OUGD603: Christmas Joy- Evaluation

This brief combined everything that I love and hate about screen printing. It was a very ambitious project and took a lot of manual hours in the print room, a lot of trial and error and some very sore shoulders to bring to completion. I did really enjoy it and I knew throughout this year I wanted to use screen printing as much as possible so this introductory brief really was a full immersive welcome back to screen printing as a whole. 

The initial development of my designs was fairly easy. After knowing what imagery I wanted to use and after adapting my one line drawing style it was a fun, quick process to produce the repeated pattern and separate the layers ready for screen exposure. However the practical side proved difficult in so many ways. I figured that, for some unknown reason, A3 screens and a repeated design on a single roll would work best, however this quickly changed to large sheets of brown paper. Though with the A3 screen it meant having to repeat the design on a single sheet about three-six times causing all kinds of time problems, ghosting ink on the screen where it hadn't properly dried and then having someone take and clean my screen two days before the date was up.

I went though a lot of brown paper and ended up cleaning and exposing screens many more times than I would've liked. For some reason I had made the logical conclusion that a repeated A2 screen on an A1 sheet would be the best idea. I think because of little alterations here and there with stock size, screens and printing the whole physical production ended up becoming very confused. If I were to do this brief again I would do one large screen appropriate to the size of the paper so each sheet only needed one pull for each colour. I spent a solid week from 9-5 in the print room repeating the same prints again and again, having issues with matching colours, blocked up screens, registration and alignment and just all round confusion. It ended up with a lot of dud sheets, many of the final sheets include mistakes here and there- though this can be argued as a good thing because the imperfect printed look is why a lot of people like screen printed designs. 

It was difficult, and heart breaking at points when a day would have produced no usable prints, but at the end of it all it was really satisfying. I still have a ridiculous amount of paper at home (ready for next christmas) as the market/selling stall just didn't pan out too well, but the designs are pretty and the look is what I wanted and overall if anything it was a great learning experience and a great introduction back into the world of print.