Throughout my essay I discussed traditional printmaking within graphic design. In particular I focused on Benjamin's theory of aura: ‘In even the most perfect reproduction, one
thing is lacking: the here and now of the work of art- its unique existence in
a particular place.’ (BENJAMIN, 1939). This theory suggests that printmaking provides an experience which cannot be reproduced by any other means. This meant that for my practical piece I would follow this and explore traditional printmaking methods- but in particular screen printing as this is something still heavily used within contemporary graphic design.
In my essay I looked at a few examples of screen printing- one of which was a limited edition cover print (Nobrow) which is what influenced me to create a larger print of one of important quotes from my essay. Even though I focused on Benjamin throughout the essay I felt as though Dormer's quote stating 'A craft object often reveals much about the
skill and the technology used to make it' was incredibly relevant to the primary research I did on Linkedin where I found out that is in fact the process and time spent being the reasoning people love traditional print methods. The quote relates to my print as you can clearly see the colour difference between cmyk prints and the mixed inks for printing with. I also chose to present the print onto a bigger piece rather than cropped is so that you can see the crop marks slightly and also the overlap of layers which is what makes a screen print unique. My choice of background pattern was to show how screen printing can overlay colours with a high pigment and my choice of a hand rendered and somewhat quirky looking font was to enhance the idea of craft and the handmade.
The second example I looked at within my essay was a publication using traditional methods along with screen printed items, this in particular was the influence for my practical piece- I must state that I do not want to prove that digital or traditional is better than one another. In fact I want to explore how they can be used together in harmony which is why I chose to digitally print my photographs for the pack mainly due to being able to see full colour cmyk images as by using screen print this would have been with halftone dots which wouldn't necessarily portray the process I went through correctly. I used half tone dots for the initial page to enhance the idea of traditional printing methods too. The printed pages within the pack show my process step by step of creating the screen print which previously discussed at one of the crits is representative of the 'slow movement' as my piece shows in detail how something was made it isn't instance it is a research process.
The concept of using an envelope containing my process was to follow along with the quote with the idea of "revealing" this therefore means that the viewer must open it to see the process I have gone through to make the final print. The pages of photographs are simply presented on the page with large amounts of white space to allow the eye to only focus on the photographs and not to overcomplicate the page. Three stages of screen prints are included within these digitally printed photographs too as well as the final piece.
‘craft objects capture the efforts of their makers and make these efforts visible and palpable for us to see and comprehend, and in doing so, they reflect back to us our own efforts they become mirrors of our own aspirations and possibilities’ (RISATTI, 2007, p196)
From the quote above the idea of showing my process and development is so that anyone can view this work and gain an understanding from it. It is not just for those who understand and appreciate screen printing but it is also for those who do not yet know about it and will gain knowledge of what the process is and the amount of work and time that goes into making.
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