In order to produce a design which looked digital, I decided to use the screen-printing process, which, if done effectively, can look particularly neat in limiting imperfections. This process involved exposing my initial design onto a screen coated in emulsion, which was then washed out and ink pulled through the exposed areas, a process which clearly shows a physical engagement between the hand and the material, supporting the definition used in my accompanying essay.
In order to help with alignment of the design where two colours have been used, a proof print was initially pulled through the screen onto some material which then acted as a guide for the rest of my prints and helped the design seem more disciplined. However, since the process is mainly about time and skill, some prints produced more imperfections than I anticipated, however, this is something which is almost inevitable due to the nature of this process.
Despite this, the use of strong lines and limited colours particularly worked in my favour to help structure and align the print, which meant that a few came out well enough with virtually no imperfections that they could potentially be passed off as digital prints.
Digital design production:
In producing type which reflected handmade styles, I started with existing typefaces then manipulated these in order to produce type which better represented the styles and processes. For instance, in the case below, serifs were added to the typeface, as well as an adjustment of kerning and tracking between letterforms to accompany these new elements sufficiently. It was thought the addition of these serifs reflected more traditional type found in letterpress since many popular modern, san-serif fonts were not yet developed. The grainy effect also brought in small imperfections into the design of the type which reflected the processes of screen-printing and letterpress whereby sometimes the ink does not fully transfer.
Another example of how I manipulated type shows an initial use of Helvetica, which was then broken up into sections and bits cut out in order to reflect the aesthetics of crumbled letraset type. Through this process of manipulation, this also allowed me to use the styles to reflect the words themselves, for instance how here, 'clumsy' has been paired with broken elements.
This broken aesthetic can also be seen through other elements of the final poster design, whereby small elements of the design have also been broken to produce a similar effect to ensure that the design does not look 'too perfect' as digitally produced work typically does.
Paper stock:
In terms of the print production of these designs, both posters used the same paper stock to both traditionally and digitally print in order to produce colour consistency between the two designs, showing them as a series. A matte stock was used since in the screen-printing process this allows the ink to stick better to the paper and avoid smudges or imperfections, which helped with the intended style of this design to look as if digitally produced. This stock also worked well in digitally printing the second design which was meant to look as if hand-produced. Matte stocks are known for being good at enhancing colour, which created more impact and added a slight bit of texture to this design, reflective of the tactility of handmade design styles.
The poster above was also experimented with printing on glossy paper, however it was soon realised that this did not appropriately reflect the message I am attempting to get across through the use of an aesthetic contrast, since glossy stocks are more reflective of digital printing.
No comments:
Post a Comment