OUGD406 Studio Brief 02 - Licence to Print Money - Printing

After discussing my options with various tutors we had come to the conclusion of using wood block type at vernon street. However on further inspection the blocks are all different sizes and it would be extremely hard and time consuming to justify the type. Therefore I have made the decisions to have all of my design produced via screenprint.

Stocks I have chosen to work with:

Colorplan Brocade White 135gsm

Accent Smooth Glacier White 135gsm

Naturalis Absolute White Matt 135gsm

Mohawk Superfire Ultrawhite Smooth 118gsm

I have chosen to work with all white stock as I want the text to be clear and legible and provide a nice contrast to a blank template.

Colour choice:

For the background type I have chosen to go with the colour blue, this is to help keep context with my note. The slang term for a £5 note is also a bluey.

For the 'FIVER' text I have chosen to go with a metallic silver to highlight a security feature of the note and bring that overall feel of a banknote.

Printing:

I have found the whole screenprinting process really hard to get the hang of, and I have also noticed how time consuming it can be. Although I am aware that when done correctly it produces some really nice results.

As my design uses very thing type I noticed how difficult it was to get it to show up before the ink started to block up the screen. I produced lot's of copies and then it would just be a case of evaluating which one had worked the best.

When applying the silver text on top I found this really difficult as it blocks up the screen a lot quicker than the other paints. It also gave a translucent effect where you could only see the text in certain lighting. This wasn't something that I wanted for my design, so it was suggested to wait for it to dry and over print. This however came with its problems as it was extremely hard to line up. Out of the many prints I did there were only two that I could consider for submission. However after talking to Simon he was really pleased with how they had turned out are even suggested making the text more translucent as it was nice to see the blue come through the silver. After considering this I realised that it actually does work well my design just needed a little refinement. It was also suggested to add a numeral which I think will bring the whole design together. This is something I will consider changing for the exhibition.