Brief Required to submit an outcome/body of work demonstrating a design related skill, or set of skills, that are aligned with and are valued by your chosen community of practice. This body of work can be in any media, use any technique or process and be in any form. However this must be determined through your research into your chosen community of practice and demonstrate high skill proficiency.
Community of Practice My chosen community of practice for this project is screenprinting. I have always had an interest in this process since foundation but only got to use it once. For my skill I also felt that I needed to add another dimension. What was I going to screenprint? This was when I decided to incorporate hand made type into the project. I have not ever devoted a project to typography before but have always wished to. I chose these areas of practice as I wanted to move away from the computer and digital based design. I have always felt that my strengths lay in more practical processes, where I have to use my hands. Previous to this course I came from a fine art background and somewhere along the way have lost this experimental and physical feel to my work. I have always been more confident in my practical skills so do not know why it has taken me so long to return to them.
From my understanding of these practices they require the following skills and attributes and these are what I intend to hone and improve throughout this project - Precision - Patience - Aesthetic Judgement - Composition - Time Keeping - Organisation - Drawing Skills - Metholodical Thought Processes Some communities that focus on print making and typography: - Print Club London - Typographic Circle - International Society of Typographic Designers
Screenprinting Darren recommended a book called ‘Pulled’ by Mike Perry which I found to be very inspiring and documented numerous styles of printing and techniques.
Handmade Type The same author also published a book called ‘Hand Job’ which is all about creating type by hand and features a catalogue of artists work which came in very useful when seeing how practitioners tackle their work.
Content When it came to content I struggled to give my project a purpose. We had been advised to keep it simple so I did. I have been guilty of overthinking the content of projects in the past and it has ultimately led to my downfall and I obvoiusly did not want to make the same mistake again. As I was working with type it made sense to explore the use of language and words, in particular the rules within grammar and English. for my first experiments I played on the use of the words ‘there’ and ‘their’ and also worked on legibility. I will be the first to admit these were not impressive pieces of work and in my first tutorial it seems that opinion was shared by many others. I had thought I was thinking too hard about my content as the focus for this project was on the skill but the general concensus was that I was in fact underthinking it. I recieved comments from my peers suggesting I needed to refine my message and content area. Paul Bailey also mentioned that at the minute it was ‘shallow and unengaging’. Which to be honest I agreed with. Who was going to be interested?
This was were I became stuck and having spoken to Sofie Greenwood it appeared she was facing the same challenge of giving her project a purpose so we organised a chat with Darren Raven which was thoroughly helpful. He agreed that my content needed some attention but that it needn’t be changed or made more complicated, I just needed to try and be a bit more clever with it. I needed to gear my content towards my chosen community of practice so I only had to focus on making it interesting for them as oppose to trying to make it interesting for absolutely everybody. He gave me suggestions for people’s work to take a look at and gave me some interesting starting points such as semiotics, puns and quotes by famous people. It was after this talk that I decided to stick with elements within language but I was going to challenge or excentuate the meaning and context of the words by using processes and techniques used in screenprinting and typography.
Words Words Words A book that I have already looked at for a previous project, and that Darren suggested I take another look at was ‘Words Fail Me’ by Teresa Monachino. It’s content is based on the inconsistencies and nonsense in the English Language and portrays this word play using typography and colour. In one section of the book her topic is Oxymorons and I chose this as a starting point for my handmade type.
An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines contradictory terms I chose to keep my words quite simple even though they could be considered obvious. I already found it a challenge to represent the word within the font and when people suggested I do more subtle words I got the impression it was just to make it more difficult for the sake of it. However I did recieve positive feedback from other students about my designs with people commenting about the simplicity yet effectiveness of just designing the type for one word at a time. My next step was to start to experiment with these words down in screenprinting so I booked myself into an induction.
