Convulse and screen printing

At the time this project took place I had never even seen screen printing take place before, but now I love it. What really appeals to me about it is the sheer accuracy and sharpness you can get from your images. Below is an example produced by a small group of us when exploring screen printing.

As can be seen here the lettering comes out very fine, especially considering the small spaces and shapes within it.

Now for the brief, to design and create a book which has both image and text based around a single word, this word was to be picked at random from a dictionary to add an extra element of individuality and excitement to the project. When i say create a book, this could include books, fold-outs (like a map), pdf books, leaflets. However I felt a book format suited the brief best and it has a much more hand made feel.

As you may or may not have guessed from the title, the word I ended up with was 'Convulse' which to me at first was rather hard to generate ideas for and in the end I went for its meaning 'to convulse with laughter' meaning to be suddenly overcome with laughter and happiness.

Layout played a very big part in this particular project as I wanted to reflect my chosen word not only through image and text but the way each element was displayed and arranged. I went about this my adapting a classic layout style but making the images and copy used interact with each other in a way that I feel emphasises the atmosphere of the book.

After the screen print sessions I was eager to try out my newly learned skills and apply them to a finished piece of work and so I incorporated this method of printing into the centre pages of my book. Using a graphics tablet on my mac I hand scribbled a Charlie Chaplin quote in black on white and printed it at A4, then rubbing the print with vegetable oil to make the white parts transparent I exposed it to the light in the screen printing machine and experimented with my idea.

The printing was a success in terms of quality and precision, however looking back I feel it lacked in excitement and depth.

In fact I feel quite strongly about this for the whole project, although the outcome was very polished and professional looking, parts of it came off to look a bit, well, lacking in creativity. I mean it was still a fantastic outcome to me, but it just lacked that little something special, that extra push which takes it from being fantastic to one of a kind.

But you always learn from your mistakes so I shall take all that I learned onboard and will use it to better myself in the future.