Darkroom

Since I’ve graduated school I’ve found myself having a ton of free time on my hands—so I’ve decided to finally use the screen printing kit I bought a while ago. So far there has been a lot of trial and error (heavy on error). I’ve learned that dark-room safe-lights are a must, and will cut the clean up time from 2 hours to about 20 minutes. They also help prevent the need to buy replacement pants.

This was the result of the escapade sans safe-light. It was just a test to begin with, so I got a lot out of it, but I certainly learned that I need to see in order to do. After this, I Amazoned my way into owning a safe-light.

After that, things went incredibly smoothly. I Jerry-rigged an exposure system, laying the screen between the toilet and tub, with a floodlight straddling the two. At first I was concerned that the light may be bouncing off the tub, but it turned out really well.

Printing

Just a bit of tape and it prints fine. Test 1/1

With this, I have a large stack of newspaper that I’ve brushed some half water-half red ink over the top. I’ll be printing the design on top of it with either black or white ink, depending on the contrast needed.

To be continued…

Poke away!

——————–

As a reasonable chum, I like to think of myself as someone who follows a logical contraption. I believe design is about the message and delivering it with the most effectiveness. It’s about taking the conceptual, the non-tangable, and bringing it into the visual plain of existence.

Design is sort of like walking around in a room without light, reaching for these strings dangling from above, and trying to pull them into some kind of reasonable pattern, design, message, etc. Imagine weaving a dream catcher of sorts. We then pull them out for people to see. In so doing, we need to make sure we can produce these things in the dark; make sure we know what message, what demon it keeps out, without being able to see it.

This means we need to follow a system of contriving. A reasoning that is so embedded in us, that we can do it without seeing— without thought. It needs to be simple, and it needs to be intuitive.

Doing so doesn’t make each project the same. Far from it. The demon you intend to keep out is always different (unless it’s a  reoccurring demon, in which case, you reweave). Each project is different, and uses a different method of weaving. You are just following a typographic system, a grid structure, a pattern of thought that frames the best result.

We were there for the test prints (always the best, no matter who the artist is). TEN DOLLARS APIECE! Shit yeah, we took all the good ones.

It’s really more suitable as a display font only. Lowercase to come in the future. Also, I haven’t come up with a name for it yet. Any ideas are welcome.

This is a fine-dining restaurant going by the name, Fireplace, and will be featuring a variety of wild game on the menu. The idea is to create a comfortable, chillaxical environment that would still fit nicely in a modern world.

I’ve just finished printing out the menu on some recycled card stock-weight paper, and I’m about to start cutting and binding the whole thing together.

Thoughts?

Test prints are good, the pages are a little warped. Hopefully folding them the way we’re going to will eliminate that.

Alright guys! This Wednesday is the second quarterly meeting for all Graphic Design Students. It’s 1pm–3pm in rooms p111 and p113. Lots of good information will come out of there, along with answering questions you may have. Let people know when and where it is! We also have our weekly meeting on thursday, p113 at 1pm again. Bring your weekly competition

Weekly Inspiration

When you’re searching for inspirational websites, check out siteInspire. This website allows you to browse through websites by style, theme and type, or if you’re feeling lucky, it can choose a random one for you. Great resource and easy browsing.

This link is going to be a twofer!
Stefan Sagmiester recently did a lecture at Ted.com on the topic of “Time Off”. He talks about a few of his sabbaticals and how they improved his work. Instead of giving you the link I have to youtube, I’ll give you this instead. Stefan Sagmiester. The website called quietube takes all of the noise around the video, and gets ride of it, leaving a clean, refreshing window. It also provides you with a shortened URL, which is great for those of you who use twitter.

If you’re curious about the whole multi-touch thing starting to catch fire at Apple and other places, check out this (beautifully laid out) article. I’m honestly just psyched that the page is using Futura Bold for headers—and not as a png.

Outroduction

Hope your quarters are going well. We look forward to seeing you Wednesday for the GD Meeting, and then again on Thursday.

Things to come. Weekly meeting tomorrow at 1pm, p113. We’ll be looking over this weeks weekly designs and choose a winner. The word was “AiGD”. Size of the document is 2.5″x3.5″. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, come tomorrow, and we’ll get you in on the next one! Lots of fun and candy.

Weekly Inspiration

If you have no idea where to begin on the color scheme for a project, check out the Color Scheme Designer. Easy way to pull out your favorite tetrad of hues.

Here’s a portfolio website for the designer-illustrator Luis Vazquez. He has a solid, spooky/retro illustrative style, as if you brought The Nightmare Before Christmas to the 50/60s. If nothing else, you can leave the window open and listen to the cool jazzy music while you facebook around.

Here’s another way of looking at Tufte’s “ink usage” principle. Save Pens, Use Garamond.

Outroduction

Sorry about getting this out late. See you tomorrow!

We have a date and time set! Our weekly meetings will again be on Thursdays between 1 and 2pm, room p113 as Jelena said end of last week. Join us this Thursday to discuss an upcoming mixer event, weekly competitions with sweet swag, AiGD t-shirts, guest speakers, group website, and Portfolio 1 on 1! We are also talking about having more than one meeting a week for those of you who can’t make it Thursdays at 1. BE THERE THIS WEEK TO HELP GET YOUR WORD IN.

Weekly Inspiration

There are a lot of chemicals that go into printing on a can of soda. In that vein, a few designers have come up with a way to express the CocaCola can in a way that doesn’t need printing. COLORLESS CANS. What do you think? Will this catch on?

On a separate note, if you’re looking for a website with a lot of really good design inspiration, check out Cargo. It’s a new web publishing company (in other words, a CMS) powering a variety of creative communities in the fields of Education, Design, Research, and Conceptual Art. Check out their featured websites page.

Finally, if you’re tired of looking through pages and pages of terrible, free fonts, check out Hoefler & Frere-Jones for a bit of a refresher in good typography. Though you will have to cough up a bit of dough for a good family, it’s still fun to look through for inspiration!

Outroduction

We’re all excited about the things that are starting to form, and hope you guys are ready for some Design Awesomeness!