Speaking from experience, finishing touch.

Perhaps not...

Well.  The wax seal didn't work.  At all.

There is a slight indentation where the logo has been etched in, however, not enough to look like a quality seal.      If me and Sadie have time before the deadline we will look to amend the acrylic so that it actually works.  For now though, the plan is to just keep the box as it is on its own.

Speaking from experience, final resolutions

Speaking from experience, even more screenprinting, and a little emossing.

Screenprinting:

Me and Sadie realised we had not done anything with regards to the backs of the postcards yet.  Our initial idea was to say where the process can be done, what you need to bring in preparation and also our own opinion on the process.  However, after speaking to many people on the course we changed our minds.  To give the postcards less of an agenda we felt it would be helpful to say what the process was and where it can be found.  That is all.  I think that if you have a piece of design that engages people then a lot of writing, they will just shut off and look at the design again.  I think that the preciousness of the postcards will be heightened through less text on the back- it makes it look more expensive and professional.  Below are the designs I have come up with for the text:

Above: Leading experimentation.  The closer the leading is, the worse the text looks in this case.  I have set every block of text with 5pt to keep consistency within the designs.

Once we were happy with the designs we printed.  And then we realised- the whole point of this brief is to solve the problem of people not making the most of the facilities available.  So, we decided to include our 'slogan' 'Make the Most of it'.  We used italics so that it looked like a quote- a pearl of wisdom- something that they could trust.  We then decided to change the positioning of the locations to the bottom of the postcards and decrease it in size.  Overall I think the composition works well and puts emphasis on the right areas.

Our first thought to get this information on the back of the postcards would be to digitally print them before or after we had completed the process the design was depicting.  However, we were slowed down when we found that the digital print room was fully booked up until our deadline so that was a write off.  After this, it made so much sense to keep the whole thing manual- why bring in a digital print process when our whole concept is based on manual ones?

As ever, screenprinting never runs smoothly- like most of the print processes.  Above are the prints that didn't work so well.  However, I think the print above is more the screen than the actual print.  This is not good as we would have to strip and expose another screen which would not be feasible given the time constraints.  

Embossing:

Whilst Sadie screenprinted the backs of the postcards I got on with embossing.

 

Speaking from experience, Vernon St.

Today we went down to Vernon St to compile letterpress and woodblock designs for our postcards.  However, things tend to take a lot longer than first imagined- as with everything in this project.  Below is what we came up with:

To begin with we were playing around with existing letterforms within the print studio, we wanted to see if words would work well against an image.  I then inked up the logo and began printing.  The results were better than we had both imaged.  The strong colours work well with the simple design on simple stock:

The image above is an example of how messy things can get when printing.  There is no way to keep everything clean when using your hands- ink coated hands.  Later on I was shown how to stop this situation.  You cut clean pieces of paper, small enough for your fingers and use them to protect the stock against the ink.

Talk about pressure.

Later on in the day when Roger was free he helped us with setting up our letterpress.

We chose Times Italic to keep visual consistency within the whole postcard package.  The pointsize was kept small so that we could layer it up over one of our screenprints without confusion, for example:

We didn't get time that day to finish out letterpress off so we came in the next day to print, results are as follows:

You can really see from woodblock and letterpress that these processes just wouldn't work without pressure.  It really is the main aspect of the print processes, therefore solidifying our decision on 'the three p's'.

We experimented with changing the amount of pressure we were putting on the press by swapping trace for newsprint, newsprint for cartridge paper and so on.  This changes the printed result slightly.  The  first print is more cracked and less solid, and, depending on what resolution you're looking for this could work well.  However, our aim was a crisp, clean print, and we obtained this on good quality trace stock and more pressure.

Mine and Sadies' favourite piece would the the second.  We both thought that the words were clear to read, with the design being stimulating at the same time.  Originally this specific screenprint was a case of terrible misallignment, but with trace over it it just works.  The message is put across in words, showing one of the print processes at the same time, whilst incorporating consistent visual designs.  Our message is still clear.