and where you want your image. In this case, I have found the image on Google images. I took it into Photoshop and then with the square tool I went to fixed size and typed in the desired size of the image. I then selected the area I wanted of the image to include.

Then, in the 'right' section that I already determined (above) I went to image > and picked the image.

Useful tools for creating a comprehensive website:

• Vimeo is a service will compress videos for website design.
• Soundcloud for sounds
• Lightbox for image galleries

OUGD504 - Design for Print - Development of Print Pack artwork

OUGD504 - Design for Print - Development of Print Pack artwork

After researching into Victorian and Art Deco art (here)  I made a sort of, 'mood board' of ideas. Throughout this post I will keep referring to this mood board as I picked it apart for all different aspects of the artwork:

Design of Artwork for Octagon net

After scribbling all of the ideas possible for the details that could be included on the mood board, I started to jot some down onto an actual net, seeing how it would fit, what might look good etc. I really liked this design revolving around the centre, an ever-symmetrical composition.

Then I had an idea. Going back to one of my original ideas of a Jules Verne style piece about Victorian-era adventure, I sort of thought I could have illustrations of print equipment sort of 'orbiting' the boxes in the middle:

I only did one rough panel and I was hooked on this idea. Again, a mixture of all the different things on the mood board, this idea included all different equipment orbiting and floating around the centre surrounded by swirls and stars, and bordered by the titles of different kinds of print. I wanted it to look like some sort of circular Victorian astrology chart.

I don't normally do this, but I liked this idea so much I didn't pursue initial ideas any further and jumped straight into the development of this one!

I wanted the illustrations to be of realistic resemblance, but with a Victorian etching-style execution.

Here I am refining my drawings so they can be reproduced easily on Adobe Illustrator.

Here is one of the finished illustrations after being taken through Adobe Illustrator. I used the pen tool to go over the sketch and the fill tool. I played around with the stroke tool to create this sketched effect digitally.

I used this font quite often throughout the project, so it was nice to include it on the little ink can

I jumped straight onto the main design with no other sketches for this (!) 

I immediately drew several borders to create the outside of the design.

I had to go through quite a few typefaces to see what suited the best! 'Connie' was the best because it was bold and had big bowls on the letters so was easy to read even if small, and was elegant yet striking - very Victorian!

closeup of the design:

Taking different sketches from my original research into Victorian and Art Deco illustrations, I create a bike- spoke resembling design for the second layer of the rose boxes. Here is the final design for this:

Never Ending/ inner card design artwork development

For the never ending card design, I wanted to play to the fact that it had some really interesting opening mechanisms. I thought that maybe it could feature a lock that would open, or some windows/ doors that would 'reveal' the possibilities of designing for print.

With a less rough mock up of the original, I start to draw the intended graphics on a working model:

Using the idea of unveiling the possibilities of print, the front cover features two curtains opening. This could feature flocking so it could look like actual curtains?!

It then goes into a description about the features on the cover.

The next 'page' shows a lock opening -it including foiling through screenprinting.

The last page - another unveil/ reveal feature - thermochromic ink!!

Digitising the designs:

Using the patterns and fonts used all the way through the project, I created these designs, according to my sketches.