Screenprinting As I had done screenprinting before I had a basic knowledge of what was required, however, the set up at LCC was completely different to that of my previous college so I had a lot of new tricks to learn. The induction was led by Barbara, a technician, and she covered all the necessary information that we needed to know before we were able to embark on our own projects. The following is what I learnt: - When setting up a screen there must be at least 5mm between the screen and the table. - Use assetate to position your paper with the correct alignment - Add acrylic printing medium to the inks before using them, the ratio should be 50:50 - The more medium added the more transparent the colour - There are 4 types of ink: Transparent, Semi Transparent, Opaque and Semi Opaque - Cover all other vacuum holes in the bed to make the current under the paper stronger - Use the squeegy at a 45 degree angle - Make sure to flood the screen after each use to prevent the ink from drying - When exposing screens the paper needs to be 80gsm - The image needs to be totally black and white
- When exposed the light goes through the white areas and hardens the photographic coating - When cleaning screens they need to be covered with a stripping chemical and then pressure washed to get the hardened coating and remaining ink off
Experiments The first time I went down to print I had only prepared a solid blocked out shape for my screen and I was going to see what outcomes I could make purely by experimenting with colour, positioning and transparency. I did have an idea in mind of what I was aiming for, just from seeing other student’s work on the walls. However my prints were a million miles away from my expectations. It was clear I had a lot to learn. The main problem was I had chosen too darker colours and not added the required amount of medium to make them transparent enough. When I tried to create a gradient with them the colour they mixed into in the middle was not always a nice one and very rarely did the transition from one colour to the other run smoothly.
Keen to improve my techniques I sought the advice of Richard, another technician that works in the studio. He gave me pointers on how to improve the gradual mixing of the paints and also started me off on a layering technique that mixed numeous transparent paints to create patches of new colour. It was surprisingly easy to pick up on and the effect it had was very visually engaging. At the next crit I was praised for having a body of work that showed experimantation and imagery that had a strong optical element.
Printing Oxymorons I hadn’t got a plan of what to do when it came to printing my typefaces, I was just going to experiment and see what I could come up with on the day. I was certain that by using colour and positioning I could come up with some interesting outcomes. My aim had been to contrast the context of the word with what font it was written in so I decided to try and further enhance this with the printing techniques I was going to use. When I sought feedback from peers they all agreed that it was nice to see something other than a print out and that had a tactile aspect that they could interact with. Anna Grenholm found it intriguing how I had opposed the meanings of the words but in some cases, through printing had switched it back. For example, and I agreed with her, the word ‘ugly’ was written in a decorative style that made it look more pleasing to the eye, but the colours I had printed it in had mixed into a murky green colour which had in a way stripped it of the prettiness created by the font. I have to admit that this was a font that I did not design as I could not achieve my desired look when I tried to create a decorative font.
Joanna Choukier also came over to take a look at my work and asked if I had thought about the paper I was using. I hadn’t up until that point as I was using so much of it that I couldn’t afford to be picky about paper stock. I had been using a selection of left over paper that my team acquired from green week which had of numeous different types of weight and finishes to it. What prompted her to ask was the print where I had used white ink over the white paper on the ‘lies’ design. It was meant to represent the phrase ‘Little White Lies’ and the idea behind it was that the word was printed large, you could not see it as they are only small, almost transparent lies but have still in some way twisted the truth. The white ink gave an even nicer effect on the paper that had evidently been left to grow old and yellow.
Developments Joanna liked my use of Oxymorons as a subject and suggested that I carry on with the same idea and produce more of them and perhaps intergrate some quotes that I liked aswell. I did like the sound of doing this and may proceed to do so in my own time as part of a self-initiated project, but I felt that just doing words that I liked was a bit ‘fluffy’ (for lack of another word) and reduced the potential for my work to appear interesting for my community of practice. I did want to move on from Oxymorons though and following my conversation with Darren I had held onto an idea that involved the use of insults. In particular I wanted to somehow how take these out of their usually dark context and print them in such a way that highlights how negative they are.
Backgrounds Whilst sourcing these insults I developed an idea that I found slightly more intriguing than a flat out insult. It was that of the back-handed compliment. Having found a few good ones, with a clear divide between the negative and positive parts I set about trying to illustrate them and printing my developments.
