Speaking from experience, change of direction.

Today Charlotte came to me with an idea. So far we have been set on making a small book guide describing the different print processes available around the college. The idea is instead to make a different postcard for each process, kept together in a box.

I really like this idea as the idea of producing a book seemed quite typical. Also it would be nice for the first years to have physical examples of screen prints, letterpress etc. to see what they actually look like in the flesh. We asked some people on our course about producing postcards instead of a book and we got nothing but positive feedback. Something else that was brought up is that at the beginning of the year everyone is moving into halls and wants something to brighten up their rooms. This would be the perfect keep sake that is relevant to the course.

A design sheet of the idea by Charlotte...

speaking from Experience

Today me and Charlotte went on a bit of a primary research spree. We started off by going downstairs to see James in digital print to see what different stocks that are available. We also had a sneaky peak at the swatch book that he'd made.

We then went back upstairs to the print rooms so we could interview one of the technicians. They were so helpful and we found that our course are second most popular to book the room (400 this year) after textiles. This is great as it obviously shows that once we know that the facilities are available we are very keen to use them. We also asked what other printing processes were available that could be appropriate for our course and what different stocks they provide.

We did walk down to Vernon street, but the entrance was closed and we couldn't work out how to get in!   So we're just going to go back on Monday.

We then had our crit. I think it went well, there wasn't really much negative feedback which is good. Although we did find out that Joe Warburton is doing a very similar project to us, so we're going to have to make sure that we keep to our own style and make it unique.

We asked an opinion of a classmate about if they feel they would have benefited from being more aware of what printing processes the college has to offer. Here's the feedback we got...

Speaking from experience

We asked people from our course on Facebook about their knowledge of the print processes in the college so that we could get a better idea about what we're doing and what's the best way to get it across. heres some feedback that we got.

Basing mine and Charlottes project on print is made easier by the fact that we have both taken our print elective at Vernon street and also had our induction at Blenheim walk. This will save us a lot of time as we don't have to go through all of the inductions and already have basic knowledge on how to use the print rooms. The printing processes we have already had inductions in are...

Screen printing 

Collograph

Letterpress

Woodblock 

Monoprint

We have decided that these are the processes to include in our final product, as they are directly relevant to our course. Although we want to have an induction in foil blocking, which from what I already know is similar to screen printing but involves a heat press. We feel that people on our course would benefit from knowing about this resource and is definitely something I've been intending to use for a while.

Today we mocked up our design direction boards for our crit on Friday. We have decided to keep the general layout and design similar to our initial ideas for our print designs, we think that this will give a feel of what we aim to produce.

Slogan. MAKE THE MOST OF IT. Add brainstorm here

We decided to choose each others strengths and weaknesses to make it easer to filter down which individual tasks we should carry out. At the moment the idea is that we both have a say in the over all design and concept, but I am more involved in the layout of the guide and Charlotte will be more hands on with the actual printing production. This will also help us to manage our time effectively, we have decided that everyday that we work together to begin with writing the days action plan. I will be recording this on my PPD blog.

After writing this we discovered that we will work well together and play off each others strengths and weaknesses to benefit our design work. The work load for the brief we have chosen is too big for one person, but together hopefully we will be able to produce an appropriate amount of work and fulfil this brief to its full potential.

We started at the basics and thought about different formats that we could produce this guide in. Charlotte produced a brainstorm and some design sheets to help our idea process. For now it looks like producing a small book is the best approach.

Charlotte also produced a swatch book to consider different stocks to use for our design.

Today we were put into pairs and set various tasks to expand on the ideas that we had already come up with. I was put with Matt, we discussed and shared each others ideas and then individually came up with our two most solid concepts. 

We then wrote up two briefs on our ideas and got feedback from other classmates. I found that it helped having an outsiders input and more than anything I think that it has made mine and Chars idea more solid.