OUGD603: GF Smith- Brief Extension

I really enjoyed this GF Smith brief and I wanted to push it a little bit further. The extra prints we created for the exhibition are going to be sold in Colours May Vary where the framed prints are displayed. I thought that it may be a good idea to try and produce something else with my design that could also be sold, something that could prove a more useful commodity than prints alone. I had purchased some tote bags about two years ago with the intention to sew them, print onto them and customise them for my own purposes, however I had never got around to using them and so felt they could be perfect for extending this brief.

Because of the size of the bags I was able to use my original hand drawn negatives for the screens and so there were no issues with resizing or altering the image. 

When I started printing I believed I could mass print lots of bags in a row with each layer, print all yellow in one go, all white, then all black. However this didn't work. Alignment was absolutely key for getting the bags right and once a screen had been flooded with ink it was incredibly difficult to get the right placement on the next print. So I had to take a longer process when printing the bags. Print one yellow, clean and leave screen to dry before using the yellow again on the next screen. This was not only time consuming because you had to wait 20 minutes for each layer and screen to dry before you could print over them again but also because I had exposed the white and black layers on the same screen. This meant that once I had printed the white layer, cleaned and dried the screen I would have to use it again for the black layer, holding up the entire factory process.

Although it was time consuming the whole thing was entirely rewarding and the quality of the image didn't diminish anywhere near as much as I thought it would have. Although there were issues with the black ink making some bug names unreadable the whole final bag looks really pretty and they possess a quality and professional feel about them.

I pitched the final bags to the store and as far as I know they are happy to sell them along with the prints. So overall it was a very successful brief, even if it means I have a nice, hand printed bag just to use for myself.