Presentation Boards

Here are the presentation boards for each projec, plus a brief explanation of the information I've given and why.

Open publication - Free publishing

So with the Manchester Book Fair, I included a splash board that had a summary of the concept and audience etc. A shot of all the products I produced, including a close up on the spot varnish detailing on the cover, some shots of the spreads, where I've tried to highlight the spot varnish finish. It was difficult to photograph so I've handed in the product as well. I've also produced a board that highlights the extra materials. What I haven't included, quite deliberately is a context shot of the book at the book fair, no one needs to see a photo of me and whoever manning a stall to emphasise the point of it in context, it felt like a waste of a board.

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DSW has a brief summary of the lgo, her audience and the concept etc. Before looking at the stationary range I produced, then the press release booklet I've made for her and finally the website I've mocked up for her, all with type specification information.

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The cult brief was specifically about type and layout/ print and finish, so I documented each one of the different finishes I used on the boards a long with a detailed type specification. There was intentionally no context to avoid limiting myself in terms of what prints and finishes I could use.

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The membership pack brief simply has a splash page for each organisation followed by shots of the stationary for each membership pack. This has a type spec a long with colour swatches included in the information.

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This was a day brief so it has a quick summary of that as a concept, a board on the pysical release and a board on the digital release.

Reprinted Cults Brief and evaluation

OK so here are some photos of the finished products for the cults brief. I think an unfortunate side effect of doing a project that involved a lot of print processes is the time it took compared to the amount of blog posts I can make about the time it took. Anyway these are the reprints, as oyu can see they're only marginally better than the ones I did before, but they'll have to do. In terms of evaluating the project, I'm very happy with the layout of the typography, how unusual it looks, how tightly gridded it is and how it works with the fold. I think ti has a strong message and concept too. My main disappointment comes from my poor printing skills, which I assume may get better with time but it's made me realise that I can't wait to find a good printer to collaborate with on projects like this. So I guess that will form part of my PPD development as I go on.

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.

A note on the raelian church

So a quick note, I've decided not to print the raelian church piece with glow in the dark in, I'm running out of the amount of time I'm willing to spend on this project and getting hold of the ink is going to be too difficult. Instead this is just a proposal for further pieces that could potentially be added to the series as it goes on.

Revised cults brief posters

Ok so I revised some of these posters, some of them are minor like readjusting the point size so it has more presence on the page or in the case of the manson poster below, a complete redesign of the words. I wasn't happy with the way it all sat on 2 lines, it felt to bulky. Also in comparison to some of the other ones, it didn't seem particularly intelligent. The new phrase came to me last night and I think it looks more effective and less clunky on the page. The punchline is quite good too, revealing the quite crazy nature of the cult from what seems like quite a basic, normal phrase.

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

With this one I just tweaked the type size and the 'line spacing' to make it more symmetrical and have a better presence on the page by increeasing the point size by 5 or so.

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With this one, again i increased the point size by maybe 10 or 15 so it wasn't lost on the page. I also added the header line above, for some reason it had gone missing from the previous designs, and I wanted this poster to work equally within the set.

Aleister Crowley and Themela design

Ok, so I wopped out this design pretty quickly, I'd researched the elements I needed pretty well

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I did the quote quite plainly again, rather than working with an object, I wanted to use a pentagram but to do it in foilblock would mean covering most of the photograph. I added the pentagram to fill this fixation, though I'm not sure it will work. Elements in rich black as a pose to normal black are going to be foil blocked with the black foil, this includes the peak membership circle, all the lines dividing the headers and sections and the quote. I'm tempted to also put the title into foil block.

Poster:

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This came really quickly to, based on the idea of the media branding him the beast/ the antichrist/a satanist/evil at the time, and actually despite being very odd and a little deluded, by todays standards, his beliefs aren't even shocking. It also reflects the idea that he played on being called the beast (a reference to the Devil) despite being no such thing.

Things like the type setting need tweaking and will be properly sorted out by the end of tonight, but this is definitely the direction I'm going in with it.

Ready(ish) for print:

Here are the final layouts ready to print and sort out the separations to make screens for. Ignore the black on the order of the sun layout, I've since changed that to the white I mentioned in an earlier post, Issuu is just struggling to upload stuff at the minute and so I'll update that at a later date, also the green for the raelian church isn't right either. I think I'm running out of print proccesses that are do-able within collage, to exploit. I can't emboss with this brief anymore because I've switched to a double sided poster format from a leaflet/booklet format, embossing would lead to unwanted indentations on each side of the poster. I really want to do a piece on Alleister Crowley and his Themela Cult, I think it might involve playing around with rich black against black, and/or spot varnishing onto black without there being anything underneath in order to get over his 'wickedest man in Britain' reputation. Anyway, I'm going to try it out, but these are the finished product ready for print, but I think theres a few things I need to tweak ever so slightly throughout to make sure they're absolutely right for print.

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Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

Open publication - Free publishing

A word about the Church of Scientology; initially it said 'we are not a cult' but the trend amongst the rest of them is that the fold in the middle reveals a truth about the cult, where when it's folded it's a lie or it's a twist on the truth. The scientology one is the other way around. Under the advice of some of my peers I decided to use the term 'We are not a religion' instead which I think is actually a lot more suitable.

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The end is in sight, if I can get all the black inks printed on different paper stocks and the exposures printed tomorrow, I can expose the screens and then have two days printing on Monday and Tuesday ready for the show and tell.

Testing Colourways

For the ones that I've done so far, only 2 of them need colour exploration at this stage, as a pose to having a bit of a mess around at the screenprinting stage,this being the Raelian Church, who's colour will alter when I screen glow in the dark ink over it anyway, although I may do a test to see how visible it is when it isn't glowing anyway, removing the need for colour, however, I've decided to look at what greens should sit under it to ensure that it is visible and the text is legible in the ink.














With the greens I've been looking at, I prefer the paler, every so slightly bluer greens to the very yellow greens that are quite snot coloured and unpleasant to me. I'm also a fan of the lighter shades to the very deep and dominating greens. DS 278-5 seems a little more appropriate, but i want to check the visibility of the glow in the dark ink in normal light first, because if it's visible enough by it's self, I'd much rather do that.


And I also needed to test what red to use for the Manson layout. I decided to go much subtler than I was looking before, removing the blood droplets from the poster side, and simply having the text red. I want to spot varnish over the red sections on both sides to create the feeling of liquid, this combined with the red will hopefully create a link in the viewers mind between the visuals I've represented and blood/murder. I have been a lot subtler than I could have been, I think this gives it more integrity than smearing everything in splatter brushes, which could be deemed a little tacky. Anyway, it's important I get the right red, it needs to be crimson enough, without having a tinge of pink, orange or indigo.









With this, it was much easier to find what I was looking for, a few of the ones above are too orange or too indigo, or even too light, appearing a bit pink. DS91-1 is a vivid and quite pur red, with enough darkness to it to have connotations of blood without seeming too heavy on the page.