I really liked my back-handed compliments and think that it added a new dimension by having two contrasting meanings within one complete sentence. However something was missing. They needed some sort of background image behind them but I was pressed for time and could not complete the preparation needed to have a new screen designed. It was then that I decided to utilise the gradients that I had produced as colour experiments in the earlier stages of my work. I had done some A2 versions as I wanted to incorporate a range of different sizes into my body of work. Choosing colours to print in took a bit of time to figure out. As the gradients were so contrasting in tone and hue, adding a 3rd to the mix could have been disasterous. As there were a few of us from the course with our chosen COP as screenprinting, there was always someone there to give immediate feedback and advice and we all ended up learning little tricks from each other.
Highlighting the contrast Although my prints weren’t supposed be seen as final outcomes, because of their size I felt like they needed a little extra work doing on them. I didn’t think I had done as much as possible to highlight the negative yet positive tone of the backhanded compliments. When someone uses a back-handed compliment, one either can either accept the compliment and ignore the insult or not even pick up on it, but on the other hand, you could completely overlook the compliment as it has been immediately followed up with an insult. I wanted to somehow show how this could work both ways so had a think about how I could make the positivity of the compliment even more apparent and the negativity of the insult affect the sincerity of the compliment. Something that sprang to mind was to use use metallic ink to make the compliment or insult stand out more depending on how it is interpreted. But when looking through my box of art materials I found some gold leaf that I hadn’t used in a while and thought that it would do the job perfectly.
I didn’t really know how to go about applying it to the image so just through trial and error found that the easiest way was to press it over the ink whilst it is still wet from being printed on. The leaf attached where the type was and could be delicately brushed away once it had dried.
Transparency Having tackled one half of the back-handed compliments the other half was a bit more challenging. I needed to somehow give the impression that certain parts of the sentence were overlooked as the opposite half stood out more to the person hearing it. I asked Barbara what I could do and she suggested that I print white ink onto white paper like I had done for the oxymorons but that was not an option as I had a coloured background so the white would not go unoticed. This is when she suggested using a more transparent ink. I wanted to it to be visible but only very subtly so did some experiments to see how well using just the acrylic medium on its own gave a different finish. It only came out glossy and noticable on glossy paper but was completely invisible on other paper stocks which was disappointing as I was not using glossy paper for this set of prints. The medium also took an extremely long time to dry and could be smudged easily so I decided to abandon that idea.
Instead I had a go at mixing an ink that was 10% paint and 90% medium, hopefully the acryclic within the paint would mean it gave some sort of colour and dried faster aswell. It took some pracitce at getting it right but I managed to just about make the words subtly visible but without detracting from the word that was covered with gold.
Print Club London I had not yet recieved any feedback from any industry practitioners so Laura Clarke and myself decided to take our work over to Print Club London to see whether they would be willing to offer any feedback or advice on our respective projects. The technicians there were really friendly and we spoke to Ben, who graduated from LCC only recenty. He gave us a quick tour and told us more about the types of screenprinting they do at their studio. He was more than helpful and gave me some really positive and constructive feedback. The gold leaf was something he hadn’t seen done the way I did before and he really liked the gradients that I had produced, especially the ones on the older paper so I gave him some to keep. When it came the type and overall image he suggested that I somehow try and link in the background with what the words say a bit more, giving the example of the word drunk and saying how the background and general look of that print could be more all over place. Even going so far as to say ‘why not screenprint whilst drunk?’. I didn’t have the opportunity to take his suggestions on board as much as I would have liked but managed to create a new background that was more jagged and less smooth and soft looking.
He also gave me a couple of artists to look at who used different materials to print onto and re-used adverting posters to make their work with.
Reflection By choosing to undertake screenprinting as a new process to get to grips with I have had to develop skills not just related to the physical techniques needed to create a print. The preparation of a screen requires a very clear thought process and the ability to forward plan and be organised. As the workshop is only open for a certain time each day and it gets so busy I had to make the effort to come in and get my work done as and when I could. I also had to be prepared for things to go wrong and allow room for mistakes which a lot of the time produced the most interesting outcomes. Some other printers at the Print Club said that the most important aspects of screenprinting were to be methodical and organised and not be afraid to make mistakes as that is how you learn and improve. For the short duration of time that I have been using the process of screenprinting I can certainly agree with what they had to say.