Printing Disaster

Ok so recently I took my files for the cults brief to print with James, ready to screen print the special finishes. I took a few different paper stocks, mainly those purchased form the library, there are photos, which I need to find or retake of the different ones, but I also used the matt stock that James had in his printer. Looking at the way they all took the ink, I concluded that the best choice would be to use the matt stock that James had because the ink sat on it and had a much stronger presence, rather than bleeding into the paper, which reduced the clarity of colour, something that was appropriate for the conspiracy theory book, but something I didn't want to emulate with this, I wanted to really show off the print processes. Below are some photos of the screen printing proccess and why I have to do some of them again.





Here's the fluorescent ink on 'antique' paper form the library, as you can see, it's not very bright and the paper has absorbed a lot of that away, which is why I decided to go with the matte stock.




The fluorescent yellow has come out extremely faint, so next time i.e. today, I'm going to make sure I get more pulls thorugh, I've checked and the flat beds still aren't available so I'm going to have to do my best and photoshop them if neccassary.




As you can see the metallic ink has come out patchy, I think theres a few things to blame for this; 1. I had to use the cloth beds instead of the flat beds because they were in use so much. 2.The screen was kind of grainy, an unfortunate side effect of short exposure due to trace paper print outs, and 3. I'm a terrible screen printer. Also note how uneven the fluorescent pink is on the right hand side, another thing I may have to correct.


Here's the result of foil blocking, uneven on one side and the paper beneath it has stuck to the paper on the other side, so utter disaster that I need to do something about today. I decided that to get best results to avoid the unpredictable foil blocking and instead screen print a rich black onto the poster, followed by a heavy spot varnish coat to simulate a similar effect to what I'd get with this.