Thursday 10 February 2011

Crafting Products: Collection 100.


Developing my final designs for product and promotion- based upon the theme of experimental moustache growth and promotion of styles (DIY and babershop cuts)...


I'm really happy with the quality of my acetate designs now printed on the high-quality laser printers in the digital print suite at Uni- with six designs printed onto each A3 sheet, and then trimmed down accordingly to their designed 100mmx100mm dimensions. 

I decided to organise and present my designs on a keyring bind- easy to use, affordable and strong- however, despite the reasonably large circumfrence of the keyring, even a quarter of the way through my printing stage, the swatch book was already getting far too thick for the keyring- making it difficult to flip through and hold securely. 


After going to to experiment with dividing the designs between two books, I still found this a little too bulky- so decided to settle on an edition of four books- each with the same front and back cover, with the only difference being "part. 1", "part. 2", etc... easy enough to distingush between them, yet still visually remaining within part of a series.


Throughout the printing process I have had good luck as well as bad- being the first time I have used both acetate, and the illustrator software (in regards to the volume I am printing) I have learnt a lot about the condition of the stock, how it should be handled, etc.

Initially, when I was attempting to feed the hole-punched sheets onto the keyring, I found they would scratch very easily, and get covered in fingerprints- but with time and patience I found it far easier a process, and now feel very comfortable that I can achieved a well-crafted and neatly presented design.

Other problems were only bought to my attention post-print- like silly accidents had on Illustrator- perhaps through lack of sleep, or simply staring at a monitor for over eight hours a day resulted in a few mishaps- unaligned counter-fills, or even a slightly darker outline to my fill colour (see above for an example).

However, despite obvious frustrations in regards to print costs, and time, I'm glad that I get to learn from these experiences, so next time, and in all the sessions and workshops in the future, I know I can get it right.

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